61 THE PAINTED SNIPE The Painted Snipe is not a Snipe at all but an aberrant type of Sandpi- per and as it cannot be fitted in with any well defined group of birds it has been separated as a family by itself. It is one of those few forms in which the female is the larger, brighter coloured of the sexes and the dominating partner in sexual matters. The females fight for the males and challenge one another with a loud note. After a male has been secured and eggs have been laid the female entrusts the duties of brooding the clutch and rearing the young to her partner and so soon as she is ready to lay again she seeks another partner in the usual manner, and so on. From her larger size, handsome colouration and the ways just referred to she is often mistaken for the male of the species. These birds inhabit rushy, reedy swamps or margins of tanks and lakes up to about 5,000 ft. in the Himalayas and at suitable places in the plains. Being birds of crepuscular habits they possess, like the Snipe, very large eyes which, unlike the Snipe, however, are placed in a forward position. The female is olive-brown and bright olive-green, closely barred with black above: rich chestnut on the upper breast which is separated from the white belly by a blackish-brown pectoral band. A white ring surrounds the large eye and is prolonged into a streak behind it. The male has a duller plumage, a drab or brown breast and a white belly. The ring round the eye is buff. The wind-pipe of the female is longer than that of the male, and curves into a full loop, and it thus provides her with a powerful voice apparatus, for it is she who does all the calling with a deep mellow note. Frank Finn's remarks about the eyes of the bird, quoted by S. Baker in Game Birds of India, Burma and Ceylon, Vol. II, 132, are very interest- ing: "Like Owls, also, this bird has a singularly expressive countenance. On the rare occasions, however when one sees the bird walking about at ease, the feathers over the eyes are raised so as to be higher than the crown, which gives quite a wide awake expression. In moving about thus, the head is carried high, and the bird looks tall and graceful." No wonder it is called the 'Peacock Snipe' in South India because of the beautiful plumage of the female and particularly the white ring round her eyes and its extension (cf. ; a Peacock).
