ROSTRATULA. 147 
upper wing-coverts, but I have found indications of the latter in quite 
- young birds. 
“Nestling.—Covered with down of a chestnut color, interspersed with 
black along the back, and prettily variegated with silvery tips to the 
feathers; below the eye a whitish streak, bordered with lines of black; 
under surface of body bright chestnut, with a black spot on the throat 
and a black line across the fore neck.” (Sharpe.) 
“This species and G. stenura are likely to be confounded unless special 
attention is paid to the differences between them. ‘The first and most 
unfailing point of difference is in the tail. In G. gallinago the tail is 
composed of twelve, fourteen, or sixteen ordinary soft feathers; in G. 
stenura there are ten soft feathers and on either side of these a number, 
varying from five to nine, of narrow rigid feathers with apparently no 
webs. These narrow feathers require to be looked for; they do not strike 
the eye, as they are more or less hidden by the tail-coverts and are more- 
over very close together. A second point of difference lies in the colora- 
tion of the lower surface of the wing. In the pintail snipe the axillars 
and the under wing-coverts are very distinctly and regularly barred with 
dark brown throughout. In the common snipe these same parts are 
indistinctly barred, and there is always a patch on the coverts left quite 
white and unbarred. Mr. Hume points out one or two additional differ- 
ences which it may be well to quote: In the common snipe the outer 
web of the first primary is white or nearly so, and the secondaries are 
broadly tipped with white; in the pintail the outer web of the first 
primary is of the same color as the inner, and the secondaries are only 
margined with albescent or brownish white.” (Oates.) 
Genus ROSTRATULA Vieillot, 1816. 
Bill long and slender but shorter than in Gallinago, its tip slightly 
swollen and bent downward with a median ridge and two lateral grooves, 
not pitted; culmen little longer than tarsus; female brighter in plumage 
than male. 
124. ROSTRATULA CAPENSIS (Linnezus). 
PAINTED SNIPE, 
Scolopax capensis LINNEXUS, Syst. Nat. ed. 12 (1766), 1, 246. 
Rostratula capensis SHARPE, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1896), 24, 683; Hand- 
List (1899), 1, 167; BLANForD, Fauna Brit. Ind. Bds. (1898), 4, 293, 
fig. 67; Oates, Cat. Birds’ Eggs (1902), 2, 68; McGregor and Wor- 
CESTER, Hand-List (1906), 29. 
Pa-co’-bo, Manila. 
Catanduanes (Whitehead); Leyte (Everett); Lubang (McGregor); Luzon 
(Everett, Bourns & Worcester, McGregor) ; Marinduque (Steere Exp.) ; Mindanao 
(Murray, Everett, Steere Exp., Bourns € Worcester); Panay (Bourns & Wor- 
cester) ; Samar (Steere Hap., Whitehead) ; Sibuyan (McGregor) ; Siquijor (Bourns 
& Worcester). Africa, Indian Peninsula, Greater Sunda Islands; Burmese prov- 
inces to China and Japan south to Malay Peninsula. 
