134 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



many occasions exclusive meals of fat little field crickets, sometimes 

 the same mixed with grass seeds or, less often, with unripe paddy ; 

 often meals of many courses including snails and tiny shell-fish, 

 worms of all sorts and sizes, grass-hoppers, seeds, paddy and rarely 

 millet. At other times they seem to have taken nothing but 

 vegetarian food and once or twice I found nothing but paddy in their 

 stomachs, mixed with the green blades of paddy leaves. 



The crickets were found in the stomachs of those which had been 

 feeding in the open fields, and it may have been the extraordinary 

 abundance of these insects which induced the birds to forsake their 

 ordinary habits and haunts. 



I have remarked in the beginning of this article upon the 

 difference in the length of the trachea of the male and female 

 Painted Snipe, the latter having it long and convoluted and the 

 former shorter and straight. This appears to correspond with a 

 difference in voice, and we find that the female has a rather deep, 

 mellow note, contrasting with the squeaky note of the male. Finn 

 says he has noticed no difference in the notes of the two sexes, 

 but says nothing further. 



Wood-Mason describes the call of the female as " a low, regular, 

 hoarse, but rich purr " ; Tickell considers it " low and mellow," a 

 single soft note frequently repeated, " kone, kone, kone " ; and Hume 

 says that to his ears it " most resembles the sound produced by 

 blowing into the neck of a phial." Hume's description of the call 

 seems to me to describe it well ; but the reader must not imagine 

 that the note is a whistle. A strong blow into the neck of a phial, 

 of course, produces a whistle ; but the call of the female Painter 

 resembles the blow when it just falls short of this. It is a common 

 enough call, and every sportsman must get to know it if he does 

 much snipe-shooting, as the birds repeatedly call up to nine or 

 ten a.m. in the cold weather, and again commence calling in the 

 evening an hour before sunset. 



The Plate. — The colouration is on the whole good. The feathering 

 of this bird should be more than usually pronounced, as it is more 

 lax and soft than in the true Snipes. 



Both bills and legs are correctly coloured, but depict, of course, 

 only one type. In most birds the legs will be found to be a less 



