THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 923 



Hume that the birds showed off to each other in this way in the 

 breeding-season were quite correct in their statements, as I have 

 more than once noted cases in which various birds used the same 

 gestures to express anger or fear as they display in courtship." 



Finn in the above quotation says that he thinks these birds 

 must be as nocturnal as owls and Hume says that they certainly 

 move about much more at night than by day. It is probable, 

 however, that they feed freely in the early mornings and evenings 

 and are crepuscular rather than nocturnal in their habits. Certainly 

 Mr. Hole and I found them constantly feeding in the ploughed 

 fields I have referred to already during all excepting the hottest 

 hours of the day when they retired to the ditches and were only 

 roused with great difficulty. 



They are very omnivorous in their diet and eat both grain and 

 animal food. An examination of the stomachs of a fairly large series 

 of birds has given the following menus of a Painter's daily fare. 

 On many occasions exclusive meals of fat little field crickets, some- 

 times 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 rarefy 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 extra- 

 ordinary 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 dif- 

 ference 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 



