Painted-snipes | Rostratulidae

Goudsnippen | Aguateros

Snipe-like marsh birds with a long bill that droops slightly at the tip and broad rounded wings that give a slow, owl-like flight. A wide pale spectacle runs round the eye and back past the ear coverts, and a pale brace crosses the shoulder, breaking the bird into pieces among the reeds. Here too the roles are reversed: the female is larger and richer in colour, with a warm chestnut neck, and it is her low repeated booming that carries over the marsh at dusk. She mates with several males, each of which incubates his own clutch and raises the young. They feed at half-light, probing the mud with the bill held slightly open, and when threatened rely first on standing still.