Greater Painted-snipe

The greater painted-snipe (Rostratula benghalensis) is a species of wader in the small painted-snipe family Rostratulidae. It widely distributed across Africa and southern Asia and is found in a variety of wetland habitats, including swamps and the edges of larger water bodies such as lakes and rivers. This species is sexually dimorphic with the female being larger and more brightly coloured than the male. The female is normally polyandrous with the males incubating the eggs and caring for the young. == Taxonomy == The greater painted-snipe was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the rails in the genus Rallus and coined the binomial name Rallus benghalenis. Linnaeus based his account on the "Bengall water rail" that had been described and illustrated in 1738 by the English naturalist Eleazar Albin in his A Natural History of Birds. Albin had examined a drawing that had been sent to the English silk-pattern designer Joseph Dandridge from Bengal. The greater painted-snipe is now placed with the Australian painted-snipe in the genus Rostratula that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Vieillot. The species is treated as…