Common Snipe
(Gallinago gallinago)Cool fact: Snipes rely on their cryptic coloration when hiding. But when danger comes too close they flush with a characteristic erratic zigzag flight, flying rapidly away while loudly calling "scaap," or "snipe."
The Common Snipe is primarily a bird of open freshwater marshes, bogs, wet meadows, and the northern tundra during the breeding season. There they feed in water up to their bellies or probe into soft mud with their long bills for food. Their bills are hard-tipped, but otherwise highly sensitive and flexible so that they can curve their upper mandible and raise it to capture earthworms and other subterranean prey. Insects make up about half of their food. The remainder consists of crustaceans such as crayfish, crabs, and daphnia, earthworms, leeches, spiders, some small vertebrates, and seeds. Snipes forage in fairly dense low marsh vegetation or in plowed fields, and only sparingly on mud flats. When not feeding, they can be hard to see while they rest motionless for long periods.
The female selects a nest site concealed by vegetation, and lines a scrape on the ground with short grasses, leaves, or moss. She may incorporate a roof of overhanging plants. She lays three or four spotted eggs. Although the male does not contribute to nest construction or incubation, he shares in the care of the precocial young, who leave the nest as soon as their down is dry. Sometimes the female cares for part of the brood and the male cares for the rest. They fledge at about 20 days.
Males are famous for their aerial displays performed not only during courtship, but also over the nest and even at times during migration and winter. Males circle several hundred feet up in the sky on rapidly beating wings, then produce an ethereal rhythmically pulsing musical sound while plunging earthward at about a 45 degree angle. The sound is produced by the passage of air over the outermost tail feathers, which the male holds out at right angles to the body. The sound seems to rise and fall as he repeats the performance in flight, roller-coaster fashion. At other times snipes call with a repetitive "chip-per, chip-per, chip-per," around the nest. They sometimes call from fence posts or trees.
During the breeding season Common Snipes are found across Canada and south in the United States through New England, New York, Michigan, the northern Great Plains and through the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. In winter they are common throughout the South and West, but some migrate as far as the Lesser Antilles and South America. They also occur across Europe and Asia, wintering in southern Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa. Although still locally common, formerly abundant North American populations were decimated by market hunting before the late 1900s.
Description: Common Snipes are stocky, medium-sized sandpipers with short legs and very long straight bills (twice the length of the head). Only dowitchers and woodcocks are similar in shape, but they are easily distinguished by plumage pattern. Common Snipes have generally warm brown upperparts that are prominently marked on their heads and backs with pale longitudinal stripes. The short rounded tail is orange and the belly is white, contrasting with the dark chest and undertail area. Woodcocks are plumper, marked with crosswise bars on the head and have larger heads and more rounded wings. Dowitchers are more similarly shaped, but lack the snipe's very prominent stripes. Sexes are alike, and there is very little change in the plumage with age or season.