A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three

genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...

in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Scolopacidae Scolopacidae is a large family of shorebirds, or waders, which mainly includes many species known as sandpipers, but also others such as woodcocks, curlews and snipes. Most of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil ...

. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/ camouflaging

plumage Plumage () is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, there can b ...

. ''

Gallinago ''Gallinago'' is a genus of birds in the wader family Scolopacidae, containing 18 species. Taxonomy The name ''Gallinago'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 as a subdivision of the genus ''Scolopax''. Bri ...

'' snipe have a nearly worldwide distribution, the '' Lymnocryptes'' snipe is restricted to

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

and

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and the ''

Coenocorypha The austral snipes, also known as the New Zealand snipes or tutukiwi, are a genus, ''Coenocorypha'', of tiny birds in the sandpiper family (biology), family, which are now only found on New Zealand outlying islands, New Zealand's outlying islands ...

'' snipe is found only in the outlying islands of New Zealand. The four species of painted snipe are not closely related to the typical snipe, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.

Behaviour

Snipe search for

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

s in the mud with a " sewing-machine" action of their long bills. The sensitivity of the bill is caused by filaments belonging to the fifth pair of nerves, which run almost to the tip and open immediately under the soft cuticle in a series of cells; a similar adaptation is found in sandpipers; this adaptation gives this portion of the surface of the premaxillaries a honeycomb-like appearance: with these filaments the bird can sense its food in the mud without seeing it.

Diet

Snipe feed mainly on insect

larva A larva (; : larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into their next life stage. Animals with indirect development such as insects, some arachnids, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase ...

. Other invertebrate prey include

snail A snail is a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gas ...

crustacean Crustaceans (from Latin meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are invertebrate animals that constitute one group of arthropods that are traditionally a part of the subphylum Crustacea (), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthrop ...

s, and

worm Worms are many different distantly related bilateria, bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limb (anatomy), limbs, and usually no eyes. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine ...

s. The snipe's bill allows the very tip to remain closed while the snipe slurps up invertebrates.

Habitat

Snipe can be found in various types of wet marshy settings including

bogs A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main Wetland#Types, types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagm ...

swamps A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

, wet meadows, and along

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

s, coast lines, and

ponds A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression, either naturally or artificially. A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing the two, although defining a pond t ...

. Snipe avoid settling in areas with dense vegetation, but rather seek marshy areas with patchy cover to hide from predators.

Hunting

Camouflage may enable snipe to remain undetected by hunters in

marshland In ecology, a marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous plants rather than by woody plants.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p More in general ...

. The bird is also highly alert and startled easily, rarely staying long in the open. If the snipe flies, hunters have difficulty wing-shooting due to the bird's erratic flight pattern. The difficulties involved around hunting snipe gave rise to the military term ''

sniper A sniper is a military or paramilitary marksman who engages targets from positions of concealment or at distances exceeding the target's detection capabilities. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with telescopic si ...

'', which originally meant an expert hunter highly skilled in

marksmanship A marksman is a person who is skilled in precision shooting. In modern military usage this typically refers to the use of projectile weapons such as an accurized scoped long gun such as designated marksman rifle (or a sniper rifle) to shoot ...

and camouflaging, but later evolved to mean a

sharpshooter A sharpshooter is one who is highly proficient at firing firearms or other projectile weapons accurately. Military units composed of sharpshooters were important factors in 19th-century combat. Along with " marksman" and "expert", "sharpshooter" ...

or a shooter who makes distant shots from concealment.

Footnotes

External links