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Common Snipe

Common Snipe

Gallinago gallinago

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The Common Snipe is a small, well-camouflaged, long-billed wader of wet grasslands, bogs and marshes across the Palearctic. It feeds by probing soft mud for invertebrates and is famous for the male's “drumming” display, a bleating sound made by vibrating tail feathers during dives. Northern breeders migrate to milder parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia for the winter.

Did you know?

  • Its display sound has been likened to a bleating goat, inspiring folk names such as “heather-bleater”.
  • It was shown that the drumming comes from two outspread tail feathers – the sound can even be recreated by whirling two feathers fixed in a cork.

Voice

Song
Flight call
Drumming

About the species

Identification

A long-billed, mottled brown wader with pale longitudinal stripes on the back. Its white belly and broad pale trailing edge to the wing separate it from Great Snipe, and the pale central crown stripe from Jack Snipe. The bleating sound of its display flight helps identification.

Family

Scolopacidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, black, white, orange

About the habitat

Wet, open habitats – bogs, fens, marshes, wet meadows, tundra and the edges of lakes and streams – where soft soil allows probing. In winter wet lowland fields and marshes.

Diet

Mainly earthworms, insects and their larvae and small molluscs probed from soft ground; also some plant material and seeds.

Behaviour

Shy and superbly camouflaged, it often crouches in vegetation and flushes only at close range, calling a harsh “scaap” and zigzagging away. Males perform high circling display flights with shallow dives to “drum”. It nests on the ground, and both parents care for the young.

Sources

Photo: TRinaud, CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Common snipe (Gallinago gallinago) 2022.jpg

Sound: Hermann Josef Eckl, XC952492, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/952492

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC730531, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/730531

Sound: Gallinago gallinago, Public domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gallinago_gallinago_drumming.ogg

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions + Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_snipe

See also