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Jack Snipe

Jack Snipe

Lymnocryptes minimus

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The Jack Snipe is the smallest snipe, a stocky, very secretive wader and the only member of its genus. It breeds in bogs and marshes of northern Europe and northern Russia and winters in western and southern Europe, Africa and India. It is famous for its rhythmic bobbing and for being remarkably hard to flush from cover.

Did you know?

  • Its display flight sounds like a distant galloping horse.
  • Its scientific name roughly means “smallest hidden marsh-dweller”.

Voice

Song

About the species

Identification

A small snipe with a fairly short bill, about the length of the head (clearly shorter than Common Snipe's), short legs and a short, wedge-shaped tail. The dark back shows two bright yellowish stripes, and the head pattern lacks a central crown stripe but has a split supercilium. It bobs its body up and down while feeding. It usually flushes only at very close range and silently.

Family

Scolopacidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, black, white, yellow

About the habitat

Very wet habitats with dense low vegetation – bogs, fens, wet meadows and tundra pools; outside the breeding season flooded fields and the muddy margins of marshes.

Diet

Small invertebrates – earthworms, insect larvae such as midges, beetles and small snails – probed from soft mud; some seeds.

Behaviour

Extremely cryptic, it crouches and relies on camouflage, often letting an intruder come very close before rising silently, flying low and short, and dropping back into cover. It feeds with a rhythmic bobbing, as if on springs. In the breeding season the male performs an aerial display with a sound likened to a galloping horse.

Sources

Photo: Morhaf kamal aljanee, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jack snipe.png

Sound: Teet Sirotkin, XC1157232, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/1157232

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

See also