The Magellanic snipe (''Gallinago magellanica'') is a

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in tribe Scolopancinai and subfamily Scolopacinae of

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Scolopacidae Sandpipers are a large family, Scolopacidae, of waders. They include many species called sandpipers, as well as those called by names such as curlew and snipe. The majority of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil. ...

, the sandpipers and relatives.HBW and BirdLife International (2022) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 6b. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v6b_Jul22.zip retrieved December 5, 2022 It is found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

, and the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouze ...

.Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2022. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2022. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ retrieved November 10, 2022

Taxonomy and systematics

The taxonomic history of the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...

snipes of genus ''

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 ...

'' is complicated. What is now the Magellanic snipe has in the past been treated as a subspecies of

common snipe The common snipe (''Gallinago gallinago'') is a small, stocky wader native to the Old World. The breeding habitats are marshes, bogs, tundra and wet meadows throughout the Palearctic. In the north, the distribution limit extends from Iceland ov ...

(''G. gallinago''), then as

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organis ...

with what are now the

Pantanal snipe The Pantanal snipe (''Gallinago paraguaiae'') is a bird in tribe Scolopancinai and subfamily Scolopacinae of Family (biology), family Scolopacidae, the sandpipers and relatives.HBW and BirdLife International (2022) Handbook of the Birds of the ...

(''G. paraguaiae'') and the

puna snipe The puna snipe (''Gallinago andina'') is a bird in tribe Scolopancinai and subfamily Scolopacinae of family Scolopacidae, the sandpipers and relatives.HBW and BirdLife International (2022) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife Intern ...

(''G. andina''), and later still as conspecific with only the Pantanal snipe. The South American Classification Committee of the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

, the

International Ornithological Committee The International Ornithologists' Union, formerly known as the International Ornithological Committee, is a group of about 200 international ornithologists, and is responsible for the International Ornithological Congress and other international ...

(IOC), and the

Clements taxonomy ''The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'' is a book by Jim Clements which presents a list of the bird species of the world. The most recent printed version is the sixth edition (2007), but has been updated yearly, the last version in 202 ...

treat all of them as separate species. However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) retains the Magellanic and Pantanal snipes as subspecies of what it calls the South American snipe, with the

binomial Binomial may refer to: In mathematics *Binomial (polynomial), a polynomial with two terms * Binomial coefficient, numbers appearing in the expansions of powers of binomials *Binomial QMF, a perfect-reconstruction orthogonal wavelet decomposition ...

''G. paraguaiae''.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved July 24, 2022 This article follows the IOC definition of a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

''G. magellanica'', the Magellanic snipe.

Description

The Magellanic snipe's face has distinct tan and darker brown stripes. Its upperparts have a complex pattern of muted whitish, buffy, rufous, and black on a brown background. Its breast has fine

vermiculation Vermiculation is a surface pattern of dense but irregular lines, so called from the Latin ''vermiculus'' meaning "little worm" because the shapes resemble worms, worm-casts, or worm tracks in mud or wet sand. The word may be used in a number of ...

and its flanks have dark and light barring. The upper surface of its tail is rufescent with irregular bars and white tips. It has a long, thick, dull pinkish bill with a black tip. Its legs are yellowish.Van Gils, J., P. Wiersma, G. M. Kirwan, P. C. Rasmussen, and P. F. D. Boesman (2021). Magellanic Snipe (''Gallinago magellanica''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (P. C. Rasmussen, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.soasni3.01 retrieved December 8, 2022

Distribution and habitat

The Magellanic snipe is found from north-central Chile and northwestern Argentina south into

Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of the Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla ...

and also on the

. It reaches Uruguay during the non-breeding season. It inhabits a variety of damp to wet landscapes including ''

pampas The Pampas (from the qu, pampa, meaning "plain") are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba; all of Uruguay; and Brazi ...

'', peat bogs, flooded ''steppe'',

tussock grasslands Tussock grassland is a form of open grassland that is dominated by tussock grasses (also called bunchgrasses). It is common in some temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregions of the Southern Hemisphere. Tussock grasslands are usually ...

, the edges of marshes, and sometimes swampy woods.

Behavior

Movement

The Magellanic snipe is a partial migrant. The Tierra del Fuego population mostly moves north for the austral winter, as do some individuals of the mainland population. They reach northeastern Argentina and Uruguay at that time. Some birds overwinter on the Falklands but most of that population apparently migrates to the mainland.

Feeding

The Magellanic snipe forages by probing in mud. Their diet of invertebrates is not known in detail but includes insect larvae and earthworms.

Breeding

The Magellanic snipe's breeding season varies geographically. On the mainland it appears to span from August to November. On the Falklands it is mainly from August to October. The male performs a

winnowing Winnowing is a process by which chaff is separated from grain. It can also be used to remove pests from stored grain. Winnowing usually follows threshing in grain preparation. In its simplest form, it involves throwing the mixture into the ...

display during courtship, flying high in circles and then taking shallow dives to produce a distinctive sound. The female makes a nest as a shallow depression, usually in grass and close to water. The typical clutch size is two eggs. The incubation period and time to fledging are not known.

Vocal and non-vocal sounds

The Magellanic snipe has a very wide variety of vocalizations including a chip call "''kek..kek..kek..kek..kek...''", a chipper call "raspy notes repeated at steady pace ''...rek..kek....rek...kek....rek..kek...''", a flight call "short raspy note, repeated at irregular intervals ''..kek......kek...''", and a flush call "''KEK.kek.kek.....kek.kek...''". The chip and chipper calls are typically made from the ground or near it such as from a fence post. The species' non-vocal winnowing is made by air flowing over the outer tail feathers during flight. It is described as "a series of pulses that increase in duration and amplitude over the sound, with pulses organized as multiples (typically couplets with different duration)." It lasts two to five seconds and is repeated about every 10 seconds.

Status

The IUCN follows HBW taxonomy and so has not assessed Magellanic snipe separately from Pantanal snipe.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q19709505 Gallinago Wading birds Birds of South America Birds of the Falkland Islands Birds of islands of the Atlantic Ocean Birds of Tierra del Fuego Birds of Chile Birds described in 1828 Taxa named by Phillip Parker King