The Pantanal snipe (''Gallinago paraguaiae'') 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 lightweigh ...

in tribe Scolopancinai and

subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoologi ...

Scolopacinae of

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

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 on

Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...

, 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 Dubouzet ...

, and in every mainland South American country except

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 ...

(though only as a

vagrant Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

.)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. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved July 24, 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. 3 ...

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''. Briss ...

'' is complicated. What is now the Pantanal 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 ...

(''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 organ ...

with what are now the

Magellanic snipe The Magellanic snipe (''Gallinago magellanica'') 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 Bir ...

(''G. magellanica'') 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 Magellanic 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 2022 ...

treat all of them as separate species. However,

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...

(HBW) retains the Pantanal and Magellanic 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, 2022Clements, 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 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 "unispec ...

''G. paraguaiae'', the Pantanal snipe.

Description

The adult Pantanal snipe is long. Males weigh about and females . Females are slightly larger than males but otherwise the same. They have short greenish-gray legs and a very long straight dark bill. Their upperparts have a complex pattern of muted whitish, buffy, rufous, and black on a brown background. Their breast and flanks are buff with black markings and the rest of their underparts whitish. Their face has tan and darker brown stripes that blend into each other.Van Gils, J., P. Wiersma, G. M. Kirwan, P. C. Rasmussen, and P. F. D. Boesman (2021). Pantanal Snipe (''Gallinago paraguaiae''), 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.soasni2.01 retrieved December 7, 2022

Distribution and habitat

The Pantanal snipe is found in almost every mainland South American country; it is absent from Chile and has been found in Ecuador only as a vagrant. It also occurs on Trinidad and the Falkland Islands. However, it is scarce in the

Amazon Basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...

. It inhabits wet grassy

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

. In elevation it is known as high as in Venezuela, as high as in Peru, and perhaps as high as in Bolivia.

Behavior

Movement

The Pantanal snipe is essentially sedentary, though some make short movements in winter to find permanent marshes.

Feeding

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

Breeding

The Pantanal snipe breeds in most of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

away from the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

coast and eastern

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, and also on

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

and the Falkland Islands. Its breeding season varies geographically across its very large range but has not been fully defined anywhere. 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 typical clutch size is four eggs. The nest, incubation period, and time to fledging are not known.

Vocal and non-vocal sounds

The Pantanal snipe has a very wide variety of vocalizations including a slow chip "''kek..kek..kek..kek..kek...''", a fast chip "''kekkekkekkekkekkekkek''", a "short raspy" flight call "''..kek......kek...kek-kek...''", and a flush call "''KEK.kek.kek.....kek.kek...''". The chip 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 muffled stuttered crescendo series...''huhuhuhuhuhu.hu.WHOO..WHOO..WHOO.whu''" that lasts about two or three seconds and is repeated about every 10 seconds.

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

follows HBW taxonomy and so has assessed the "South American" (Pantanal plus Magellanic) snipe as a whole. It treats the taxon as being of Least Concern. Though its population size is not known, it is believed to be stable. No immediate threats have been identified.