A snipe is any of about 26
wading bird
245px, A flock of Dunlins and Red knots">Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots
Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflat ...
species in three
genera
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...
in the
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. ...
. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and
cryptic/
camouflaging
Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the ...
plumage
Plumage ( "feather") 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, ...
. The ''
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 ...
'' snipes have a nearly worldwide distribution, the ''
Lymnocryptes
The jack snipe or jacksnipe (''Lymnocryptes minimus'') is a small stocky wader. It is the smallest snipe, and the only member of the genus ''Lymnocryptes''. Features such as its sternum make it quite distinct from other snipes or woodcocks.
Et ...
'' snipe is restricted to
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
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, which are now only found on New Zealand's outlying islands. There are currently three living species an ...
'' snipes are found only in the
outlying islands of New Zealand. The four species of
painted snipe
The Rostratulidae, commonly known as the painted-snipes, are a family of wading birds that consists of two genera: '' Rostratula'' and '' Nycticryphes''.
Description
The painted-snipes are short-legged, long-billed birds similar in shape to the ...
are not closely related to the typical snipes, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.
Behaviour
Snipes search for
invertebrate
Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...
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
sandpiper
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 ...
s; this adaptation give 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
Snipes feed mainly on insect
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
The ...
. Other invertebrate prey include
snail
A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastro ...
s,
crustacea, and
worm
Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes (though not always).
Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine polychaete wor ...
s. The snipe's bill allows the very tip to remain closed while the snipe slurps up invertebrates.
Habitat
Snipes 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, quagmire, ...
,
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
A wet meadow is a type of wetland with soils that are saturated for part or all of the growing season. Debate exists whether a wet meadow is a type of marsh or a completely separate type of wetland. Wet prairies and wet savannas are hydrologically ...
, and along
river
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
s, coast lines, and
ponds
A pond is an area filled with water, either natural or artificial, that is smaller than a lake. Defining them to be less than in area, less than deep, and with less than 30% emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing their ecology from t ...
. Snipes avoid settling in areas with dense vegetation, but rather seek marshy areas with patchy cover to hide from predators.
Hunting
![Bay Snipe, by A B Frost from Shooting Pictures, by Scribner & Sons, 1895](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Bay_Snipe%2C_by_A_B_Frost_from_Shooting_Pictures%2C_by_Scribner_%26_Sons%2C_1895.jpeg)
Camouflage may enable snipes to remain undetected by hunters in
marshland
A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...
. 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 snipes gave rise to the military term ''
sniper
A sniper is a military/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 high-precision r ...
'', which originally meant an expert hunter highly skilled in
marksmanship
A marksman is a person who is skilled in precision shooting using projectile weapons (in modern days most commonly an accurized scoped long gun such as designated marksman rifle or a sniper rifle) to shoot at high-value targets at longer-than- ...
and
camouflaging
Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the ...
, 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 potshots from concealment.
See also
*
Snipe eel
Snipe eels are a family, Nemichthyidae, of eels that consists of nine species in three genera. They are pelagic fishes, found in every ocean, mostly at depths of but sometimes as deep as . Depending on the species, adults may reach in length, y ...
*
Snipe hunt
A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch a nonexistent animal called a ''snipe''. Although snipe are an actua ...
*
Woodcock
The woodcocks are a group of seven or eight very similar living species of wading birds in the genus ''Scolopax''. The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders. The English name ...
Footnotes
External links
{{Wikisource1911Enc, Snipe
Snipe videoson the Internet Bird Collection
at fssbirding.org.uk
Sandpipers
Game birds
Bird common names