A snipe is any of about 26
wading bird 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 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
Cryptic may refer to:
In science:
* Cryptic species complex, a group of species that are very difficult to distinguish from one another
* Crypsis, the ability of animals to blend in to avoid observation
* Cryptic era, earliest period of the Earth
...
/
camouflaging 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'' snipes have a nearly worldwide distribution, the ''
Lymnocryptes'' snipe is restricted to
Asia and
Europe 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 (biology), family, which are now only found on New Zealand outlying islands, New Zealand's outlying islands ...
'' 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 t ...
are not closely related to the typical snipes, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.
Behaviour
Snipes search for
invertebrates 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
sandpipers; 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. Other invertebrate prey include
snails,
crustacea
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...
, and
worms. 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, and along
rivers, coast lines, and
ponds. Snipes avoid settling in areas with dense vegetation, but rather seek marshy areas with patchy cover to hide from predators.
Hunting
Camouflage may enable snipes to remain undetected by hunters in
marshland. 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, but later evolved to mean a
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 actual ...
*
Woodcock
Footnotes
External links
{{Wikisource1911Enc, Snipe
Snipe videoson the Internet Bird Collection
at fssbirding.org.uk
Sandpipers
Game birds
Bird common names