Common Snipe

Common Snipe

Common Snipe: Longest-billed of all snipes, best identified by broad white stripe at base of underwing. Upperparts cryptically colored with brown and yellow-brown streaks of many different shades. Underparts white but strongly suffused with orange wash, heavily barred and streaked with dark brown.

● Song: "scaap"

● Foraging & Feeding: Common Snipe: Slow moving and creeping along ground in hunchbacked posture as it probes into soil and mud with its very long bill searching for earthworms and insect larvae. Finds food by touch with its highly sensitive bill. Often vibrates bill while probing to startle worms into moving. Usually feeds at dawn and dusk, often in groups where food plentiful.

● Breeding & nesting: Common Snipe: Male performs elaborate aerial courtship flights in the evening, making winnowing sound by rushing air through specially modified outer tail feathers. Female builds nest on ground among dense grasses or sedges. Female incubates two to four brown and black marked, olive brown eggs for 18 to 20 days. Male lures newly hatched chicks out of nest and feeds them separately while female continues incubating remaining eggs. Young make their first flight at 20 days.

● Similar species: Common Snipe: Wilson's Snipe has much less orange wash on its flanks, and black and white stripes at base of underwing are of equal width. Jack Snipe is significantly smaller, has a much shorter bill, and has a split white eyebrow. Pin-tailed Snipe has a squat appearance due to its shorter tail, secondary wing coverts are strongly barred with dark and light bands of equal width.

Flight Pattern