Adults: Crown, dark browm with buffy white mesial stripe and eyebrow forming a distinctive pattern. Eyebrow, narrower and buff. Lores, brown bordered by a buff white stripe above and below. Mantle, back, wings, mottled dark brown and buffy with buffy edges to feathers forming stripes down the back. Eye, dark brown. Throat, white. Breast, undertail coverts, mottled dark brown and buff. Belly, white, with barred flanks. Tail, has 12 - 18 feathers, uniformly shaped. Trailing edge of wing has white, formed by white tips to secondaries and inner primaries. Underwing has white band on inner median coverts giving a whiter apperance. Bill, black tip, reddish-brown to pink at base and middle. Legs, grey.
Other Names (World)
Common Snipe, Fantail Snipe, Wilson Snipe, Snipe, Heather Bleater
Family
Scolopacidae (Sandpipers, Snipes, Phalaropes)
Afghanistan (NB), Albania (B) (NB), Algeria, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Austria (B) (NB), Azerbaijan (NB) (P), Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus (B) (NB) (P), Belgium (B) (NB), Belize, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina (B) (NB), Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria (B) (NB), Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada (B) (P), Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, China (mainland), Colombia, Congo, Congo [The Democratic Republic of the], Costa Rica, Côte dIvoire, Croatia (Local Name: Hrvatska) (B) (NB), Cuba, Cyprus (NB), Czech Republic (B) (NB), Denmark (B) (NB) (P), Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia (B) (NB), Ethiopia, Faroe Islands (B) (NB), Finland (B) (NB) (P), France (B) (NB) (P), Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany (B) (NB) (P), Ghana, Greece (NB) (P), Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam (NB), Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong (China), Hungary (B) (NB), Iceland (B) (NB) (P), India, Indonesia, Iran [Islamic Republic of], Iraq (NB) (P), Ireland (B) (NB), Israel, Italy (B) (NB) (P), Jamaica, Japan, Jordan (NB) (P), Kazakhstan (B), Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia (B), Lebanon, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Liechtenstein (B) (NB), Lithuania (B), Luxembourg (B) (NB), Macedonia [The Former Yugoslav Republic of] (B) (NB), Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta (NB), Martinique, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova [Republic of] (NB) (P), Mongolia (B), Montenegro (B) (NB) (P), Montserrat, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands (B) (NB), Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Northern Mariana Islands (NB), Norway (B) (P), Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland (B) (NB) (P), Portugal (B) (NB), Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania (B) (NB) (P), Russia (Asian) (B), Russia (Central Asian) (B), Russia (European) (B) (NB) (P), Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia (B) (NB) (P), Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia (Slovak Republic) (B) (NB), Slovenia (B) (NB) (P), Somalia, South Korea, Spain (B) (NB), Sri Lanka, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Pierre and Miquelon (B) (NB) (P), St Vincent and The Grenadines, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden (B) (NB) (P), Switzerland (B) (NB), Syrian Arab Republic, Taiwan (China), Tajikistan, Tanzania [United Republic of], Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey (B) (NB), Turkmenistan (B), Turks and Caicos Islands, Uganda, Ukraine (B) (NB) (P), United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom (B) (NB) (P), USA (B), Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (British) (NB), Virgin Islands (U.S.) (NB), Yemen.
Vagrant to Benin, Cape Verde, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Gibraltar, Malawi, Seychelles, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Zambia.
Population
Estimated population is 6,300,000 - 8,100,000 (2010).
Status LC
Habitat destruction and degradation, pollution, nest predation by introduced mammals, susceptibility to avian influenza are the main threats.
For more information see BirdLife International Species Factsheet.
Food
Invertebrates.
Voice
A sneeze-like call when flushed, a rhythmic, repetitive 'tick-a tick-a' at the breeding grounds.
Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) [XC240773]
by Peter Boesman from Achterhaven Zeebrugge, West-Vlaanderen, Poland (call, song)
Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) [XC894091]
by Martin Billard from Arrondissement de Quimper (near Tr\u00e9ogat), Finist\u00e8re, Bretagne, France (flight call)
Nest
On the ground, concealed by thick vegetation, in a damp area.
Eggs (Guide)
4; slightly glossy, pale green to olive with red or brown dark blotches; pyriform. Incubation: 20 days; by female.
Subspecies
Gallinago gallinago (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) was split into Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) and Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata) by Banks et al. (2002), on the basis of 'differences in the winnowing display sounds and morphology', and recognised as separate by AOU (2002) and SACC (2005), but this treatment is not followed by the BirdLife Taxonomic Working Group because the morphological differences are limited to the number and width of tail feathers and, as Mueller (1999) makes clear, there is overlap between the two forms in these characters.
Forms superspecies with South American Snipe (Gallinago paraguaiae) and perhaps African Snipe (Gallinago nigripennis), which are sometimes included as subspecies of present species, but differences in size, outer tail feathers and quality of aerial "winnowing" suggest separate species status. Madagascar Snipe (Gallinago macrodactyla) may also belong to superspecies. Subspecies delicata may constitute separate species, having 16 tail feathers, as opposed to usually 14 (sometimes 12, 16 or 18) in nominate. Both forms breed nearby in Aleutians.
The following 3 subspecies are recognised:
faeroeensis (Brehm, CL, 1831) - Iceland, Faeroes, Orkney and Shetland. Winters in British Is.
gallinago (Linnaeus, 1758) - British Is, Scandinavia and western Europe through north-central Eurasia to Kamchatka and western Aleutians, with isolated population from north-eastern Afghanistan to northern India. Winters from western Europe, Mediterranean and equatorial Africa through Middle East, Arabia and Indian Subcontinent to eastern China, southern Korea, southern Japan, Philippines and western Indonesia.
delicata (Ord, 1825) - Aleutian Is. and Alaska to southern US. Winters to northern South America. Considered by some authors to be a distinct species, Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata).
The Reader's Digest Book of British Birds 1980, 3rd Edition, Drive Publications Ltd ISBN 0 340 25308 8
Birds in Colour Campbell, B., 1960, Penguin Books Ltd
The Pocket Guide to Nest and Eggs Fitter, R.S.R., 1954, Collins
RSPB Handbook of British Birds Holden, P., Cleeves, T., 2002, A & C Black ISBN 0 7136 5713 8
Birds of Britain and Europe Sterry, P., et al., 2001, AA Publishing ISBN 0 7495 3068 5
The Popular Handbook of British Birds Hollom, P.A.D., 1973, H.F. & G. Witherby Ltd ISBN 0 85493 002 7
BirdLife International Species Factsheet