DSC3098 Snipe..
Snipe....
Snipes can be found in various types of wet marshy settings including bogs, swamps, 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.
Painting of a kneeling hunter shooting at a group of birds flying above a marsh
Depiction of a snipe hunter, by A. B. Frost
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, which originally meant an expert hunter highly skilled in marksmanship and camouflaging, but later evolved to mean a sharpshooter or a shooter who makes potshots from concealment.
Snipe are medium sized, skulking wading birds with short legs and long straight bills. Both sexes are mottled brown above, with paler buff stripes on the back, dark streaks on the chest and pale under parts. They are widespread as a breeding species in the UK, with particularly high densities on northern uplands but lower numbers in southern lowlands (especially south west England). In winter, birds from northern Europe join resident birds.
The UK population of snipe has undergone moderate declines overall in the past twenty-five years, with particularly steep declines in lowland wet grassland, making it an Amber List species.
DSC3098 Snipe..
Snipe....
Snipes can be found in various types of wet marshy settings including bogs, swamps, 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.
Painting of a kneeling hunter shooting at a group of birds flying above a marsh
Depiction of a snipe hunter, by A. B. Frost
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, which originally meant an expert hunter highly skilled in marksmanship and camouflaging, but later evolved to mean a sharpshooter or a shooter who makes potshots from concealment.
Snipe are medium sized, skulking wading birds with short legs and long straight bills. Both sexes are mottled brown above, with paler buff stripes on the back, dark streaks on the chest and pale under parts. They are widespread as a breeding species in the UK, with particularly high densities on northern uplands but lower numbers in southern lowlands (especially south west England). In winter, birds from northern Europe join resident birds.
The UK population of snipe has undergone moderate declines overall in the past twenty-five years, with particularly steep declines in lowland wet grassland, making it an Amber List species.