Wilson's Snipe is a stocky, cryptically striped shorebird of marshes and wet meadows, so well camouflaged in the reeds that it is usually seen only when it explodes from underfoot in a fast, zigzagging flight with a rasping call. Its extraordinarily long, straight bill probes soft mud for hidden prey, and like the woodcock it has a flexible bill tip that can open at the end to grasp worms below the surface. Bulging eyes set well back on the head let it watch for danger while feeding head-down.
The snipe's spring display is as remarkable as the woodcock's but produced without the voice: circling high overhead, the male dives with tail feathers spread so that air rushing past them creates an eerie, quavering "winnowing" hum. This ghostly sound drifting over a Michigan marsh at dusk in April and May is the bird's signature. Snipe breed in wet meadows and bogs across the state and pass through wetlands in numbers during migration.
Probes soft mud and shallow water for insect larvae, earthworms, and other invertebrates, using a long, sensitive bill whose flexible tip can seize prey underground. It feeds in a steady, sewing-machine probing motion in wet, mucky ground rich in soil animals.
That quavering, hollow "winnowing" is a displaying male Wilson's Snipe. It is made not by the voice but by air rushing over the spread outer tail feathers as the bird dives during its high circling flight.
Yes. The snipe's erratic, fast flight made it a challenging target, and skilled hunters who could hit one were called "snipers" — the origin of the term now used for marksmen.
Wilson's Snipe is more boldly striped, lives in open wet marshes and meadows rather than young woods, and flushes in a fast zigzag. The woodcock is plainer buff-brown and favors moist thickets and forest edges.
A wisp — one of the few collective nouns birders actually use, because it captures how a scattered group flushes off a wet field in erratic zigzags. Groups are loose rather than tightly flocked.
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