SNIPE (Gallinago gallinago) - Bécassine des marais
© Arlette Berlie
Summary
Mostly a winter visitor to Switzerland from its core range to the north and north-east. Found in marshes and river margins. Hard to spot when not in flight. It has a distinctive “chip-per” call when stationary and also in flight. Famous for its “drumming”.
The Snipe is a marshland bird, smaller than a Woodcock and like that bird, very cryptically coloured, so that it is very difficult to see on the ground. It favours extremely wet areas where the water table is high and where its long beak probes for food into the mud, a beak which is flexible at the end, and can be used like a pair of forceps.
It is mostly a winter visitor in Switzerland where we are are right on the southwestern edge of its breeding range:
Snipe breeding range (pale green); winter (blue); both seasons (dark green). (from IUCN/Wikipedia)
It was formerly found breeding in Switzerland and, around the 1960’s, about 80 pairs were recorded, but this had crashed by the early ‘90s and in the latest census (2013-2016, Knause etal 2018) only two territories were found. Drainage of marshlands and falling water tables, coupled with nutrient input changing the vegetation structure, all played a role for a species on the edge of its normal range. In winter, it can be found regularly, mostly across the north of the country, but always near rivers lakes and marshes.
Snipe are happiest in the very wetest areas with a high water table. The disproportionately long beak being a key clue to its identity © Arlette Berlie
© Arlette Berlie
As stated, the cryptic colouration makes it very difficult to spot on the ground and, when disturbed, it flies off with a low zig-zagging flight and a loud scraping cry “creech”. But this happens very quickly, when you are almost upon it and I have not yet been fast enough to record this!
It does however make two other very distinctive sounds. Its actual voice in the breeding season is a loud call roughly described as “chip-per, chip-per, chip-per” repeated in long streams. This is done either in flight or sitting on a log or fence post. Here is one calling whilst sitting:
But it can also be made in flight, especially when the competition for territories and females is underway. Then, several birds can be displaying and seem to fill the air with their sound as they fly round and round each other. I made the following recording on their breeding grounds in Norway, where several birds were displaying vigorously:
If you were listening carefully, right at the end of that last recording (about 2 seconds from the end), you may have caught a buzzing sound like an insect and this is the sound the Snipe is most famous for. It is normally referred to as “drumming”, “humming”, “bleating” or, sometimes, “winnowing”. All of these are appropriate descriptions of this strange and, in the half-light of early dawn or dusk, eerie sound:
Snipe “drumming”. From Cramp et al: Handbook of the Birds of Europe the Middle East and North Africa Vol III
The outer tail feather (left) of a Snipe is very different from the other tail feathers
This sound is a key part of Snipe display, but it is not voice, it is mechanical, made by the outer tails feathers. The male climbs to about 50m above ground level before diving at about a 40 deg angle with the outer tail feathers extended at 90 degrees to the body. Researchers at the University of Manchester (Casteren etal 2010) concluded that when the air speed of the dive reaches about 47 km per hour, the feathers begin to vibrate and this continues up to about 86 km per hour - this lasts between 1-3 secs in a dive display.
Using a wind tunnel, high speed photography and microscopic examination of the feathers, Casteren and colleagues found several things: (1) the two outer tail feathers have pronounced curve towards the rear; (2) the feather structure is adapted so that the trailing vane has a sort of flexible “hinge” parallel to the rachis running the full length; and (3) between this hinge and the feather margin, the barbs are not completely hooked together leaving the trailing edge of the vane flexible. This means that when air flows at speed over the extended feather, the trailing edge flaps up and down rather like a flag flapping in a strong wind and this is what makes the vibrating noise.
In the picture on the left, the approximate position of the “hinge” is shown by the red line. To the right of that line is where the vibrations take place. (Feather pictures taken from www.featherbase.info).
An amusing anecdote about this: the role of the tail feathers in making this sound was first pointed out by a Mr Meves, a curator at the Stockholm Museum, in a paper written in 1858. But, for many years, ornithologists continued to argue over exactly how this strange noise was made, some still believing it was vocal. The issue was resolved once and for all in 1931 at a dinner of the very serious British Ornithologists Union, when Sir Phillip Manson-Bahr (who was also a distinguished tropical medicine specialist) stuck two Snipe tail feathers at right angles in a weighted wine cork and whirled it around his head on a length of string, filling the restaurant with the haunting sound!
Diagram from the original paper by Meves (1858), who also commented on the shape and long trailing edge which he made vibrate by blowing on it. Yet, people were still arguing nearly 100 years later and the true mechanics of the system only fully described in 2010.
It seems that the female can also drum on occasions, but not as extensively or vigorously as the male, who uses it for both sexual attraction and territorial defence. Other species of snipe also can do this and feather noises are known in various grouse and pheasants, pigeons and humming-birds. But those stories are for another occasion.
It has always been a favourite with hunters and is considered a “game bird” but, in reality, there is very little eating below those beautiful feathers. © Arlette Berlie
