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Common Snipe
Conservation status
Least Concern
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Charadriiformes Family: Scolopacidae Genus: Gallinago Species: G. gallinago
Binomial name
Gallinago gallinago Linnaeus, 1758
Subspecies
G. g. gallinago G. g. faroeensis

The Common Snipe or Fantail Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) is a small, stocky shorebird.

The breeding habitat is marshes, bogs, tundra and wet meadows in Iceland, the Faroes, northern Europe and Russia. Common Snipe nest in a well-hidden location on the ground.

European birds winter in southern Europe and Africa, and Asian migrants move to tropical southern Asia..

At Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India.

Adults are 23-28 cm in length with a 39-45 cm wingspan. They have short greenish-grey legs and a very long straight dark bill. The body is mottled brown on top and pale underneath. They have a dark stripe through the eye, with light stripes above and below it. The wings are pointed.

These birds forage in soft mud, probing or picking up food by sight. They mainly eat insects and earthworms, also plant material.

The male performs "winnowing" display during courtship, flying high in circles and then taking shallow dives to produce a distinctive sound - which is given its Finnish name taivaanvuohi, "goat of a sky" because that sound reminds baaing of goat.

This species closely resembles the Wilson's Snipe, G. delicata, of North America, which was until recently considered to be a subspecies G. g. delicata of Common Snipe. The latter differs from the North American species in having a wider white edge to the wings, and seven pairs of tail feathers instead of eight.

There are two other races of Common Snipe; G. g. faeroeensis in Iceland, the Faroes, Shetland and Orkney, and G. g. gallinago in the rest of the Old World. The latter is a species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

Camouflaged at Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India.

This well camouflaged bird is usually shy and conceals itself close to ground vegetation and flushes only when approached closely. They fly off in a series of aerial zig-zags to confuse predators. Snipe hunters, therefore, needed to be very skilled to hunt these birds and they came to be called snipers - a term later adopted by the military.^[1]

At Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India.	At Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India.	At Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India.

• BirdLife International (2005). Gallinago gallinago. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Gallinago gallinago

• Common Snipe videos on the Internet Bird Collection

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