Pin-tailed Snipe

Overview

Pin-tailed Snipe: Large, chunky, cryptically colored shorebird. Upperparts complexly mottled tan, brown, and black. Tail rufous. Long gray-green bill, dark brown tip. Legs, feet are gray-green. Feeds on insects, larvae, worms, seeds. Flushes in a zigzag pattern. Direct flight with rapid wing beats.

Range and Habitat

Pin-tailed Snipe: Twice found on Attu in the western Aleutian Islands. Favors marshy bogs and wet grasslands, or on muddy shorelines.

INTERESTING FACTS

Common name variations include Pin-tail, Pintail Snipe, and the Asiatic Snipe.
Male Pintail Snipes often display in a group, with a loud repetitive song and whistling noises produced in flight by the pin-like outer tail feathers which give this species its English name.
This bird was first described in 1831 by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, French naturalist and ornithologist, and nephew of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
A group of snipes has many collective nouns, including a "leash", "walk", "whisper", "winnowing", and "volley" of snipes.

The Pin-tailed Snipe has a large range estimated at 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 square kilometers. This bird can be found in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Viet Nam and the United States. Its preferred habitats include forests, shrublands, grasslands, wetlands and some marine environments, including seasonally flooded agricultural lands. The global population of this species is estimated to be around 50,000 to 2,000,000 individual birds. It is not believed that the population trends for this species will soon approach the minimum levels that could suggest a potential decline in population. Due to this, population trends for the Pin-tailed Snipe have a present evaluation level of Least Concern.