Status of snipe greatly exaggerated

Posted: Friday, April 3, 2015 11:32 am | Updated: 11:34 am, Fri Apr 3, 2015.

Bryan Stevens | For the Birds | Special to the Herald Courier

Have you ever gone on a wild goose chase? Do you have memories of being taken on a snipe hunt?

If so, I don't need to tell you that our feathered friends have inspired a lot of unusual sayings and activities. The snipe hunt is widely regarded as a rite of passage. I'm not sure if these "hunts" are still organized on moonless nights to pull a playful prank on unsuspecting or naive adolescents. The gist of this practical joke is that these would-be snipe hunters are given a bag or sack to use in capturing the supposedly elusive, perhaps mythical snipe.

The "snipe hunt" has also come to symbolize a lesson in futility since the target of the hunt is never found despite some diligent efforts. It's all harmless fun, but what bothers me is that the tradition of the snipe hunt reinforces the mistaken idea that this evasive creature is a make-believe bird.

That's not the case, and I've seen plenty of snipes over the years to prove my point. There are some things about this unusual bird that makes it understandable how this creature became the focus of the long-running tradition of the snipe hunt.

The Wilson's snipe is one of North America's more elusive birds. It's an aberrant shorebird that doesn't exactly fit the mold of the birds any coastal visitor has probably seen running along the surf's edge on a beach. It's an odd, gangly bird with long legs and an even more absurdly long bill. It's also remarkably well camouflaged to blend with its preferred surroundings in flooded fields and wetland marshes. It is one of those shorebirds that usually makes its home far from beaches and the crash of the ocean's surf.

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THREATENED BIRD SPECIES: Call for wader sightings in the Antrim Hills

Threatened breeding wader species including lapwing, curlew and snipe have been bucking national trends in the Antrim Hills in recent years, thanks to the interventions of wildlife friendly farmers in Glenwherry.

Recent research has shown this species group declined by 83 per cent in Northern Ireland since 1987 but in the hills and valleys of Glenwherry these birds have been on the increase since 2011, with an impressive 164 pairs recorded last year.

Through the RSPB’s Halting Environmental Loss Project (HELP) local farmers have been taking advice from Neal Warnock their local RSPB Project Officer and have been busy tackling many of the problems which have caused such drastic declines in the wider countryside.

Nearly £1.5 million has been given to HELP from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the INTERREG IVA Programme, which is delivered locally by the Special EU Programmes Body. The project will run until August 2014 operating in the few remaining hot spots for these birds in Northern Ireland.

Weather conditions in late summer and early autumn 2013 were excellent and the dry conditions saw fields grazed late into the autumn and allowed for more than 143 hectares of rush to be controlled in wader fields.

“The increasing level of rush control has been one of the major successes of the project and has resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of breeding snipe in particular,” Neal explained.

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A Snipe's Tale - Part III - Tony Whitehead

Tony Whitehead 

25 Feb 2014 9:53 PM 

In the third of a short series of blogs the RSPB’s Tony Whitehead describes why the Somerset Levels are a special place, and why the RSPB wants them to thrive for both wildlife and people.

The Levels are a naturally formed floodplain, but one that has been manipulated over centuries by people. And yet one where people and nature can thrive side by side. And there’s a beauty to it. That a particular sort of farming, cattle grazing, has produced a system that also gives the right conditions for wetland birds such as snipe to thrive. That animals munching and chomping their way across fields creates places for our snipe to feed and nest. That the need for cattle to have extra food when the grass has been eaten produced hay meadows in which curlew and skylark feed and nest.

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A Snipe’s Tale - Part II - Tony Whitehead

Tony Whitehead 

25 Feb 2014 2:39 PM 

In the second of a short series of blogs, the RSPB’s Tony Whitehead describes why the Somerset Levels are a special place, and why the RSPB wants them to thrive for both wildlife and people.

The snipe is an improbable looking bird. It’s a small creature, with beautifully cryptic brown markings. And a disproportionately long bill. A bill that evolution has fine tuned over millennia to do one thing – to search out small creepy crawlies deep in the soft damp earth.

Its length is however just one feature of a design that is way more subtle. Naturally, if you’re probing around in the soil you can’t see what lies beneath. For this reason the tip of the bill is pitted with clusters of nerves, making it hyper sensitive to the slightest movement. That’s good, but the next problem to overcome is, simply, how do you open your bill to swallow something if it’s stuck in the ground? To prise the whole length open would take quite some effort. But the snipe has an elegant solution. Instead of prising it open fully, the bird has the ability to open just the tip of its bill (which, for Scrabble fans, is called rhynchokinesis). Clever things these snipe.

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A Snipe’s Tale - Part I - Tony Whitehead

Tony Whitehead 

24 Feb 2014 4:12 PM 

In a short series of blogs the RSPB’s Tony Whitehead describes why the Somerset Levels are a special place, and why the RSPB wants them to thrive for both wildlife and people.

Spring 2009. A still, cool, early morning. I’m standing a little way along on one of the droves that, if followed, take you out into the vast flat-lands of West Sedgemoor. I’m listening. Across the moor I hear an impossible sound. In some ways it’s like the whinnying of a horse. In others the bleating of goat. I raise my binoculars but strain to see the creature producing the sound. Fortunately it’s a familiar sound – the “drumming” of a snipe, a bird of which I’m particularly fond, and for which the Levels and Moors are special.

The sound is produced by air rushing across two specially stiffened feathers either side of the tail as the bird plummets to the ground. It’s part of the male‘s courtship display, a marking of territory, an expression of prowess. It’s a sound that, every time I hear it, reminds me that the Levels are a special place. And there are now precious few sites in lowland England where you can hear this.

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Otmoor snipe population to benefit from soil work

Work to help reverse the decline of a bird species is to be carried out on an Oxfordshire nature reserve.

Soil structure on the RSPB Otmoor reserve is set to improved to make it suitable for worms, a major food source of snipe.

The RSPB said the site near Headington was "an ideal home for these captivating and enigmatic birds".

The charity's figures show long-billed snipe have suffered a 60% fall in breeding numbers since the 1980s.

As part of a five-year conservation plan for the 400 acre site, gypsum and an aerator will be used to loosen the soil, allowing air to penetrate, benefiting soil bacteria and the decomposition process which will encourage worms.

Manure sourced from a local farm will be spread to provide extra nutrients and organic matter.

Joe Harris, nature reserve warden, said: "We are justifiably proud to have snipe breeding on Otmoor, but there is still a lot of work we can do to make it even better for them.

The £109,000 funding for the scheme has come a grant by not-for-profit conservation business, WREN.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-24461265