Snipe
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 Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago)
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A Snipe is any of nearly 20 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterised by a very long slender bill and cryptic plumage. The Gallinago snipes have a nearly worldwide distribution, the Lymnocryptes Jack Snipe is restriced to Asia and Europe and the Coenocorypha snipes are restriced to New Zealand. The three species of painted snipe are not closely related to these, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.
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[edit] Description
Snipe in the family Scolopacidae belong either to the small genera Coenocorypha (the New Zealand snipes) and Lymnocryptes, or to the about 15 typical snipes in the genus Gallinago. The latter are toy closest relatives of the woodcocks , whereas the small genera represent earlier divergences in the snipe/woodcock clade (Thomas et al., 2004). They search for invertebrates in the mud with a "sewing-machine" action of their long bills.
Most have distinctive displays, usually given at dawn or dusk.
English manuscripts dating from the 15th century indicate that the bird was originally called a "snyte" (Austin, 1888).
[edit] Linguistic Inspiration
The elusive nature of the snipe is well-known among hunters. In the days of market hunting, the most skilled hunters of all would often bring many Common Snipe to market earning the nickname "sniper" as a badge of respect for the difficulty in shooting this bird. The term has evolved into the modern usage sniper, referring to a skilled anti-personnel military sharpshooter. [1]
A common form of prank is the "Snipe hunt," in which the victim is given the description of a creature and some ridiculous means of catching it. The object is simply to make the naїve individual (usually a newcomer to a tightly-knit working crew) look foolish for attempting it, and perhaps keep him or her at it as long as possible. However, while the name of the prank is most likely related to the actual Snipe, the creature described is almost always fictional. These "Snipes" are usually granted traits which either make the victim look more foolish for believing it could exist, or lend some form of credence to the foolish means of capture.
[edit] Genera
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved on 2007-09-27.
[edit] References
- McKelvie, Colin Laurie : Woodcock and Snipe: Conservation and Sport (Swan Hill, 1993)
- Thomas, Gavin H.; Wills, Matthew A. & Székely, Tamás (2004): A supertree approach to shorebird phylogeny. BMC Evol. Biol. 4: 28. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-4-28 PDF fulltext Supplementary Material
- Austin, Thomas. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS. 4016, with extracts from Ashmole MS. 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS 55. London: for The Early English Text Society by N. Trübner & Co., 1888
[edit] External links
- Snipe videos on the Internet Bird Collection
