Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Unusual Wilson’s Snipe

By: Tom Berg

The Wilson’s Snipe is a strange-looking bird that is about the size of an American robin. It is a chubby, medium-sized shorebird with feathers that are a mottled mixture of brown, tan, cream and white. It’s got a round head and a very short tail, but the weirdest thing about it is its beak. It has a tremendously long, straight beak that looks very out of place.

The long beak actually serves a very important purpose. Wilson’s snipes forage for food by probing the mud and soft soil with that long bill. There are small sensory pits at the end of their beak that help them locate their prey. The beak is actually very flexible at the tip, too, and these birds can thrust their beak into the mud and open the tip of their beak to grab a worm or other morsel while the base of the beak stays closed.

Besides worms, they eat a wide variety of insects and insect larvae that they pluck from under the soft, wet soil. Beetle larvae and fly larvae are favorites. They also eat insects on top of the ground like ants, grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and centipedes. In marshy wetlands areas they occasionally find small frogs, snails, crayfish and even tiny fish to eat.

The Wilson’s Snipe is most likely to be seen in muddy farmer’s fields early in the spring, and in swampy wetlands and along the muddy shorelines of streams, lakes and ponds. They are actually pretty hard to see when they are standing motionless among the grasses and reeds, because their buffy feathers provide excellent camouflage. This helps protect them from predators, too.

Although these birds look slow and awkward, nothing could be further from the truth. They have extra-large flight muscles and they are extremely strong flyers. Researchers have estimated their flight speed is at least 60 miles per hour, and they typically fly in an erratic zigzag pattern that makes them a very difficult target for hunters.

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