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Wilson's snipe
Gallinago delicata | Amerikaanse watersnip | Agachadiza de Wilson
Wilson's Snipe was split from Common Snipe in 2002, and ever since, every autumn birder in western Europe has been checking snipe for a bird with sixteen tail feathers. That character is almost never on show in the field, which is exactly why this is one of the most under-recorded vagrants on the list.
Voice
On flushing a sharper, higher, drier ketch than the hoarse scaap of Common Snipe, but the difference is too slight to build a record on. The display is more distinct: the bleating hum of the vibrating outer tail feathers is pitched higher, runs faster and sounds harder, closer to a rapid woo-woo-woo-woo than to the slow bleat of Common Snipe.
Recording: Doug Hynes — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
At range it is a Common Snipe: the same dumpy build, the same very long straight bill, the same four cream braces down the back. Close to, it looks colder and greyer, with less warm rufous in the head and mantle pattern and white rather than buff fringes to the wing coverts. The tail holds sixteen feathers instead of fourteen, and the outermost are narrower, more heavily barred and show less white.
Confusion species
Common Snipe is the only candidate, and the difference comes down to feathers you have to count. Count the rectrices: eight pairs on Wilson's, seven on Common. In flight, watch the narrower white trailing edge to the secondaries, a bold white line on Common Snipe but no more than a thin edge here. Watch too for darker axillaries and underwing coverts, where the dark bars are broader than the white ones. In practice this often cannot be settled in the field: most accepted records rest on photographs of a spread tail or of a bird stretching.
Habitat
In Europe it turns up in exactly the ground Common Snipe uses: ditch banks, shallow floods, waterlogged pasture and flooded stubble with cover within a few metres. In North America it breeds in sedge marsh, bog, willow and alder swamp and wet meadow, and winters as far as rice and sugarcane fields.
Where the bird is most at home, classified with EUNIS — the European standard for habitats.
Range and movements
Breeds from Alaska and Canada south into the northern United States and winters from the southern States to northern South America. In Europe it is a vagrant: the first British bird was on the Isles of Scilly in 1998 and over two hundred records now stand, many of them long-staying birds that hold a single pool for months. In the Azores it is close to annual in autumn.
Where and when to look
Work a long-staying wintering bird in Cornwall or Ireland and give it time; wait until it stretches or preens, because only then does the tail spread. Photograph every snipe that flushes, from the side and from below: the trailing edge of the wing and the barring of the underwing are far easier to judge on a sharp image than through binoculars.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species is common in North America with a population in the millions, and the ninety thousand or so shot there each year does not dent the numbers. Wetland loss and collisions with buildings and masts are the recognised pressures. The European records carry no weight at all for the species itself.