Game Birds of the World

The Wilson's snipe is the North American representative of a snipe type that also occurs widely in Eurasia, and which in Britain is called the common snipe. The Wilson's snipe's wintering habitat includes a variety of marsh types—delta and prairie marshes, rice fields, and cattail thickets—all characterized by wet organic soils. Marshes are also used during migration, but breeding usually occurs in bogs or low tundra vegetation. At times flocks are seen migrating at a fairly high altitude and they probably migrate mainly at night.

The most common male territorial display is "bleating," or "winnowing," an aerial performance in which the male (and later also the female) rises into the air, and then performs a series of swooping dives. In these dives the wings are partially closed and the tail feathers are fully spread. The resulting interruption of airflow from the wings past the vibrating outer feathers produces an eerie tremolo sound. This snipe is monogamous, and the male remains with his offspring through the brood-rearing period. The nest is usually built in wet, marshy ground, especially where low grass clumps or brush rises above the surface of the bog, and is simply a depression in a clump or tussock, lined with grasses or dead leaves. The clutch size is nearly always four eggs. Incubation, performed entirely by the female, normally takes 18–19 days. Typically the male adopts the first two chicks that hatch, while the female cares for the latter two, and the parents raise their chicks separately. The chicks are fed by the parents, who probe in the mud and allow them to eat as the bill is withdrawn. Chicks make their first short flights at the age of about 15–18 days. By the time they are about six weeks old they begin to form groups ("wisps") with others of their own age and sometimes such flocks may number in the hundreds. These young birds apparently migrate south together in advance of the adults.