A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/camouflaging plumage. The Gallinago snipes have a nearly worldwide distribution, the Lymnocryptes snipe is restricted to Asia and Europe and the Coenocorypha snipes are found only in the outlying islands of New Zealand. The four species of painted snipe are not closely related to the typical snipes, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.
Sandpipers are a large family, Scolopacidae, of waders. They include many species called sandpipers, as well as those called by names such as curlew and snipe. The majority of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil. Different lengths of bills enable different species to feed in the same habitat, particularly on the coast, without direct competition for food.
The woodcocks are a group of seven or eight very similar living species of wading birds in the genus Scolopax. The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders. The English name was first recorded in about 1050. According to the Harleian Miscellany, a group of them is called a "fall."
The curlews, genus Numenius, are a group of nine species of birds, characterised by long, slender, downcurved bills and mottled brown plumage. The English name is imitative of the Eurasian curlew's call, but may have been influenced by the Old French corliu, "messenger", from courir , "to run". It was first recorded in 1377 in Langland's Piers Plowman "Fissch to lyue in þe flode..Þe corlue by kynde of þe eyre". In Europe "curlew" usually refers to one species, the Eurasian curlew Numenius arquata.
The common snipe is a small, stocky wader native to the Old World.
Wilson's snipe is a small, stocky shorebird. The genus name gallinago is New Latin for a woodcock or snipe from Latin gallina, "hen" and the suffix -ago, "resembling". The specific delicata is Latin for "dainty".
The American woodcock, sometimes colloquially referred to as the timberdoodle, the bogsucker, the hokumpoke, and the Labrador twister, is a small shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America. Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage.
The Eurasian woodcock is a medium-small wading bird found in temperate and subarctic Eurasia. It has cryptic camouflage to suit its woodland habitat, with reddish-brown upperparts and buff-coloured underparts. Its eyes are set far back on its head to give it 360-degree vision and it probes in the ground for food with its long, sensitive bill, making it vulnerable to cold weather when the ground remains frozen.
The great snipe is a small stocky wader in the genus Gallinago. This bird's breeding habitat is marshes and wet meadows with short vegetation in north-eastern Europe, including north-western Russia. Great snipes are migratory, wintering in Africa. The European breeding population is in steep decline.
Nicholas Aylward Vigors was an Irish zoologist and politician. He popularized the classification of birds on the basis of the quinarian system.
Gallinago is a genus of birds in the wader family Scolopacidae, containing 17 species.
The pin-tailed snipe or pintail snipe is a species of bird in the family Scolopacidae, the sandpipers.
The Fuegian snipe also known as the cordilleran snipe, is a small stocky wader. It breeds in south-central Chile and Argentina south to Tierra del Fuego. It is mainly sedentary, but the Tierra del Fuego population winters in mainland Chile.
The Jameson's snipe or Andean snipe is a small, stocky wader. It breeds in the Andes in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. It appears to be entirely sedentary, with no evidence of migration.
The giant snipe is a stocky wader. It breeds in South America. The nominate subspecies G. u. undulata occurs in two distinct areas, one in Colombia, and the other from Venezuela through Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana to extreme north-eastern Brazil. The southern subspecies G. u. gigantea is found in eastern Bolivia, eastern Paraguay and south-east Brazil, and probably also in Uruguay and north-eastern Argentina.
The Snares Island snipe, also known as the Snares snipe or tutukiwi in Māori, is a species of bird in the sandpiper family, Scolopacidae.
The New Guinea woodcock is a species of bird in the family Scolopacidae formerly considered to be conspecific with the Javan woodcock and called collectively the dusky woodcock. It is endemic to New Guinea and is found in both the Indonesian and Papuan parts of the island.
Scolopax brachycarpa, is an extinct species of woodcock in the family Scolopacidae that was endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Scolopax anthonyi is a prehistoric species of woodcock in the family Scolopacidae that was once endemic to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Fossil remains were initially identified as belonging to a snipe of the genus Gallinago, but a re-analysis of the bones in 1976 indicated that they belonged to a woodcock. It has more osteological similarities to Eurasian woodcock than the American woodcock, a trait it shares with the extinct Scolopax brachycarpa of Hispaniola. Both of these species may have belonged to a distinct insular radiation in the Caribbean, which are now extinct.
