{"id":145157,"date":"2023-10-21T06:24:15","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T12:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=145157"},"modified":"2023-10-21T11:37:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T17:37:48","slug":"wilsons-snipes-a-weird-repeated-behavior-and-a-possible-explanation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/21\/wilsons-snipes-a-weird-repeated-behavior-and-a-possible-explanation\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilson’s Snipes – A Weird, Repeated Behavior And A Possible Explanation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three days ago I photographed a strange and intriguing Wilson’s Snipe behavior and the next day I posted a single photo of it, with little explanation because I didn’t understand why they were doing it. After a little research I can now at least take an educated guess as to their motivation.<\/p>\n

I photographed the behavior five times. In two of those times my photos were very soft, in one case because I never got the bird in focus and in the other because I obtained focus but quickly lost it. In the other three instances, the behavior may or may not have been performed by the same bird – the same bird out of at least 200 snipes.\u00a0Below are my photos documenting the three instances where my photos were sharp, or sharp enough.<\/p>\n

In this species, sexes are similar in plumage. Females have longer bills and shorter outer retrices than males but those are judgment calls I’m hesitant to make. So in all cases, as a matter of convenience, I’ll refer to these birds as males, even though I don’t really know their sex.<\/p>\n

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This bird wasn’t close but I had a good look at the behavior. He was hanging out at the shore and looking in the direction (west) from which other snipes nearly always approached this spot when they were coming in to land and join all the snipes on the ground.<\/p>\n

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Suddenly he crouched down, fanned his tail and cocked it vertically and sideways. He held this position for long enough for me to get eight almost identical photos of it. I’d never before seen anything quite like it, from any species.<\/p>\n

This is the same photo I posted three days ago.<\/p>\n

Because he was facing incoming snipes when he did it, and because of research I did that suggests as much (I’ll refer to that research below), I now believe it was an agonistic (aggressive) display directed at the incoming birds.<\/p>\n

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Less than a minute later I focused on this bird that was much closer to me than the previous one. He was also near the shore and looking in the general direction that incoming snipes nearly always approached from.<\/p>\n

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Suddenly he did the same thing, or at least tried to. He crouched down and…<\/p>\n

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began to raise and…<\/p>\n

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fan his tail. But the incoming snipes must have been coming in slightly to his right because he began to turn his body in that direction so he could continue to face them.<\/p>\n

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Because the tip of his bill was dragging on the ground as he turned\u00a0 (possibly getting caught on that little white rock) it almost upset the apple cart.<\/p>\n

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He very nearly toppled over on his left side.<\/p>\n

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I don’t like to laugh out loud at the expense of birds I’m photographing but this time I couldn’t help myself.<\/p>\n

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But he recovered nicely and returned to his station to watch for more incoming snipes.<\/p>\n

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Only seconds later he did it again. He crouched down, cocked his tail and…<\/p>\n

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fanned it to one side. He held this pose for long enough for me to get 20 photos very similar to this one. But unlike the previous instances, this time he…<\/p>\n

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sprang up and took off. I can only guess why.<\/p>\n

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I spent some time attempting to research this behavior and found four instances in Cornell’s Birds of the World of snipe behavior somewhat similar to what I observed in the field. I say “similar” because all of them are associated with aggressive interactions between Wilson’s Snipes that involve crouching, vertical tail cocking and\/or tail fanning but none of them are exactly like what I saw.<\/p>\n