{"id":19915,"date":"2013-11-12T06:16:36","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T13:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19915"},"modified":"2013-11-12T06:16:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T13:16:36","slug":"wilsons-snipe-feeding-technique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/12\/wilsons-snipe-feeding-technique\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilson’s Snipe Feeding Technique"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week ago today I had my best photo opportunity with the elusive Wilsons’s Snipe.\u00a0 Several of them, in fact.\u00a0 And this time they gave me an intimate look at their feeding behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"wilson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It had snowed recently and the muddy shoreline preferred by the species for feeding didn’t provide the most attractive setting but here I was\u00a0happy to get three of\u00a0 them in the same shot, despite the fact that I didn’t have enough depth of field at f\/8 to get the foreground bird as sharp as I like.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"wilson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Notice the namesake\u00a0long, probing bill.\u00a0 The\u00a0word \u201csnipe\u201d comes from \u201csnite,\u201d a variant of \u201csnout\u201d so the\u00a0species is appropriately named.<\/p>\n

It was fascinating\u00a0to watch these birds feed.\u00a0 They would often plunge their entire beak deep into the\u00a0very soft mud and maintain that position for several seconds as they used the sensory\u00a0pits at the tip of the beak to search for small invertebrates.\u00a0 The end of the beak is very flexible and can be opened and closed with no movement at the beak base.\u00a0 They were swallowing food without withdrawing their bills from the mud.<\/p>\n

Note the length of the bill in this shot…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"wilson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and how deeply it is plunged into the soft mud.\u00a0 They often immerse their entire bill and forehead to the eyes in the\u00a0water\/mud and at times only the top of the back can be seen above water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"wilson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a more intimate look at this feeding behavior from another angle.<\/p>\n

These birds sometimes feed on larger invertebrates like earthworms but they typically beat them into several pieces before swallowing them.<\/p>\n

Yesterday we tried to locate these snipes once again but failed.\u00a0 I\u00a0suspect\u00a0the intense weekend hunter activity may have\u00a0scared them off.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week ago today I had my best photo opportunity with the elusive Wilsons’s Snipe. Several of them, in fact. And this time they gave me an intimate look at their feeding behavior.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,392,876],"tags":[136,875,874],"class_list":["post-19915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-wilsons-snipe-shore-birds","tag-feeding","tag-gallinago-delicata","tag-wilsons-snipe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/wilsons-snipe-3055-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5bd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}