Description
Adults are 25–27 cm in length with a 44–47 cm wingspan and a weight of 80–140 g (up to 180 g pre-migration). They have short greenish-grey legs and a very long (5.5–7 cm) straight dark bill. The body is mottled brown with straw-yellow stripes on top and pale underneath. They have a dark stripe through the eye, with light stripes above and below it. The wings are pointed.
It is the most widespread of several similar snipes. It most closely resembles the Wilson's Snipe G. delicata of North America, which was until recently considered to be a subspecies G. g. delicata of Common Snipe. They differ in the number of tail feathers, with seven pairs in G. gallinago and eight pairs in G. delicata; the North American species also has a slightly thinner white trailing edge to the wings (the white is mostly on the tips of the secondaries). Both species breed in the Aleutian Islands. It is also very similar to the Pin-tailed Snipe G. stenura and Swinhoe's Snipe G. megala of eastern Asia; identification of these species there is complex.
There are two subspecies of Common Snipe, G. g. faeroeensis in Iceland, the Faroes, Shetland and Orkney (wintering in Britain and Ireland), and G. g. gallinago in the rest of the Old World.
Read more about this topic: Common Snipe
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