Jack Snipe at Llyn Coed-y-Dinas

Thanks to Steve Benbow for finding, photographing and reporting a Jack Snipe with a Teal and 8 Common Snipe at Llyn Coed-y-Dinas this morning. Jack Snipe are smaller and shorter billed than the Common Snipe. When flushed, they typically fly only a very short distance. They nest in remote Arctic bogs, and their display is a rarely seen flight above their territory, in which they vocalise with a sound 'like galloping horses': kollarap, kollarap. Once in the 1980s, I was lucky enough to hear and watch one flying high over a Norwegian bog at about 70 degrees north while leading a group. They are not uncommon as winter visitors to UK, but very elusive. They are usually found in freshwater margins, or at night by ringers looking for snipe and Woodcock in grazed fields or moorland. When feeding they bob up and down as if on springs.