Hi everyone:
For what it's worth, I was about one-third of the way towards Saint
Mary's County to look for the bird, before sunset, when I saw Mikey's
admonishment about the farmer, so I turned around ...
Anyway, a few quick personal comments from some earlier Alaskan snipe
experiences ... I have seen Common Snipe on the Aleutians and on
Bering Sea islands, including Attu, St. Paul Island, at Gambell on
Saint Lawrence Island, and at Adak Island.
On Attu, you would work the tall wet meadows and when you kicked up a
snipe it would invariably explode up and fly away from you. Your best
bet in identifying a Common (then called the Eurasian form -
gallinago) was to look for the broad(er) white trailing edge on the
secondaries as the bird lifted off and flew high away from you, as
they always did (i.e., they never flew back towards you!)
At St. Paul and Gambell, after the AOU re-spilt the Common Snipe back
into Wilson and Common, people became a lot more diligent in trying
to separate the two species. Snipe are not regular at either place,
however, occasionally, you might find one on the ground or kick one
up. Common Snipe are not just lighter colored overall, they are
warmer brown and not colder gray, as are Wilson's. There are also
some subtle plumage differences.
My best experience with them, however, was at Adak. When Adak opened
up for commercial birding tours in 2004, we found that both Common
and Wilson's were present, in the same locations. Since it was spring
(May), the birds displayed and called and you could hear the
differences in winnowing (Common is lower in pitch due to one fewer
pair of tail feathers) and in its circular display flight overhead
you could see the lighter underwing on Common's (which normally
wasn't apparent as a bird was flying away from you) and you could
also key on the differences in the width of the white trailing edge
of the secondaries. (However, I never was able to pick out the
difference in tail shapes of the displaying birds, which surprised me
- I thought I would be able to do so ... the outermost feathers stick
out differently on the two species.)
That being said, some observations related to Mikey's bird based on
the photos and his report ...
Overall coloration - warmer (supportive)
Underwing color - light (supportive)
Underwing pattern - appears to be supportive of Common
Trailing edge of the secondaries - appears prominent in at least one
of the photos (supportive)
Number of tail feathers/shape of tail - N/A
Call - N/A
Some other things to think about: Many consider there to be two
subspecies of Common Snipe. Most Alaskan, western N.A., and Labrador
records are considered to be the more widespread nominate subspecies.
Differences and subtleties dealing with the northern European
subspecies (faeroeensis) should be considered.
Aging - These species are tough to age after the fall.
Similar species: There are some other similar sized and superficially
similar species that should be eliminated: Pin-tailed Snipe,
Latham's, Solitary, and Swinhoe's. At least two of these have been
recorded in North America.
(I have lots of reference material on my shelf on snipe - just need
the time to dig them out and review them!)
Sidenote: This is very ironic ... When I saw the recent reports of
large numbers of snipe at places like Oxbow Lake, a week or so ago, I
started to post a message to MD Birding reminding people to look out
for the unlikely Common Snipe and recap some of the ID differences. I
was going to say that one of these days, one was going to be found up
in the Mid-Atlantic region. However, I decided to not post anything,
since I figured that people would think I was crazy! (No comments, please!)
Hope this helps ... or not ...
Phil
At 23:19 03/24/2013, Mikey Lutmerding wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>I wanted to send the link to photos of the bird-
>
><http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeycerw>http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeycerw
>
>Any and all comments welcomed, I was hoping to get better images,
>but hopefully these will do for something! I will do a more in
>depth write up tomorrow, but it has been a long day and I need some sleep!
==================================
Phil Davis Davidsonville, Maryland USA
mailto:<PDavis...>
==================================
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