3/21/2021 3 Comments Two posts in a day?!Yeah, the birding is just that good! I thought I'd check a couple marshes before sunset tonight and was rewarded with three new birds for the list: Long-billed Dowitcher, (which gets the prestigious Bird #100 spot for the year) Wilson's Snipe, and Horned Grebe. I got some photos of the grebe, but none as good as ones I took a couple years ago. So cute, and check out that reflection in the water. Extra head! I'm not a hunter but I can see the appeal of trying to hunt snipe. They blend in really well to the marshes they live in, and when they flush, these stripy little footballs fly really quickly and erratically. Here's one I watched tonight, colored very much like the corn stubble it was feeding in, where, I might add, it was very successful in finding worms. I must have watched it pull up five of them in as many minutes.
3 Comments
Terry
3/24/2021 06:47:32 pm
That’s a crazy-long beak on the Wilson’s Snipe! When does one use “bill” and when does one use “beak”? Did you just take that picture? How close were you to the snipe?
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paul
3/24/2021 07:21:51 pm
That's a pretty "soft" distinction, no hard-and-fast rules, though people sometimes prefer to use "beak" when it's pointy. Ornithologists use "bill" most of the time, it seems to me, like maybe it's the more official term? And yes, I just took that snipe photo a couple days ago, shooting out the car window from maybe 10-15 yards away.
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Emily
3/24/2021 08:19:01 pm
I prefer to say "nose."
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