'Here today, gone tomorrow'

With its cryptic plumage, striking beak and curious drumming behaviour, the snipe is a fascinating bird that has captivated sportsmen for generations

- David Tomlinson

Abel Chapman's summing up of the snipe is hard to better: 'The most shifty and capricious of all game-birds – here today, gone tomorrow,' he noted in his book Bird-Life of the Borders. He added how these birds will often sit tight until almost trodden on, while on other occasions 'they spring at a couple of gun-shots' distance'. He found it difficult to account for 'all their vagaries' but concluded that, apart from the weather, the main factor influencing their movements is the moon. On moonlit nights they will 'feed abundantly all night' but 'in wild weather when the moon is overcast they are compelled to feed partially by day, and at such times are more watchful and wild'.

Chapman, who was born in 1851, was not only a noted sportsman, pioneer conservationist and talented artist but also a skilled observer of wildlife, as these thoughts on snipe remind us. The snipe, like its cousin the woodcock, is clearly a bird whose habits are inextricably linked to the cycles of the moon but that's something that few modern bird books mention. Today we may know a great deal more about the snipe's ecology than did Chapman but of the bird itself we probably know less.

I've been fascinated by snipe all my life. I encountered my first on a sewage farm when I was 13. The farm, in → South Croydon, was a long cycle ride from home. Here my friend Martin and I were (rather surprisingly) given permission to walk between the settling beds, looking for birds, and I still remember the excitement of flushing my first snipe and watching it rocket away, uttering its distinctive cry that is best described as like tearing paper. We put up several more before we at last spied one on the ground, enabling us to admire its beautifully cryptic plumage and marvel at a beak that looks as long as the bird itself.