Oxwich Marsh 18 March 2015: Sniping from the Reedbed

Light northerly winds and mild overnight temperatures lured us into a midweek session.

Recent sessions have been typical of the time of year, with the better ones totalling over 100 birds, and those conducted in less optimal weather resulting in catches of closer to 50. The catch has been made up of a mixture of blue and great tits, the commoner finches, reed buntings and a few resident species, such as dunnock, robin and wren. In the main, the results have been predictable, and while collecting good data sets on finches and reed buntings is one of the principal aims of ringing on the marsh, the blog posts can become rather similar.

This session was very different, however. We had noted snipe using an area of medium height broken rushy ground for day roosting. This provided enough encouragement for a horribly early start, with the aim being to have three nets in place over an hour before dawn.

This was duly achieved and the results made it worthwhile, with one jack snipe and two common snipe captured. After some deliberation, all were determined as 1st winter birds. Both the snipe showed two clear generations of wing coverts, with both worn juvenile and fresher adult feathers present. The jack snipe was aged based on a combination of the pattern of the undertail coverts and tail shape. However we need more practice to become confident in our conclusions, and it may well go down as a 4 in IPMR.

The common snipe had wing lengths of 135mm and 127mm respectively and the jack snipe 116mm. Weight were 111.3g, 97.6g and 64.4g respectively (so the jack snipe was only just over half the weight of the larger of the two common snipe).

The only other notable capture was a treecreeper. We only catch 1-2 a year, and these tend to be in late summer and autumn, so this was a welcome capture.

Pictures of the snipe are below. These show the respective bill lengths and head patterns of the two species: