Bog Myrtle & Peat

Well worth recording the fact that I saw a jack snipe on the Chayne for the first time this afternoon. I’m quite sure that I’ve seen these little birds before, but I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that this is the first one I have ever been 100% certain of. It rose up from some rushes on an extremely wet area of ground, and my first reaction was that it was a very small snipe. There was no skreiking call, and at the end of a brief zig-zag flight, it dropped back into the rushes again about seventy yards away. This in direct opposition to a common snipe, which skreiks, zig-zags and then gains height and travels off for some distance.

From the little I know of them, jack snipe are not uncommon, but their secretive habits and diminutive size makes them far harder to see and spend time with than common snipe. It is not at all clear why they were taken off the quarry list in 1981, and this decision is made bizarre by the fact that they are still legally shot in Ireland without any apparent ill effect. I’m not exactly dancing around with frustration at the fact that they are no longer a legal quarry species, but the decision does seem rather odd.