Common snipe
Aug 04, 2020
3 minutes
Gallinago gallinago
Robert Burns called the snipe “the blitter frae the boggie”, and the noise that this diminutive wader makes in flight echoes in many other local names in Scotland and Ireland including blutter or heather bleater or bog bleater.
“Its flight throws in frequent random and rapid jinking to avoid aerial predators”
A little further afield and you will find that the Finnish name translates as sky ram. It does indeed resemble the bleating of a goat but in fact
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