Wilson's Snipe
I was sitting at my desk early yesterday morning dinking around on the blog while keeping an eye out for urban wildlife in the front yard. We're less than a mile (as the bird flies) from Puget Sound, but other than an occasional high flying seagull, I've never seen anything resembling a shorebird in the neighborhood.
So I was surprised to spot a little chunky fellow with an extremely long bill pecking through dead leaves by the hedge. Exactly the type of bird you see running around on beaches. I managed to get a poor picture through the window, and it was good enough to find him in "Birds of the Puget Sound Region."
Snipe are solitary, secretive birds. They eat insects, worms and other small critters in mud and shallow water. Their habitat is bogs, swamps, flooded fields and the margins of lakes and ponds. Really? Maybe all the rain made for some good worm hunting in our soggy yard.
Anyway, it's always fun when a "lifer" bird drops right in your lap with no effort at all.
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