A snipe in full display is one of the strangest birds of the air
you could hope to see. That striped earth-brown body that makes
this wader almost impossible to spot on the ground is suddenly
flung up like a mud pie to the heavens. The wings flicker in
quick shallow beats almost like a skylark's in mid-song, and it
could even be a lark except for that extraordinary wand-like
bill poking ahead of him. This weirdly disproportionate
silhouette then careers in a series of fluttering ascents and
even steeper descents and performs an invisible crown-shaped
circuit across the skies. As he goes he creates two interlocking
sounds. The background note is vocal – a constant chikk-a,
chikk-a, chikk-a – but to each of its daredevil dives it adds a
long-drawn shuddering sound that is mysterious and arresting.
Our forebears were bamboozled by it. They called this bird the
horse gokk or, in Gaelic, gabhairin reo, "little goat of the
frost", to suggest the sound's similarity to neighing or
bleating livestock. They also made i