BTO - Breeding Birds of the Wider Countryside: Snipe

SNIPE
Gallinago gallinago

• Population
changes

• Productivity
trends

• Additional
information

Conservation listings

Europe: SPEC category 3 (declining)
UK: amber (>50% population decline, but data possibly unrepresentative)

Long-term trend

UK: probable decline

UK population size

59,300 (52,600–69,000) pairs in 1985–99 (O'Brien 2005: BiE04, APEP06)

Status summary

Snipe were monitored by the CBC mainly in lowland England, where numbers have fallen rapidly since the 1970s as farmland has been drained (Gibbons et al. 1993, Siriwardena et al. 2000a). The CBC index fell from the early 1970s until 1984, when the number of occupied plots became too small for further monitoring (Marchant et al. 1990), and the graph is not shown here. In Northern Ireland, a breeding decline of around 30% occurred between the mid 1980s and 1999 (Henderson et al. 2002). Surveys in England and Wales revealed a decrease of 62% in breeding birds in wet meadows between 1982 and 2002, with the remaining birds becoming highly aggregated into a tiny number of suitable sites (Wilson et al. 2005). Birds were more likely to persist where soils remained soft and wet; the fact that Snipe have continued to decline, despite soil conditions being improved for them at many lowland wetland reserves, suggests that other key aspects of habitat quality, such as prey abundance, are more likely to be driving the decline (Smart et al. 2008). The trend in the upland and moorland strongholds of the species is not fully known, but the 1988–91 atlas documented range loss widely in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as lowland England, and a general decrease is therefore highly probable. The BBS shows increases in England and especially in Scotland since 1994, falling back in recent seasons. Daily nest failure rates at the egg stage appear to have halved. Following declines across much of Europe during the 1990s, this previously 'secure' species is now provisionally evaluated as 'declining' (BirdLife International 2004).

Population changes

Table of population changes for Snipe

Source	Period (yrs)	Years	Plots (n)	Change (%)	Lower limit	Upper limit
BBS UK	11	1995-2006	132	31	17	51
	10	1996-2006	134	29	14	47
	5	2001-2006	147	0	-12	15
BBS England	11	1995-2006	62	14	-8	36
	10	1996-2006	63	15	-4	35
	5	2001-2006	74	-5	-19	7
BBS Scotland	11	1995-2006	53	39	21	68
	10	1996-2006	52	35	18	61
	5	2001-2006	52	2	-12	19

Productivity trends

Table of productivity changes for Snipe

Variable	Period (yrs)	Years	Mean annual sample	Trend	Modelled in first year	Modelled in 2006	Change	Comment
Clutch size	38	1968-2006	13	None				Small sample
Daily failure rate (eggs)	38	1968-2006	16	Linear decline	3.3% nests/day	1.36% nests/day	-58.8%	Small sample

Insufficient data on brood size
available for this species

Insufficient data on nestling failure
available for this species

Insufficient data on laying date
available for this species

Insufficient data on CES
available for this species

Additional information


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This report should be cited as: Baillie, S.R., Marchant, J.H., Leech, D.I., Joys, A.C., Noble, D.G., Barimore, C., Grantham, M.J., Risely, K. & Robinson, R.A. (2009). Breeding Birds in the Wider Countryside: their conservation status 2008. BTO Research Report No. 516. BTO, Thetford. (http://www.bto.org/birdtrends) Pages maintained by Iain Downie, Mandy T Andrews and Laura Smith: Last updated 18.02.2009