I have always found the diminutive jack snipe delightful to see, both in flight and, in bygone days when they were quarry, in the hand. However, I must admit that, due to the more or less straight flight and their lack of size, I also thought they were not worth the cartridge. One would need a few to grace a slice of toast, or to use a very small sliver.
The jack snipe or Lymnocryptes minimus, the name in which it rejoices in Latin, is a winter migrant to these shores and it comes in relatively large numbers — an approximate total of 110,000. As you can imagine, as a wader, it is a bird that loves to get its feet wet, so marsh and bog are its favourite resting…