My snipe gripe is I never see them before they take flight

TAKING advantage of a few brief breaks in the rain this week, I have enjoyed a muddy trudge or two over the sodden west Dartmoor hill which rises opposite the village where I live.

There is a flat route along the base, where streams running off the incline join beside the path, but I prefer to add in a little height just to warm up, following routes through the grass and gorse up the flank of the hill.

At this time of year, one is virtually guaranteed to flush a snipe or two when crossing boggy patches and, despite being quick off the draw with a camera, my sharp-shooting skills are left wanting as I struggle to get them in focus.

They are so fast-moving and zigzag as they rise, usually uttering a rasping call before coming back to earth quite a way away.

The late Devon poet laureate, Ted Hughes, who loved Dartmoor – a granite memorial stone being laid in his honour high on the northern moor – described perfectly their twisting flight in his 1983 poem Snipe, in which he writes how, on a wet walk, one suddenly ‘rips itself up from the marsh-quake’ with ‘bowed head, jockey shoulders’ and ‘slashes a wet rent’ as it cuts through the rain.

They are so canny and well-camouflaged that, despite seeing dozens every winter on Dartmoor, I have never seen one on the ground on the hill where I walk. I look ahead, surveying suitable bogs with binoculars in the hope of catching one unawares, but they always elude me – then make me look a fool when they take to the air as I stride across the area I had just that minute scanned.

The snipe is a brown bird of boggy places, its plumage subtly marked with light and dark feathering which blends in perfectly among the tangled grasses and muddy stretches it calls home, and it has light lines running down its dark brown back which are noticeable in flight.

However, it is its preposterously long beak which really stands out. The straight bill is proportionately lengthier than that of any other British species, sticking out in front like a conductor’s baton.

They are more common at this time of year, when resident numbers are boosted by migrants from northern Europe.

Flushed from a moorland bog, they only give you a fleeting moment to work out what they are, before disappearing off into the mist.

Congratulate yourself if you spy one on the ground before it takes flight – you’ll have earned your snipe stripes.