A recent Pennsylvania Game Commission press release announced the dates for migratory game bird hunting seasons. The Wilson's or common snipe hunt runs from October 16 through November 27, with a daily limit of eight birds and a possession limit of 16.

Shortly thereafter, I received an e-mail from a reader who questioned the Game Commission's sanity. "Snipe are mythical creatures, aren't they?" he asked.

Thanks to "snipe hunts," a common rite of passage when I was a kid, many men of a certain age question the existence of snipe. But snipe are real. They are shorebirds, kin to woodcock. But unlike timber-doodles, which prefer wet woodlands and bottoms, snipe favor wetter areas on the edges of bogs, swamps and marshes. I've often seen them in roadside ditches inundated by spring rains. When flushed, their zigzag flight pattern is distinctive.

Snipe measure 10-12 inches long and, at 3.5 ounces, weigh about half that of woodcock. A striped head, rusty tail, and otherwise drab brownish-gray markings make snipe fairly easy to identify.

Wilson's snipe is classified as a webless migratory game bird in Pennsylvania.

"Last year," said John Dunn, chief of the Game Management Division, "the federal harvest estimate for snipe in Pennsylvania was 400 snipe killed by 300 snipe hunters."

Look for snipe early or late in the day on mudflats probing the muck for earthworms, insect larva, crayfish and even small frogs. Spines on the base of the tongue and backward-projecting serrations on the inside of the upper bill help move prey items along the bill and into the gullet. After digesting a meal, snipe regurgitate small pellets of indigestible parts -- shells, bones and bits of exoskeleton.

In the spring, males advertise their presence to females with a flight display called winnowing. At dawn and dusk males fly about 300 feet above their territories and then dive toward the earth at speeds approaching 60 mph. Simultaneously, the male fans his tail. The air rushing through the outer tail feathers causes them to vibrate and produces distinctive "woo-woo" sounds that can be heard from as far as a half mile away. This display not only attracts females, it also lets other males know the area is occupied.

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