A small, secretive wader that lives only on a handful of wild, wind-lashed islands south of New Zealand. Instead of long-distance migrations and big flocks, its world is low tussock, herbs, megaherbs, and dripping peat on tiny subantarctic islands. About the size of a blackbird, it’s plump, short-legged and short-tailed, with a long, straight bill for probing mud. Its plumage is a beautifully cryptic mix of browns, buffs, reds and blacks, with a striped head and mottled back that make it vanish into dead leaves and tussocks as soon as it crouches.

What we call “Subantarctic snipe” is really a cluster of island forms. The nominate Auckland snipe lives on smaller islands of the Auckland group (but not the main island); the Antipodes snipe on the Antipodes Islands; and the Campbell snipe on Campbell Island, where it was once wiped out from the main island by rats and survived only on tiny, rat-free Jacquemart Island. All three are currently treated as subspecies of the Subantarctic snipe. A very similar bird on the Snares Islands was once lumped in too, but is now recognised as its own species, the Snares snipe. Mainland New Zealand once had its own Coenocorypha snipes on the North and South Islands, but both went extinct after rats and other predators arrived, leaving the subantarctic island populations as the last survivors of this ancient lineage.

Day to day, Subantarctic snipes live a low, quiet life in dense cover. They favour damp ground under tussocks, ferns and shrubs, where they probe for worms, amphipods, insects and other invertebrates with a rapid “sewing-machine” action of the bill. They seldom fly unless pushed, and on predator-free islands can be remarkably tame, sometimes trotting almost under a person’s feet before suddenly remembering to be shy. At night, the islands come alive with their sharp “chup chup” calls and, in the breeding season, something far stranger: the hakawai. In this spectacular aerial display, males climb high into the dark sky, then plunge in steep dives that make their tail feathers roar like a jet passing overhead.

Distribution

Country

Population est.

Status

Year

Comments

New Zealand

20,000-50,000

Official estimate

NT

2022