Pintail Snipe in Hong Kong is a common passage migrant and uncommon winter visitor, is always found mixed with other snipes like Common Snipe and Swinhoe's Snipe. In fall, Pintail (and Swinhoe's) usually arrive earlier than Common Snipe, like in August. Then Common Snipe will become the dominate snipe species after November.
Telling from similar Common Snipe can be straight forward if view is good: Common Snipe shows longer bill, thicker black lore and pale edge of scapulars. Also by the call and when flushed, Common Snipe shows a prominent white trailing edge, cleaner underwing and usually flies to a longer distance before landing.
Telling from Swinhoe's Snipe is a real difficult task. In this case, Pintail Snipe is usually smaller, showing rounder body jizz, shorter tail projection beyond wings and no or very small primary projection. Call may also be a clue to tell the difference.
We still don't have any Latham's Snipe in HK and we haven't seen one yet but this species is very possible to be overlooked, so we will create another post if we see one in future.
Anyway, the safest way to tell a snipe is by looking at its outertail pattern.
From left to right: Latham’s, Pintail, Swinhoe’s Snipe. This picture is taken from the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds.
In Aug 2015, Wing Tung and I were lucky enough to take a flight shot of Pintail Snipe in Long Valley, a photo showing the details of the outertail pattern to confirm its identity. We also saw several Pintail Snipes in fall later, wondering if the time for primary molt is an ID feature or not, which, the Pintail Snipes molt their primaries earlier / during their migration as we saw several Pintail Snipes were undergoing molting in this time of the year but not the case in observed Swinhoe's Snipe.
Pintail Snipe, in Aug 2015
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