Great Snipe
Gallinago media
- Family
- Sandpipers and Allies (Scolopacidae)
- Order
- Charadriiformes
Overview
The great snipe (Gallinago media) is a small stocky wader in the genus Gallinago. This bird's breeding habitat is marshes and wet meadows with short vegetation in northeastern Europe and northern Asia, from Scandinavia and Poland east across northern Russia to western Siberia, and south to northern Kazakhstan. Great snipe are migratory, wintering in tropical Africa. The European breeding population is in steep decline.
Summary from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Range and habitat
Breeds meadows from northern Scandinavia and eastern Poland eastward to Yenisei River (western Siberia); winters wet grassland of tropical and subtropical sub-Saharan Africa.
Range description: AviList Global Avian Checklist.
Countries
- Albania
- Algeria
- Angola
- Armenia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Côte d'Ivoire
- Croatia
- Czechia
- Denmark
- DR Congo
- Egypt
- Equatorial Guinea
- Estonia
- Ethiopia
- Finland
- Gabon
- Georgia
- Germany
- Ghana
- Greece
- Guinea-Bissau
- Hungary
- Iraq
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Kazakhstan
- Kenya
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Liberia
- Libya
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Malawi
- Mali
- Malta
- Mauritania
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Myanmar
- Namibia
- Nigeria
- Norway
- Oman
- Poland
- Republic of the Congo
- Russia
- Rwanda
- Serbia
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Syria
- Tanzania
- Togo
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Uganda
- Ukraine
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: Great snipe
- eBird: sightings, maps and photos
- xeno-canto: sound recordings
- Birds of the World: full species account (subscription)
- BirdLife DataZone: status and threats
- IUCN Red List (threat status)
- AviList global checklist (taxonomy)
Last updated September 29, 2026.
