Jump to content

Talk:Great snipe

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Magicans' Land

[edit]

Weird, this page is mentioned in a book:

“Are you sure that’s a real bird? It sounds like something from Lewis Carroll.”
“‘Some have been recorded to fly nonstop for forty-eight hours over 6,760 kilometers.’ I’m quoting here.”
“From Wikipedia.”
But still. He looked over her shoulder. The great snipe was a plump little wading bird, roughly egg-shaped, with a big long bill and zigzaggy brown stripes, like a not particularly exotic seashell. It didn’t look like a speed demon.
“‘Female great snipe are, on average, significantly larger than the male,’” Plum said.
“We’d need something to base the spell on, like some great snipe DNA. At least the first time we did it. I don’t think we can do the transformation based on an image from a Wikipedia entry.”
“Are you sure? They have it in hi-res.”[1]

BeniBela (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! Good find, BeniBela. This is a notoriously difficult bird to see, hiding quietly in long vegetation. In the UK, where it's very rare, sometimes a line of birders will walk up a field to flush the bird in the hope of getting a flight view before it plunges back into cover. There was one in Yorkshire a couple of years ago that hadn't read the book and wandered within a metre of its admirers, as shown in this blog. Unfortunately, it hadn't read the book about cats either... Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:20, 25 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Grossman. The Magican's Land. p. 121.