抄録
Pintail Snipe Gallinago stenura breed over a wide area from Tibet north across the Siberian tundra, and east as far as the trans-Baikal; and winter south along the Korean Peninsula to China and peninsular and island Southeast Asia. In Japan they have been occasionally recorded as accidental visitors, primarily along the Pacific Ocean side of the islands. This research reports three observations of Pintail Snipe in rice paddies in Niigata Prefecture, along the Sea of Japan side of central Honshu. The first observation, made on 19 Feb 2009, was of a single Pintail Snipe mixed in with a flock of seven Common Snipe G. gallinago (Fig 1). Compared to that of the Common Snipe, the bill of the Pintail Snipe is shorter, and thicker at the base. The tail is also shorter. The second observation, recorded on 28 Feb 2009, was of three Pintail Snipe mixed in a flock of five Common Snipe. The third observation, on 1 March 2009, was of three Pintail Snipe individuals feeding alone. The rice paddies in which these observations were made ranged from one to three kilometers inland from the coast, which raises the possibility that these Pintail Snipe are not just visitors accidently blown here. Perhaps, due to global warming or some combination of various changing environmental factors, small numbers of Pintail Snipe may actually be beginning to winter in central Honshu. In the future, researchers and observers should keep a sharp lookout for Pintail Snipe, as more observations are required to ascertain whether or not these birds have begun to winter here.
