Deb, Linda, Dave,
I had a very odd snipe experience in Oct, 1998. I noticed a "Common Snipe" (before Wilson's designation) in my suburban Tacoma, WA backyard. It caught my eye because of the strange and very prominent bobbing up and down behavior as it probed and walked around in my vegetable garden and yard. I thought it had a neurological problem;) It was an amazing opportunity because, for some reason, the bird hung around from about 1pm till dusk pretty much in full view. I also had several chances to observe the "freezing for camouflage" position it took when alarmed. Once, when a sharpie landed on a tree stump, it adopted the angled frozen posture for almost 10 min. I looked through all my bird guides and couldn't find anything on the bobbing behavior; so, after a few phone calls, got in touch with the president of the Washington Ornithological Society. He was quite interested in my story because he was only familiar with bobbing behavior in the Jack Snipe. He subsequently sent my crude photos and write up to a shorebird expert at University of Puget Sound, who also did not know about bobbing in the Common Snipe but did verify my photos as Common Snipe. Wish I'd had better technology then. I assume it was a Wilson's. At the time there had been one documented report of a Jack Snipe in Washington state, based mostly on bobbing behavior, as the observation was from a distance!
Becky Campbell
Arapahoe County