Drumming (also called bleating or winnowing) is a sound produced by snipe as part of their courtship display flights. The sound is produced mechanically (rather than vocally) by the vibration of the modified outer tail feathers, held out at a wide angle to the body, in the slipstream of a power dive. The display is usually crepuscular, or given throughout moonlit nights. The behaviour is generally characteristic of the genera Coenocorypha, Gallinago and Lymnocryptes. Sounds made by the closely related woodcocks (Scolopax spp.) in the course of their 'roding' display flights may be homologous to drumming.
The sound made by Gallinago snipes has been variously described as "drumming", "bleating", "throbbing", a "rattle" and an "eerie fluting". The drumming of the jack snipe (Limnocryptes minimus) has been likened to the sound made by a cantering or galloping horse. Miskelly records Coenocorypha snipes giving a non-vocal “roar” homologous to the drumming displays of Gallinago snipes, a sound formerly ascribed to a mythological bird, the hakawai. When breeding in northern Japan, Latham's snipe (Gallinago hardwickii) are known as “thunder birds” for the drumming noise made in the course of their display flights.
A snipe is any of about 25 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill and crypsis plumage. The Gallinago snipes have a nearly worldwide distribution, the Lymnocryptes snipe is restricted to Asia and Europe and the Coenocorypha snipes are found only in the Outlying Islands of New Zealand. The three species of painted snipe are not closely related to the typical snipes, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.
Snipes search for invertebrates in the mud with a "sewing-machine" action of their long bills. The sensitivity of the bill, though to some extent noticeable in many sandpipers, is in snipes carried to an extreme by a number of filaments, belonging to the fifth pair of nerves, which run almost to the tip and open immediately under the soft cuticle in a series of cells. They give this portion of the surface of the premaxillaries, when exposed, a honeycomb-like appearance. Thus the bill becomes a most delicate organ of sensation, and by its means the bird, while probing for food, is at once able to distinguish the nature of the objects it encounters, though these are wholly out of sight.
Snipe, in woodworking, is a noticeably deeper cut on the leading and/or trailing end of a board after having passed through a thickness planer or jointer. Its cause, in a jointer, is an out-feed table which is set too low relative to the cutter head, or in a thickness planer, an unnecessarily high setting of the Bed rollers of the in-feed table or a pressure bar which is set too high. The term has its origin in forestry where it is applied to a sloping surface or bevel cut on the fore end of a log to ease dragging. (OED)
"Snipe" (stylized as "snIpe") is a maxi single released by the J-pop singer, Kotoko. Released on June 24, 2009, this single is also contained in the I've Sound 10th Anniversary 「Departed to the future」 Special CD BOX, released on March 25, 2009.
The accompanying song, "Close to Me...: I've in Budokan 2009 Live Ver.", is the live version of her first visual novel theme song with I've Sound that she performed in their concert in Budokan on January 2, 2009.
The single only came in a limited CD+DVD edition (GNCV-0018). The DVD will contain the Promotional Video for snIpe.