The results of the Snipe & Whisk Project undertaken byFIdC Migratory Birdlife Office. The research project through the use of hunting diaries on the two small colopacids has reached its ninth season of activity, expanding the results useful for the knowledge and management of the two species. The Newsletter of the Woodcock and Snipe Specialist Group (WSSG), has in fact published the work on the collection of the wings and coxswain of the snipe and whisk in Italy, entitled "2017-2018 Italian snipe plumage collection", by the authors Daniel Tramontana & Michele Sorrenti.
The purpose of this initiative launched on an experimental basis during the 2017-2018 hunting season and further implemented through the "Beccaccini Network" made up of FIdC, ACMA and Club del Beccaccino, is to get to know the structure in terms of sex and age classes of the populations of snipe and whisk that are hunted in Italy. Analyzing the age ratio for the snipe it was noted that the juveniles were more numerous than the adults with a proportion equal to 61% (age ratio = 1.5) while for the whisk the proportion of youngsters, estimated through the examination of the helmsmen, was 69,2%.
As for the sex ratio, for the Snipe it was not possible to define the sex, due to the lack of coxswain in the sample analyzed; while for the whisk the proportion of males in the sample analyzed was 23%. These first results on the population structure of the two piarists will find further confirmation in the analysis of the approximately 160 wings and helmsmen collected to date relating to the 2018-2019 season. After the participation of the Migratory Birdlife Office in the8th Woodcock and Snipe Workshop, held in Pico Island in Portugal in 2017, the proceedings of which will be published shortly, these further results increase the knowledge of the Italian hunting world on the two piarists migrating and wintering in Italy.