First rtcofd of Solitary Snipo 
sdMff) for North America 
on Saint Paul Island, Alaska 
mmn bieber • 3993 north Campbell avenue, apartment 1201 , tucson, Arizona 85719 • (kingbird77@hotmail.com) 
SCOTT SCHUETTE • 303 SPRING CHURCH ROAD, TROY, MISSOURI 63379 • (SSCHUETTE01@HOTMAIL.COM) 
Figure 1 . This photograph of the Solitary Snipe on Saint Paul Island, Alaska 10 September 2008 shows the very long bill and heavy- 
chested appearance, as well as the dark barring on the sides of the breast. The long, evenly wide dark eyeline, outlined on both sides 
by white, starts at the bill and extends through and past the eye. Wood Snipe, a large, little-studied Asian snipe, shows prominent 
golden "back braces," a shorter bill, and an eyeline that splits into two lines behind the eye. Another large snipe species of the Old 
World, Great Snipe, has a shorter bill and bold buffy bands across the face; that species also has a striking upperwing pattern, absent 
in the Saint Paul snipe. The ground below the bird is reddish-black volcanic scoria. Digkcoped photograph by Gavin Bieber. 
Abstract 
This article provides details of the discovery 
and identification of the first Solitary Snipe 
(Gallimgo solitaha) for the North America, 
and the Western Hemisphere, on Saint Paul 
Island, Alaska on 10 September 2008. 
Introduction 
Saint Paul Island is the largest of the five Pri- 
bilof Islands, an isolated archipelago approxi- 
mately 400 kilometers north of the Aleutian 
Island chain and 400 kilometers west of the 
Alaskan mainland. Saint Pauls position in the 
central Bering Sea affords migrant and va- 
grant birds one of the only stopover sites 
within hundreds of square kilometers. Or- 
nithological records for the Pribilofs date 
back to the 1870s (Kenyon and Phillips 1921, 
Preble and McAtee 1923), but systematic cov- 
erage did not begin in earnest until the begin- 
ning of birding ecotourism in the late 1970s. 
Beginning in 1993, birders have been on the 
island throughout the summer months (mid- 
May through mid-August), surveying the is- 
land’s avifauna and guiding groups for Tanad- 
gusix (TDX), the native corporation. Inspired 
by exciting autumn finds on Saint Lawrence 
Island by Lehman (2005; <http://wings 
birds.com/files/narra tives/GambellMSCurrent 
doc.html>) and by autumn reports from the 
Aleutian Islands, Saint Paul Island Tour, a 
subsidiary of TDX, elected in 2003 to expand 
the survey and tour season into early October. 
The extended autumn coverage in 2003, 
2004, 2007, and 2008 resulted each year in 
the detection of exceptional birds. Further in- 
formation on the fall survey and the vagrant 
potential of the Pribilofs can be found in 
Lovitch (2004) and in West (2008); accounts 
of two recent North American firsts from 
Saint Paul are provided in Hoyer and Smith 
(1997) and Yerger and Mohlmann (2008). 
Weather 
Because Saint Paul Island is so remote from 
continental landmasses, storm systems and 
prevailing wind flows strongly influence the 
species composition and the abundance of 
migrants and vagrants there. The southerly 
position of the polar jet stream in autumn 
2008 brought steady northerly and easterly 
winds to Saint Paul and resulted in a slow 
year for Asian vagrants across the Bering Sea. 
The steady flow of low-pressure systems that 
came off the Russian coast and passed to the 
south of the Aleutians and into the Gulf of 
Alaska left the central and northern Bering 
Sea under the influence of a stable high-pres- 
sure system for much of September. Never- 
theless, a few of the low-pressure systems did 
reach to the latitude of the Pribilofs, bringing 
short bursts of westerly or northwesterly 
winds. On 9 and 10 September 2008, one 
such system was responsible for 22 hours of 
steady but weak westerly wind, accompanied 
by fog and light rain. 
Field encounter 
On the evening of 10 September 2008, Saint 
Paul Island Tour guides Dave Porter, Scott 
Schuette, and Gavin Bieber brought Bieber’s 
visiting Wings, Inc. group to Northeast Point. 
This peninsula, which juts out from the east- 
ern side of the island, functions as a migrant 
and vagrant trap. After checking several 
patches of Wild Celery (Angelica lucida), the 
guides split up, and Bieber took his group to 
Hutchinson Hill, an isolated volcanic hill at 
the tip of Saint Paul Island (see West [2008] 
for a summary of some of the vagrants found 
at this site). An abandoned gravel quarry in 
the side of the hill affords protection from the 
elements, and the vegetated ledges of the 
quarry are often productive for birds. As the 
group approached the terminus of the road, a 
large shorebird flushed from the dry grasses 
along the edge of the quarry and flew quickly 
over the crest of the hill. Bieber’s initial im- 
pression was that the bird was a snipe (Galli- 
nago) but that it was exceedingly large, dark, 
and pot-bellied, recalling in overall propor- 
tions more a woodcock (Scolopax) than any 
expected species of snipe. After alerting the 
group and notifying the other guides by radio, 
Bieber ran up the hill. The search for the bird 
was made more complicated by the fact that 
178 
NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 
