The African Snipe probes soft, wet mud with its long bill. Its striped plumage helps it blend into wetlands and flooded grassland, where it feeds on invertebrates and other small prey.
It has a long bill, yellow-green legs, and dark-and-pale stripes on the head and back. The pattern helps it blend into marshes and flooded grassland.
It feeds in freshwater or brackish wetlands, especially soft mud among shallowly flooded vegetation. Its diet includes beetle, dragonfly, and fly larvae, worms, small crustaceans, and molluscs; it sometimes takes seeds.
In southern Africa it nests in isolated pairs, making a saucer-shaped grass nest within a tuft of grass or rushes.
In southern Africa it lays one to three eggs, usually two. The female alone incubates, and both parents brood the chicks.
Depending on conditions it can remain resident, migrate locally or wander. It may leave an area when wetlands dry out or deteriorate.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.