After an exhausting weekend of catching in Port Fairy, following hot on the heels of a visit to Canberra, the Latham’s Snipe Project team had another catch success. Sunday morning was the largest catch yet, of 13 birds – this almost equals our total catch from 2015-2016! Of these, 3 birds were same-season recaptures, H2, H6 & V2. Monday morning saw only a single capture due to very windy conditions, but it too was a bird from earlier in spring (H1).
More green snipe bags than ever before! The processing station at Don and Sherril’s place.
We have now recaptured 5 birds caught earlier in spring 2016 – this has given us some really valuable information on changes in weight and moult of birds through spring and into summer. It also complements the information we are getting from the radio tracking, that birds are hanging around Powling street wetlands and only moving small distances between daytime roosts. In fact, some birds will return to exactly the same roost spot for several days in a row. This demonstrates that Latham’s Snipe, like other migratory waders, are highly site faithful.
An almost perfect impression of a snipe body in the long grass, complete with feathers and poops, showing where this particular bird likes to spend its day roosting.
Hopefully this will be reflected in another 2015 geolocator retrieval before the snipe return to Japan in autumn 2017.
Latham’s Snipe project goes to Canberra!
December 05, 2016
On Sunday 27th November, Rich and Birgita drove up to Canberra to help Lori Gould and the Jerrabombera team catch snipe at their wetlands. The Woodlands and Wetlands Trust (Jerrabombera wetlands) have invested in satellite transmitters to deploy on their snipe, to complement their conservation work. Birgita and Rich spent 3 days in Canberra checking out the site, working out where to catch birds and finally putting nets, over 2 consecutive nights, in Kelly’ Swamp near the wetlands centre. Face fulls of insects and wading through floating grass paid off – the team caught 1 bird the first morning, and 5 birds the second morning. Everyone was thrilled to have catch success so early on, and it demonstrated the level of experience the Port Fairy team has gained in the 15 months of catching snipe.
Unfortunately, none of the birds was heavy enough to fit a transmitter, so the team will return again at the end of January to make another attempt. However, the time was not wasted. The team learnt a lot about the birds’ behaviour at Jerra, and also got the opportunity to speak to ABC Canberra about the project, see the news article Latham’s Snipe Conservation Project.
Thanks to Lori and her family for putting us up, and to Michael and Mark for sharing their knowledge about the birds and the area.
Rich at the ‘snipe’ hide, Kelly’s swamp.
Radio-tracking of snipe starts
November 02, 2016
An exiting new component of our project started last weekend, with the deployment of five radio-transmitters onto snipe caught at Port Fairy. These radio-transmitters will allow us to better understand local movement patterns of these around Port Fairy over the summer. (more…)
Across the world in 373 days
October 11, 2016
You may not have noticed anything last weekend, but there was a huge advance in snipe knowledge with the recapture of a bird at Port Fairy with a geolocator deployed last year. This represents the first time that the full migration path of the species has been recorded. T-zero was recaptured on Sunday only 600 metres from where it was originally caught on Oct 1st 2015, having been to Japan and back in the interim.
The first 2016 SE Australian snipe count starts tomorrow!
September 16, 2016
Saturday 17th September is the first of three counts across south-eastern Australia for the 2016-2017 spring-summer season. With all the flooding rains in the week just been, we are not certain that snipe will be using their traditional daytime roost sites. Tomorrow will tell!
Contact the Latham’s Snipe project team if you’re interested in joining the counts.
Wild Bird Society of Japan: snipe on its way to Australia
September 16, 2016
The Wild Bird Society of Japan (WBSJ, Birdlife International / EAAFP member in Japan) launched a project to study Latham’s Snipe’s migratory route and identify their important stopover and wintering sites for their conservation.
The WBSJ attached platform transmitter terminals (PTTs) for satellite tracking to 5 Latham’s snipes. One of those birds is currently en route to Australia and at the time of this post, was in Papua. Follow the news of latham’s snipe 158873 on the WBSJ blog.
Snipe 158873 position 16/9/2016. Image courtesy of WBSJ.
As part of their tracking program, the WBSJ have leg flagged latham’s snipe at Yufutsu, Hokkaido.
If you observe any snipe bearing blue over blue leg flags (see diagram left), please report these to oojishigi-pj@wbsj.org.
Great start to the 2016/17 season
September 15, 2016
Our first catch of the 2016/17 season over the last weekend has been a successful one. Opinions were mixed leading up to the catch: it has been a wet winter which might have meant that snipe wouldn’t need to return to Powling Street and Sandy Cove. Then there was more rain all Friday, building on these doubts. Conversely, there had been good numbers of snipe reported during the week (up to 15), and we had a years-worth of experience to call on!
Friday night was wet and raining, so the difficult decision was made to put nets up in the morning – difficult as it meant getting up at 3.40am so nets were ready for catching at 5.30am. At least the rain had stopped when the alarm rang, and three sets of paired nets were set up on the kikuyu grassland east of Powling Street wetlands. As dawn came a few snipe flew in, and one was briefly caught in the net, but it was a ‘zero-catch’ morning.
Saturday saw the weather improve, and we were able to set three nets in Sandy Cove at a reasonable time after dusk. Returning at 5am, everything seemed ideal for a good catch – almost no wind, nets over likely roosting areas, and so we waited…..At 6am the first snipe came in, and by 6.20am we had five birds safely in bags! It’s always a bit hard working out what’s happening in the dark, but one bird was caught directly in the net while the other four flushed into the nets as we approached (just as we’d planned).
Nets were dismantled, and then the birds were processed, including attachment of the vital geolocator. None of the birds was a recapture, but we now have 19 birds out there collecting data for us.
For those of you who are interested in participating, the next catch is scheduled for October 8-9th. If you’re keen to be involved before then, the first of the annual south-east Australian snipe counts is on this coming weekend, the 17-18th September. For more information on both events contact Birgita (b.hansen@federation.edu.au).
All photo with permission from Richard Chamberlain.
Latham’s Snipe team enjoy a successful visit to Hokkaido, Japan
August 02, 2016
Between July 9 and 22, the Latham’s Snipe project team visited Hokkaido to work with the Wild Bird Society of Japan on their snipe capture. Birgita, Jodie, Dave and Rich joined Tatsuya Ura, Seiji Hayama, and Hironobu Tajiri from the WBSJ catching snipe at Benten Lake. This is an important bottleneck site in southern Hokkaido, where large numbers of recently hatched juvenile and adult birds pass through on their southward migration from their breeding grounds.
Snipe team at Benten Lake, snipe catching site in Hokkaido. Left to right: Hayama-san, Jodie, Dave, Tajiri-san, Rich.
The team enjoyed the company and expertise of the WBSJ researchers and other staff, as well as enjoying the comforts and relaxing atmosphere of the Utonai-ko Nature Center in Tomakomai. During the visit, the team visited the Uenae Elementary and Junior High School to help WBSJ staff Satoshi Nakamura and Hironobu Tajiri teach primary school students about snipe surveying and conservation. The team went on to talk with senior school students at Sapporo Kaisei Secondary School about snipe and bird research more generally.
Jodie and Rich play “Oji-shigi says” with the students at Uenae.
The WBSJ hosted a community workshop on Latham’s Snipe, at which Birgita and several other noteable Japanese snipe researchers presented their research findings. Among the speakers was Professor Yuzo Fugimaki, who worked with Hans Naarding in the eighties to complete the only comprehensive surveys of snipe breeding populations. The workshop was well attended by the public as well as by Hokkaido Television Broadcasting. Birgita and Richard gave interviews to both TV and print media during the workshop and subsequent field work.
Birgita and Dr Reiko Kurosawa (interpreting) talking about snipe at the Latham’s Snipe workshop. Photo: WBSJ
The team is excited about the experiences they had working with the Japanese and the strong collaboration forged with researchers in the WBSJ. We discovered that the WBSJ has many similar objectives of their snipe research as we have in ours, and we saw several opportunities to share learnings as our respective projects progress.
Ura-san showing how WBSJ snipe research is done to Hokkaido Television Broadcasting and Rich.
We will build upon the relationships made with the two schools, which will include seeking opportunities to host students in either Port Fairy or Canberra. We also look forward to working closely with our Japanese colleagues in the coming months and years to learn more about snipe migration, and share information about our projects.
The project team would like to thank the Australia Japan Foundation for providing financial support to visit Japan.
Latham’s Snipe team travel to Japan
July 14, 2016
The Latham’s Snipe project team travelled to Hokkaido on July 8. They joined their Japanese colleagues in the Wild Bird Society of Japan to participate in snipe monitoring around Utonai-ko Nature Centre in Tomakomai.
During their trip, the team will also visit elementary and junior high schools in the Sapporo region to talk about Latham’s Snipe conservation and share knowledge about habitat protection in Australia and Japan. They have brought with them artworks produced by students at the Port Fairy Consolidated School to exchange with Japanese students. The team hopes to return to Australia with Japanese snipe stories to pass onto Port Fairy and Canberra school students.
Snipe start their migration from Queensland
April 11, 2016
We’ve had some exciting records from Queensland recently of birds massing in larger-than-usual numbers. This follows a similar pattern in more southerly areas like Melton Botanic Gardens in Victoria and Jerrabombera Wetlands in the ACT, where numbers peaked back in mid-late summer as birds moved through the region.
In the Noosa region, there has been some interesting observations of birds calling to each other around dawn and dusk daily, over the last 4 weeks. It seems that these birds have just departed the region in the last 24 hours – thanks to Lynn Scott for keeping the team updated on her local snipe.
In the Ingham region, Tony Ashton has had some great sightings of snipe (as well as great photos), and reports in his latest blog that birds appear to have departed that region too. Thanks to Tony for sharing his observations (http://tytotony.blogspot.com.au/).
Unfortunately, none of our tagged birds has been recorded yet, but we hold out hope that one may be spotted on the breeding grounds.
We’re looking forward to hearing of the first arrivals in Japan!
Second south-eastern Australia counts complete
February 22, 2016
On Jan 14th, observers from throughout south-eastern Australia undertook the second co-ordinated count of Latham’s snipe for the 2015/6 wintering period.This survey covered 38 sites in four states, and recorded 238 birds, with six sites having snipe numbers above the EPBC threshold of 18 birds. The highest count was 38 birds at Peterborough (on the Great Ocean Road, Victoria), with 37 at Begola Wetlands (Bellarine Peninsula) and 27 at both Jerrabomberra wetlands (ACT) and BARC wetlands (Gippsland). (more…)
Snipe in the news
February 03, 2016
Hi everyone,
Work by BirdLife Southern Highlands (BLSH) counting snipe in the East Bowral Botanic Gardens and adjacent areas of the Mittagong Creek has featured in the Southern Highland News, and then on social media. Snipe have been counted three times a year by BLSH members since 2011, and they have been working with the local council to include snipe habitat into the development plans for the gardens.
