October 25, 2021

We were fortunate to get an article published in The Conversation in late August that provides a story about snipe migration and the challenges we have faced trying to conserve the species. The article is available to read here.

Recently the Friends of Mason Park wetlands in Sydney produced a very informative video about the site, which is not far from the Sydney Olympic Park wetlands – a nationally significant habitat area for snipe and one of the snipe monitoring sites. The interesting back story at Mason Park is the loss of shorebird habitat from mangrove encroachment, a problem occurring also in the Hexham swamp near Newcastle, another important snipe site. The Friends of Mason Park have been doing a lot of habitat modification works, which will hopefully promote the return of habitats more suitable to support snipe and other shorebirds.

There are still challenges for snipe at many other sites in Australia, all in urban areas. In Brisbane, the state government has plans for a major road through the Eagleby wetlands, which turned up a survey result over the EPBC Act threshold of 18 birds for national significance. In south-west Victoria, there is still pressure on the wetlands in Peterborough, our largest snipe site. It is unclear whether a housing development proposal will be made for the Robertson street wetland, recently sold to an unknown buyer. And challenges still exist in Port Fairy in terms of highlighting the ongoing significance of wetlands in the town for snipe, and encouraging council to reconsider the timing and extent of various planned works at Powling Street wetlands and nearby Sandy Cove. Only through the efforts of local counters and interested community members, combined with insights from the monitoring, can we hope to influence decision-makers to take snipe wetland conservation more seriously.

October 19, 2021

Since late August, the three Latham’s Snipe tagged by the Wild Bird Society of Japan have been busy moving around parts of eastern Australia. They have used a surprising range of locations and habitats, most of which are not locations with previous records. It has been immensely exciting and satisfying to see these tracking results.

Below is a visual summary of where the snipe have been. All images have been kindly supplied by the WBSJ and annotated.

By Sept 27, 198428 had left PNG and was inland of Hervey Bay, 198427 was south of Armidale in northern NSW, and 198429 had moved to Venus Bay in Victoria.

By 18 Oct, 198428 was in the New South Wales high plains near the ACT border, 198427 was still south of Armidale, and 198429 had left Venus Bay and had moved to western Sydney.

We were very excited when 198429 turned up in Venus Bay (Victoria), especially after it looked like it was going to stay in Sydney (after making a huge detour via Menindee Lakes on its way to Sydney!). Venus Basy is one of our monitoring sites that meets the EPBC Act criteria for national importance. And now it has decided it doesn’t like the Victorian coast and has headed back to Sydney!

Snipe 198427 seems quite content to hang around Armidale / Port Macquarie region and has moved around only a little bit in that time.

We were concerned about 198428 for sometime as it had transmitted intermittently from PNG, but then it finally arrived in Australia and is now in the NSW highlands, close to Kosciuszko NP. This is intriguing news as we get very few records of snipe from the high country and its importance for Latham’s Snipe is still unclear.

The Wild Bird Society of Japan have achieved these outstanding tracking results through their patient persistence and hrd work in northern Japan. The results accumulating are providing really great insights to snipe migration but more importantly their choice of stopover habitat, many that are locations where snipe have rarely been recorded previously.

Thanks to URA Tatsuya at the WBSJ for providing regular location updates.

August 27, 2021

We have very exciting news from our colleagues at that Wild Bird Society of Japan. They have tagged a number of latham’s snipe オオジシギ in Hokkaido with satellite transmitters and three of those birds have sucessfully completed their southward migration! Woo hoo!

Two snipe arrived in Australia on 24th August, one south of Weipa on the west side of Cape York and the other south of Gladstone just east of the Bruce Highway near Bororen. As of August 26, both birds were still in the same general area.

The third snipe went to the south-east Papua New Guinea and is north of Port Moresby in forested areas.

You can find the latest updates on the WSBJ snipe tracking project on Facebook (you don’t need an account to view).

These snipe have travelled 7800km over 5 days to reach their southerly destinations. This adds to the amazing migration of T0 obtained from geolocator data back in 2016, which followed almost exactly the same route across the Pacific Ocean.

Wood Snipe tracking

In other exciting snipe news, a team of intrepid researchers at the University of Queensland, Peking University and Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding have been searching for the elusive wood snipe in the Himalayas.

At over 3000m altitude, they have been attempting to catch wood snipe and fit them with satellite tracking devices. This is a species that is very poorly known and there is no information about their seasonal migrations between the Himalayas and the Laos and Burmese lowlands.

They have successfully located nests of wood snipe and also tagged several birds at a breeding site in Pingwu, Sichuan Province.

One of their tagged wood snipe has started its southward migration and is en route to the Vietnamese lowlands.

August 09, 2021

Yesterday August 8th, the first two snipe were sighted back at Jerrabomberra wetlands. This is over a week earlier than any previous year for which there was a record. Is it this wet season we have had in south-eastern Australia?

In far north Queensland, there were three early August records also, two from the Atherton Tablelands and one from Prosperpine. These are on ebird for folk who are curious to see for themselves.

So now is the time to be on the lookout for snipe in your local wetlands!

And don’t forget the national snipe surveys start up again in September, on Saturday 18th. Please get in contact with Birgita before the end of August if you’re interested in being involved.

May 21, 2021

It is been a while since I posted here, but no, the project hasn’t died! Work life has got in the way and data entry at my end has been severely delayed. But I can finally report on the outcomes of this survey season, which was a great one.

The season totals were September 1342 snipe from 148 sites, November 1619 snipe from 132 sites, and January 1455 snipe from 149 sites.

The regions that consistently had large numbers of snipe were East Gippsland, Geelong-Bellarine, north-west Tasmania, Port Fairy-Warrnambool, and west Gippsland. And the three sites that had consistently high totals were Peterborough (max count 187 in November), Smithton (max count in 134 in November) and Fox Lake (max count 74 in January).

This season was a bumper season for snipe. There was so much water about and the numbers generally reflected this, although at some sites the wet conditions produced the paradoxical result of no snipe, because vegetation got too tall or too think, making the habitat unsuitable.

We were very fortunate that most people were able to get out and survey despite covid restrictions, and I am immensely grateful to all the counters for their efforts.

Unfortunately, several of our sites are facing threats from development. The most significant of these is Peterborough wetlands, which is threatened by housing development thanks to Melbourne investors and the sea changers buying up land. As the popularity (and housing price) of the township goes up, the council is making land use changes in the township to accommodate the growing population, which are also impacting snipe habitats. It is looking very grim there at the moment and we are most concerned that Australia’s largest snipe population could be severely impacted by development.

There are also other sites under threat. The Allansford wetlands are threatened by development, and there are 3 sites potentially under threat due to road duplication projects.

I am in the process of preparing a scientific publication about the results of the national surveys. One of the early findings is the lack of protection for snipe wetlands – less than 10% of snipe recorded were at sites with any form of official protection. This confirms what we are observing from these development threats in different parts of the country, and demonstrates that Latham’s Snipe are afforded no protection in this country. This is a matter for urgent legal and planning attention.