Exciting snipe research news
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.
