December 12, 2025

The Latham’s Snipe Project has been fortunate to receive funding through a partnership between Federation University and the Arthur Rylah Institute (Victorian State Government) to undertake a new tracking program. This funding has come from the Federal Government DCCEEW through the Renewable Energy Research Initiative and is intended to develope species-species guidance for reducing impacts of renewable energy developments on Latham’s Snipe and a bunch of other threatened species.

Birgita is leading this research program with support from her research centre (Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation) at FedUni. With a large group of experts and volunteers, the team successfully deployed 43 GPS Bluetooth tags on snipe during spring 2025 at the two largest monitoring sites in the Victoria and South Australia: Peterborough wetlands on the Great Ocean Road and Fox Lake in Robe. Most of these tags have been funded through the RERI project but there were also some tags left over Lori Gould’s PhD tagging research in Canberra.

The GPS tags use Bluetooth technology to transmit data to a nearby receiving device or “Hub”. The hub is installed on a tall pole (which we call a tower) so that the Hub has an unobstructed view across the wetland. This helps ensure line-of-sight with any snipe carrying tags that are on the ground, either hiding in the vegetation or out foraging. Three towers have been installed at Peterborough and one tower on the bird hide at Fox Lake.

These towers are receiving data regularly day and night. Twice a day the data on the Hub is transmitted to the manufacturer’s servers via the mobile phone network. The range of the Hub is up to 800m, so if the birds return to the area where the Hub is installed the data on their GPS tags will be received. Sometimes even birds flying past might transmit data, so long as they’re in range for a few seconds.

There is regular data coming in from about half the birds, with the other birds likely elsewhere in landscape and out of range of the receiver.

The data we receive from the tags will provide us important information on roosting and foraging areas birds use, day behaviours and flight height / flight speed, with which to assess potential wind turbine collision risk.

August 29, 2024

We are excited to share with you a short documentary film on the snipe project (see below). It was written, directed and produced by Richard Snashall and showcases the extensive research efforts to monitor, understand and protect the Latham Snipe. In the video, Birgita and the Canberra snipe team discuss their work and the extensive citizen scientist efforts over many years to improve knowledge about this species. The documentary was shortlisted for the Far South Film Festival in August 2024 at Merimbula. We thank Lori Gould for helping coordinate funding to support the production.

June 07, 2024

On June 5, World Environment Day, Federation University, in partnership with the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network, the Atlas of Living Australia and BirdLife Australia, released a new online mapping portal called Valuing Urban Wetlands.

The map reporting tool uses both Latham’s Snipe Project data and Atlas of Living Australia data to help raise awareness about the value of urban wetlands for biodiversity. It captures data from Melbourne only at the moment, but the idea will be to extend it in the future to other urban centres.

You can read more about the project background on the ALA blog.

This week, the Weekend Birder released an episode in their podcast series featuring Birgita talking about the project. You can access it via Spotify or on online at: Weekend Birder episode 79

As some of you with have heard, Latham’s Snipe were uplisted to Vulnerable under the EPBC Act in January of this year. This is the first time in Australia that the species has had a conservation status, and is in recognition that the species is under threat and likely to be declining. The biggest threat to snipe in Australia is wetland habitat loss, hence the purpose of the Valuing Urban Wetlands project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all the volunteers and people who have contributed to the snipe survey efforts over the years. This has been instrumental in informing the national conservation assessment and the recognition that Latham’s Snipe is a threatened species in Australia.

Lori Gould’s PhD research has been tracking along really nicely and she now has two seasons worth of movement data from tagged snipe in Canberra, which she is currently analysing. The results so far show very similar movement patterns to what we found in Port Fairy years ago with the radio tracking. Most snipe move predictably distances of usually 1-2km and up to 5km nightly between their daytime roost sites and night time foraging sites. She has also had two birds return to Jerrabomberra wetlands after their breeding season and transmitting their tag data to the Bluetooth receiver at the wetland. One bird went to northern Japan and the other went to SW Sakhalin. We were not expecting to get long distance movement data like that from these tags, and we were very excited to get these results. See attached two images.

The Wild Bird Society of Japan are conducting field work again this season on the breeding grounds and we hope they get some great results from their surveying and catching efforts.

Lastly, we have had a short documentary about the snipe project work in Canberra done, which was produced by Richard Snashell. The full doco will be available later in the year.

October 11, 2023

Thank you for your patience with my poor communication over the last 12 months. I have finished tidying up the survey results and some fascinating patterns have appeared. Here are some highlights from the results:

• September 2022 had the highest September count ever at 1492 snipe for 132 survey sites. The next highest in September was 1312 for 146 sites in 2020. Much of this we can attribute to the extraordinary wet season we had last year. For example, sites that had unusually high numbers in September 2022 were:
  • Jerrabomberra wetlands (ACT) 146 snipe
  • Norman Street industrial area (Ballarat) 97 snipe
  • Cheltenham Road retarding basin (Melbourne) 83 snipe
  • Moyne estuary (Port Fairy) 188 snipe
• November and January were surprisingly lower, which is unusual – 1135 snipe (112 sites) and 927 snipe (102 sites), respectively. Some of this drop is caused by fewer sites being surveyed than normal, but this does not explain all the differences. I have put in a table below of the regional summaries – please note that these regions are groupings of individuals sites, summarised in a way that makes sense to me.
• There were a few sites that also had unusually high numbers in other months:
  • Nov – Point Fullarton (Gippsland) 40 snipe – this site is currently threatened with a housing development proposal (sadly, a common story for urban snipe)
  • Nov – Smithton (NW Tas) 140 snipe
  • Jan – BulBul Crescent / Kekul st wetlands (Newcastle) 126 snipe
  • Nov – Moyne estuary (Port Fairy) 211 snipe
• Peterborough on the Victorian coast remains the (consistently) largest site with total counts of 123 (Sept), 158 (Nov) and 161 (Jan)

Most of the September 2023 count data are also entered. So far the total count is around 600 snipe for about 95 sites. These numbers haven’t been carefully error checked yet so these numbers are preliminary. This is one of the lowest September counts since the snipe surveys went national in 2016. This lower count also appears to be due to the slightly earlier timing of the surveys compared with previous years – usually we survey around 1 week later and seems like birds just simply had not arrived yet at some of the south-eastern Australian sites.

In other news, The Wild Bird Society of Japan are tracking snipe again from Hokkaido and the last update from late September, they had a bird somewhere near the Kiewa River valley in north-east Victoria. This is really great news and it has been fabulous to hear about the tracking success of the WBSJ.

First ever international Latham’s Snipe leg flag recovery

We had some very exciting news in September. A Japanese-marked Latham’s Snipe, captured by our colleague ODAYA Yoshiya in Ibaraki prefecture, was photographed at Lismore Lake by Lachlan Cooper. The photos below are from Lismore lake, where the bird was resighted, and of the bird when originally captured. It was banded on 28 August 2021 as a first year, and resighted on 05/09/2023 at Lake Lismore. It is a confirmed age 3 bird (i.e. in its 3rd year).

Here was the capture and banding location in Japan: https://goo.gl/maps/PzStZw2rjWEc4Zk19
And here was the resighting location in Lismore: https://goo.gl/maps/QuCC9U7vDTNTJ1r86

While there have been thousands of resightings of other leg flagged shorebird species over time across the flyway, there has never been a single re-sighting of a Latham’s Snipe outside its country of capture (to our knowledge). And even within its country of capture, leg flag re-sightings of snipe are exceptionally rare.

So this is a ground breaking outcome for capture-based studies on this species.

March 03, 2023

Prepared by Lori and Birgita

We’d like to start this update by reassuring people that the lack of updates for so long does not mean nothing has been happening in the snipe project – quite the opposite!

Since last year, we have had a new series of tracking efforts going on, both in ACT and in Japan. Lori has been undertaking tracking as part of her PhD with a different type of tag, with great success (see below). And the Wild Bird Society of Japan deployed more 2g solar PTTs in Hokkaido last year, and now have 5 snipe that have migrated to Australia and 3 that also returned to Japan.

We have also completed another season of national snipe surveys, which have produced some fascinating results.

ACT tracking update 28th February 2023

This Snipe season we set out to attach up to 20 small 3.5g GPS bluetooth devices to Latham’s Snipe at Jerrabomberra Wetlands (ACT) to investigate fine scale local movements and behaviour to inform habitat use (and land management more broadly). These bluetooth devices rely on a base station or iphone to detect and download the data, and we made an educated guess that a proportion of the birds would stay at the wetlands for us to receive data from. These devices are a lot cheaper and more accurate than PTT satellite trackers ($150 compared with $6000 each) so we were able to purchase more of them. We then constructed a tower using an aerial attached to some conveniently located cattle yards to elevate a hub (base station) to expand the Bluetooth range from 80m on our phones to 800m. After a few teething issues this hub has worked well.

The plan was that the devices would stay affixed to the birds for up to 2 months after which time they would fall off, so the bird didn’t have to carry them when data wasn’t being collected (i.e. when they leave for migration).

So in early December we set out after sunset to set up nets ready for our first catch the next morning on the 10th December. We caught two birds. We did this again on the 11th December and caught five birds. Not a bad start. We attached the devices with beading elastic using leg loop harnesses and all birds seemed healthy and well (unlike the 25 volunteers who were all very tired from getting two hours sleep for two nights). Straight away we were getting high quality track data from five of the seven birds which was more than what we had initially ever dared to hope for. Although the choice of these Bluetooth devices was well researched, they had not been used on wader birds such as Latham’s Snipe before.

Bolstered by our success, we organised another catch for the 13th and 15th January. Again, our wonderful volunteers put their hands up to help and included people from the Japanese embassy, ACT Parks and Conservation Service, Canberra Ornithologists Group, Australian National University, CSIRO, the Woodlands and Wetlands Trust and the ACT Young Rangers Club (many of whom were 8 years old when the Latham’s Snipe project started in 2015 and are now highly skilled birders and research assistants). The volunteers deserve special mention because without their involvement we couldn’t do this work.

This time we managed to catch a whole zero / nil / nada on the first night and we were a bit disappointed. Although usually a reliable catching spot, the water levels had risen and many of the birds had obviously found somewhere better to hang out. Not to be outdone, we had a group huddle around the big TV at the wetlands to look at where the birds we had already tracked were going. We found our Snipe hotspot! So out we went on the Saturday night and counted 38 birds leaving their roost site to feed for the night. Once they left, we assembled the nets in an H shape and decided on three flush teams for the morning. We also set up a net at a wetlands we affectionately know as the ‘Ditch’. Well, the next morning, things went like clockwork and we caught 12 birds – the most we have ever caught in one morning!

The birds were processed by our highly skilled teams of volunteers and the were trackers affixed. The birds were all released successfully. We received data from all of these birds and the technology was working really well. Many of the volunteers agreed to put the ‘Ecotopia’ app on their phones so that we had lots of people out scanning for birds when they were out and about. So by now we have 19 out of the 20 trackers on birds. Having one tracker left to deploy was too much to bear, so we organised an impromptu mini-catch in the ‘Ditch’ on the 19th January and to our absolute amazement, we caught just one bird and it was one we had put a leg flag on in 2018! So… job done.

The results so far have been amazing. We obtained high quality data from 16 out of the 20 birds for most of January which dropped to 12 birds for most of February and then down to 5 birds at the end of February. We are talking thousands of data points which will be analysed in coming months, but the preliminary observations are as follows:

• Most of the birds haven’t left Jerrabomberra Wetlands for any length of time and roost in the main part of the Jerrabomberra wetlands during the day, then head over to the grass-growing area (Canturf) or the paleo-channel area to the north during the night to feed.
• We recaptured 3 birds from previous years, one of which has been coming back to the wetlands for 5 years.
• Some birds go on long journeys to feed. For example several birds travelled 20-30km to feed at night and then returned to the wetlands to roost. They leave around 8pm and return at around 6am.
• One bird travelled all the way to Nowra on the NSW south coast for a couple of days but then returned to the wetlands

The success of these devices and the data received has been way beyond our expectations and we are now wondering whether the devices will stay attached for migration. If they do, it is highly likely that a proportion of birds will return to the wetlands next season due to their apparent site fidelity. We will not get ahead of ourselves yet, but we will set the devices accordingly just in case.

The Latham’s Snipe project team would like to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation for the many volunteers and supporters. As mentioned earlier, we couldn’t do it without them all.

Wild Bird Society of Japan tracking

Between 2020 and 2022, the WBSJ have deployed 10 2g solar PTTs (Microwave Telemetry) and have had tremendous success with these smaller tags, affixed to birds using leg loop harnesses. In 2021-2022, three birds migrated to Australia and spent their non-breeding season across a range of different areas in eastern Australia, ranging from coast Victoria to the ACT and NSW alps, western Sydney wetlands and northern NSW tablelands farmland.

In 2022-2023 two more tagged snipe made their way to Australia and one spent the early part of the season in Corner Inlet (eastern Victoria) and the other was in production landscapes west of Cowra in NSW. More information to follow.

National Snipe Surveys

The national surveys produced some amazing results this season. Some sites broke their own records like Moyne estuary in Port Fairy, where 188 snipe were recorded in September and 211 snipe were recorded in November! Sites like Peterborough, Fox Lake and Smithton all had high numbers of snipe again. But then there were some surprises too, like Phillip Island which had zero snipe in November!

The data entry is still being done, and we won’t now the final numbers for the season for a few weeks. However, it looks like this very wet season in eastern Australia is going to produce some really intersting results. Birgita would like to thank Jack Winterbottom for his able assistance with data entry.

April 27, 2022

As of April 25, one of the Wild Bird Society of Japan snipe was in north-east Hokkaido, in the Engaru-cho area. It is possible it will settle somewhere in this region to breed. Even more exciting is that the other snipe, which was in the far south of Honshu in early April, is now somewhere along the south-west coast of Sakhalin Island!

There have been no further transmissions from the two Canberra snipe.

There have been recent updates from the Wood Snipe tracking project also. The team now has complete southward migration tracks for two individuals (see the tracking map below). The latest point for one bird, carrying a Lotek tag, was 26/02/2022 and the other bird, carrying a HQXS tag, was 13/04/2022. The team is expecting the two birds, which were presumed to be on their wintering grounds during mid-April, to start their journey back to breeding grounds very soon.

April 11, 2022

It has been a busy and exciting time for Latham’s Snipe tracking. Since the January update there have been some interesting movements in both the Jerrabomberra wetlands snipe and the Wild Bird Society of Japan snipe.

In Canberra, ELF50 hung around at Jerrabomberra wetlands only until mid-January and then headed out to western Canberra to spend about 3 weeks on an equestrian property, before then moving SE 65km to farmland around Ballalaba. It stayed there for about 2 and a half months. ELF51 stayed at Jerrabomberra until mid-March and then headed straight up to Gwydir wetlands. This is the third snipe we have tagged that has used Gwydir! It didn’t stay there long and moved on a few days later to southern Queensland. We haven’t had a data transmission since late March. Since then, ELF50 has left NSW (March 25) and turned up in Cape York 3 days later. It’s most recent April fixes are from the central west side of the Cape.

Meanwhile the Japanese tagged snipe have done all sorts of interesting things. One was in western Sydney for spring and left the area in mid-December to move westwards to the Lachlan River region near Forbes, where spent about a month and half. It’s most recent fixes were from south-east Queensland, including a fix south of Great Sandy Strait.

The second snipe stayed in the same ~20 sqkm area of farmland SE of Tamworth for 5 months. It left in mid-February stopping off in the Cairns area for a short period, and then straight on to Japan, arriving in southern Japan at the end of March. This is the first ever complete & documented migration of a satellite-tagged Latham’s Snipe. Hooray! And congratulations to the WBSJ for this success.

The third snipe spent four months of the spring-summer period in the ACT alps and then went missing in action for a while, before turning up on northward migration in early April. The exciting news is that it is also back in Japan, on Honshu in the Kanto region.

The map below shows recent fixes from all five tagged snipe.

One of the noticeable patterns this season has been some unexpected movements westward, most likely caused by the massive rains and floods in eastern Australia over the last 2 months. The other thing we have noticed is apparently late departures of snipe from the south, with birds still being present at sites for longer or in larger numbers. Hopefully we might get some deeper insights about these migration patterns when it comes to analysing the tracking data alongside observational data in the future.

The national surveys again produced some great results. Birgita is fortunate to have had asssitance from Jack Winterbottom with the data entry and the January count results will soon be compiled. There is no doubt that all the rain over the 2021-2022 season has affected the snipe count results, with some areas having lots of snipe and others having virtually none, because there has been too much water or vegetation has become too tall.

In the coming two months, we will be embarking on a small project to produce guidelines for the management and restoration of snipe habitat. If you have any interest in getting involved, please contact Birgita.

Wood Snipe tracking update

A brief update on other snipe tracking news. The wood snipe team had an unexpected success in February when one of their tagged birds suddenly transmitted again after a long period of no data transmission (due to a flat battery). The data showed the bird in the Guizhou province and the activity data suggested it was wintering there. This represents the first wintering (non-breeding season) record for China, which is a fabulous outcome for the team.

February 08, 2022

I’ve uploaded some edited footage from my survey at Nerrina wetlands in November 2021. While the quality of the video isn’t all that flash, you can get a sense of the snipe’s call, behaviour and habitat. See the species page to view.

February 04, 2022

We are about to commence a new project called Valuing Urban Wetlands with AURIN, the ALA and BirdLife Australia. It will draw on data generated by the Latham’s Snipe Project alongside other waterbird data contained with Birdata and provisioned to the ALA alongside other citizen scientist data. The aim of the project is to improve access to information about urban wetlands to raise awareness of their importance for biodiversity conservation (and human health and wellbeing). Please get in contact with Birgita if you want to know more.

January 13, 2022

The new year has got off to a great start with five Latham’s Snipe satellitte tagged and transmitting from various parts of Australia. Three of these snipe are the Wild Bird Society of Japan tagged birds, and data is still being received intermittently from them. One has spent almost its entire time on farmland in the Niangala region of NSW, inland of Port Macquarie and south-east of Tamworth. Another roamed around a bit and visited some far-flung locations like Venus Bay in Victoria before settling down in parkland in western Sydney. And the third has spent a lot of its time in the ACT / NSW alps.

In early December 2021, the ACT team managed to find the Covid-19 gap to get a catch done at Jerrabomberra wetlands. It was destined to go pretty well as there had been record numbers of snipe recorded earlier in spring within the wetlands complex, and then 1 week out from the catching a large number of snipe were sighted at the Billabong in the south end, near the car yards. So only a single night’s catching was required and the team caught their largest catch ever at Jerrabomberra of 11 snipe. Everyone was very excited, especially as we had three PinPoint Argos tags left to deploy. Two were from previous years and there was a single new one. Consistent with patterns we have seen in the past, there were quite a few fatter birds in the catch compared to the Jan/Feb catches from previous years. The three largest adult birds (>150g) were selected for tags and fitted with leg loop harnesses. This is the first time we have used the leg loops on latham’s snipe and after some fiddling around, got them fitted nicely. The birds were held briefly just to allow them to shuffle their harnesses into position and then released near Kelly’s swamp.

Regular transmissions have been received from two of the birds, carrying orange engraved leg flags 50 and 51, but no data was ever received from the third bird (which could be a failed tag). The tags were programmed to take day and night fixes for about a month and this has proved to be a good decision as we have obtained loads of data showing the areas the birds are roosting and foraging in. As with previous years, they are almost always using completely distinct areas at night and day (see image below).

Between the WBSJ tracking and our tracking, we are starting to build a good picture of snipe movement in Australia. There are still many gaps of course, and a lack of complete migration tracks makes it harder to work out where important migration sites are outside Australia. The figure below provides a snapshot of the recent tracking data from the five tagged snipe.

National surveys 2021

As most people know, it has been an unusually wet year with the Bureau of Meteorology declaring La Niña conditions in spring. As a consequence, we have seen numbers of snipe exceeding any in past years. So despite Covid-19 preventing some people from doing surveys, we had the highest counts ever in November 2021. Paradoxically, quite a few of the usual “good sites” had too much water and not many snipe were recorded – this was particularly the case for East Gippsland and sites in Queensland.

Highlights for the surveys were:

• Total September count was 1124 from 121 sites. This included 9 new sites.
• The regions with the largest totals in September were Central Tasmania (85 snipe), East Gippsland (98 snipe), Geelong-Bellarine (71 snipe), Hunter region (91 snipe), northern-west Tasmania (91 snipe all Smithton), Otway shipwreck coast (121 snipe all at Peterborough), Port Fairy-Warrnambool (90 snipe), SE South Australia (110 snipe) and West Gippsland (74 snipe).
• Total November count was 1946 for 119 sites. This was a seasonal record! This included only 4 new sites.
• The regions with the largest totals in November were Victorian western Central Highlands (220 snipe), northern NSW (125 snipe), NSW Hunter region (259 snipe), Port Fairy – Warrnambool (179 snipe), SE South Australia (247 snipe), West Gippsland (155 snipe) and of course Smithton and Peterborough

It is always great to see the count results and the findings of peoples’ surveys. But there are also often other little treasurers that come with receiving everyone’s data and entering the data. The photos of people counting are always wonderful, as are the photos of snipe in flight or going about their business.

Here’s some gems from past surveys:

What is also wonderful is people’s care of their sites. For example, one of the counters made the following comment in relation to rubbish dumping at their survey site last year:

We actually reported the dumping, rubbish etc to the council and they fed back to me it had subsequently been inspected and is on a list for clean up. I am now concerned they’ll clean it up and disturb the snipe. Oh dear, conservation work is complicated I realise!

The law of unintended consequences! It seems to happen too often when trying to do conservation. So for those of you fighting your local conservation fights, you are not alone when you feel like you’re not getting anywhere.

With the new(ish) datasheets, there have been some fabulous site maps produced by counters and included with the snipe count data. Two examples are below, which the counters have given permission to share with you.

If you are not keen on GPS and smart devices, here is another great way to record your surveys!

Other snipe news

Not all news this year is good. One of our counters in the Geelong region, Rustem Upton, passed away earlier in January. This was pretty sudden and shocking for most of us that didn’t know him that well. He was extremely dedicated to the snipe surveys and was a meticulous observer. I would like to express my gratitude for the contribution he made to the snipe project. We will strive to carry on his legacy at his favourite snipe site, Begola wetlands.

The other news is fortunately much less sad. The snipe project will be cranking up another notch in Canberra in 2022 with the commencement of a PhD project investigating snipe movement ecology. I am pleased to announce that our colleague Lori Gould will be taking up this PhD. This is great news for the snipe project as Lori has been instrumental in initiating and driving it in Canberra and has lots of experience with the species. She will be based at ANU and working with Professor Adrian Manning, Heather Mcginness and myself to undertake this project. The project will be supported by an ANU Research Training Program scholarship and the Woodlands and Wetlands Trust.

It couldn’t happen without the volunteers and collaborators…

My thanks to all the counters that have managed to get to their sites to survey in 2021. And a special thanks to the Jerrabomberra wetlands catching team who have been so dedicated to the cause and made the effort each year to slog through wetlands at 4am. We now have a very experienced team of snipe catchers and they have made this part of the project possible. And finally I’d like to thank Tatsuya Ura and the Wild Bird Society of Japan, who have kept us up-to-date with their tracking project.

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.

November 05, 2020

The start of the 2020-2021 snipe season has gone much better than expected. The total number of snipe counted for the September 26 survey was 1347 for 150 sites – 24 of these sites were new for the National Surveys and accounted for 149 snipe. This result compares favourably to the September 2019 survey, where we had 1229 snipe for 126.

We were expecting potentially poor results this time around after the >40% decline in snipe numbers was detected during the Japanese breeding ground surveys in May. This was thought to be a consequence of the bushfires and drought effects. It is still possible these factors have had an impact on the snipe population, but the effect could have been diluted by the nature of our survey sites – as many are in urban areas they may be more stable and less likely to fluctuate with large population changes. But there is no evidence yet to support this theory.

EAAF Shorebird Science Meeting

In other news, the EAAFSSM is currently underway in Korea, although the whole conference has been moved online. Birgita has presented some findings from the Latham’s Snipe Projet satellite tracking, showing the importance of Papua New Guinea to migrating snipe. The abstract of the talk is below.

Latham’s Snipe is one of two Gallinago species confirmed in Papua New Guinea, the other being Swinhoe’s Snipe. Both species are essentially identical in the field, and extreme care and perseverance is required to differentiate them based on observations alone. As a consequence, where the species overlap, sight-based records are often unable to be verified and the distribution of each species in overlap zones is difficult to determine. This is the case for Papua New Guinea, where Swinhoe’s Snipe is considered the dominant species, and the majority of accepted records for Latham’s Snipe stem from coastal locations near the capital of Port Moresby. Between 2016 and 2020, light-level geolocators and satellite transmitters were deployed to obtain migration information for the species. Two geolocator retrievals in south-eastern Australia indicated use of Papua New Guinea on northward and / or southward migration, although the resolution of the data were insufficient to determine stopover locations. Three satellite transmitter deployments (two in Canberra, Australia, and one in Hokkaido, Japan) have provided high resolution location information, and the first conclusive evidence of staging by Latham’s Snipe in the Papua New Guinean highlands (between 1500-2500m ASL). The two Canberra-tagged snipe used modified wetlands and agricultural areas near human habitation in the highlands, while the Hokkaido-tagged snipe stopped on the Papuan coast near the border with Papua New Guinea. While these represent only a small sample size, they nevertheless demonstrate that Latham’s Snipe distribution is significantly broader than officially documented. These findings also highlight the importance of this region for migrating snipe. Targeted investigation of the population extent, habitat use and priority areas for conservation in New Guinea is urgently required.

Please contact Birgita if you would like more information

September 18, 2020

This season’s snipe surveys start on Saturday 26th September. We have the most unusual situation this year of course, due to covid and restrictions. That will affect out Melbourne counters and some of our important sites there, which is disppointing. But we are hoping that everyone else can safely get out to their nearby wetlands to find out how many snipe have come back. There have already been quite a few records from some of our regular sites, including an early Victorian arrival at Lara wetlands on August 11.

In other news, the Wild Bird Society of Japan tagged some snipe over winter in Hokkaido with 2g PTTs. Two of those birds are still transmitting, one is in central Honshu and the other is in northern Hokkaido after making what appears to be an attempt to migrate and then turning back. This might have been due to a massive typhoon in the region at the time. Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/wbsjoojishigi/ (in Japanese).

The International Shorebird Twitter Conference is on October 7 and 8. Birgita @geethansen will be giving a twitter presentation on the snipe staging records from PNG on October 7 at 640pm AEST.

We have also had both conservation successes and failures recently. The success was the decision by Gold Coast Council to retain the remains of Black Swan Lake, which had been partially infilled by the adjacent Turf Club for a carpark. Amazing that such a thing still happens in this day and age! Nevertheless, we put our evidence to council about protection of sites that support snipe and the likelihood that snipe were using the site on northward and southward migration. That evidence was considered in the decision. This is a great outcome for conservation and for the local community who want to protect their wetland values.

Unfortunately, at the same time, the QLD government and the Cairns port authority are busily dumping dread spoil and wind farm materials all over the remaining habitat at Tingara Street, Portsmith in Cairns, which snipe use regularly on migration. This site has held nationally significant numbers of snipe on a number of occasions. It is most disappointing to see the destruction of this site for something as mundane as handling dredge spoil, which could potentially be transported anywhere. Clearly we have a long way yet to go to improve snipe conservation.

July 13, 2020

June 12, 2020

Thanks to the excellent camera work by Ishida-san, Hokkaido Television Broadcasting and the Wild Bird Society of Japan have produced a short video from their visit to Canberra in January. The link to view it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84ywNOOKrfo&feature=youtu.be

There have been no further transmissions from any of our tagged snipe, so there will be no further updates on the satellite tracking until next season.

June 01, 2020

Unfortunately we have had no further transmissions from our PNG snipe 59 since May 10. The transmitter program shifted to 1 fix every 4 days on May 6, meaning that data downloads are received every 12 days. It is possible that the bird was on the move when the transmitter was trying to get a GPS fix and it has failed. However, it is also possible that something has happened to the bird and / or the tag. We will keeping checking the Argos system regularly to see if our bird has re-appeared.

On a brighter note, one of our colleagues at ANU has dug up their recent field guides to birds of PNG, and it seems that latham’s snipe are listed as vagrants with the known distribution not encompassing the regions our birds have migrated through. So our project has revealed some new and exciting results for the species in PNG.

May 04, 2020

Addendum May 13

5月13日付追加情報

Two additions to this news blog: Firstly, 59 was still in PNG as of May 10, about 15 km south-east of Koroba. It seems that the window for departing to Japan must surely close soon – will 59 stay in PNG over winter?

このニュース・ブログに2つの追加情報があります。最初の情報です。59は5月10日現在もパプアニューギニア（PNG）のKorobaの南東約15 kmの地点にいます。日本への出発の扉は近いうちに確実に閉ざされるでしょう。59は冬期間PNGに滞在するのでしょうか。（訳注：南半球の冬期間ということ）

Secondly, we are excited to be able to include a Japanese translation of the May 4 update. Our thanks go to Usui Shunji for the translation.

次に、5月4日更新記事の日本語訳を掲載できることを嬉しく思います。翻訳をしてくれた臼井俊二に感謝の意を表します。

Update May 4

The exciting news is that 59 has been in the Papua New Guinea highlands since April 26. We are still getting daily fixes which has given some really great information about where 59 is each day at midday. It seems that it is doing a final stopover near to locality of Koroba in PNG, before attempting its Pacific Ocean crossing to Japan.

心躍るニュースは、59が4月26日以降パプアニューギニア（Papua New Guinea、PNG）の高地にいるということです。毎日、59の位置情報をまだ取得しています。この位置情報で59が毎日昼頃にどこにいるかについてのいくつかの本当にすばらしい情報を得ることができます。日本への太平洋縦断を試みる前に、PNGのKorobaの近くで最後の休息をとっているようです。

The map below shows the last fix locations from Cape York and the recent fixes from PNG. For comparison, the fix locations of Nintai from 2019 are show in the inset. 59 is about 90 km west of the stopover locations used by Nintai from a year ago, and at a lower elevation (around 1500m).

下の地図は、ケープヨーク（オーストアリア）での最後の位置情報とPNGの最近の位置情報を示しています。比較のために、2019年のNintaiの位置情報を地図の中の挿入図に示します。59は、Nintaiが1年前にいた場所の西約90 kmにいて、そこは標高が低い（約1500m）がわかります。

Our fingers are now crossed hoping that 59 heads off to Japan soon and makes a successful voyage over the ocean.

59がもうすぐ日本に向かい、海を渡ることに成功することを祈っています。

There has been no further transmissions from 64.

4月15日以来、64からの信号はありません。

April 24, 2020

Since our last update, snipe 59 has made its way to Cape York and is hanging around in what appears to be a creek line / wetland area off a tributary of the Coleman River. My colleague Eric Vanderduys, who has spent loads of time working on Cape York, sent me a photo of the habitat in the region. Pretty different to Canberra and Gwydir wetlands!

Snipe 64 had made another move northward and on April 15 was south of Grafton on the mighty Clarence River. Unfortunately, there have been no further transmissions since that date. It is probably too early to make doom and gloom pronoucements, as we have had Argos data delivery issues a bit recently. So fingers crossed 64 will suddenly pop up somewhere in the coming days.

April 08, 2020

After a week of waiting anxiously, wondering what had happened to snipe 59, the Argos data finally appeared online today. Even the data for snipe 64 were a day late. It isn’t clear why there was a delay in delivering the Argos data, but the wait was worth it. Snipe 59 is now in Far North Queensland, in the tablelands inland of Mission Beach. It is not far from the Herbert River at an altitude of about 700m. Very cool. It arrived there sometime between April 3 and 6. On its way north, it stopped over near the coast at a locality called Inkerman (south of Ayr) between March 29 and April 3. There was single fix north-east of Roma in southern Queensland on March 26, and prior to that it was north of St George and east of the Balonne River for at least 9 days.

Snipe 64 is determined to stick with the NSW coast, and is making its slow and steady way up the coastline. It most recent fixes have been from the floodplains of the Macleay River, just south of South West Rocks (since March 26). It was in the Dyers Crossing area (inland of Tuncurry) for at least 10 days prior to that.

April 03, 2020

News article published today about the Latham’s Snipe project: https://federation.edu.au/news/articles/researchers-and-volunteers-join-forces-to-help-protect-the-lathams-snipe

March 25, 2020

I have been a little remiss in posting updates because I wasn’t quite sure what our two tagged snipe were up to. As of yesterday, ELF59 had moved from Gwydir wetlands, where it spent about a month, into southern Queensland. It is in a floodplain area between the Balonne and Maranoa Rivers. It has been there about a week.

Our other bird, ELF64, really seems to like the central NSW region and has not moved very far. It was still dam hopping north-west of Newcastle up until around March 6, then it moved north-east and has been near Wallamba River in the Dyers Crossing area (inland of Tuncurry) since March 11.

March 02, 2020

There hasn’t been any major changes to the whereabouts of our two snipe since the last update. 59 is still in Gwydir wetlands, spending its days and nights in different parts of the site. 64 is still dam hopping north-west of Newcastle, with no discernable pattern yet to its choice of wetland.

In other news, the Latham’s Snipe project has a few new sub-projects, in addition to the national surveys and the tracking. One is a social research / policy project exploring the on-ground changes that occurred around the time that the Japan Australia Migratory Bird Agreement was ratified. This includes gathering insights through interviews with ex-snipe hunters and government staff about what makes international conservation agreements successful or not. This research is being conducted by Federation University honours student Michelle Matthews under the supervision of Eduardo Gallo Cajiao (University of Queensland), Evan Hamman (Queensland University of Technology), Grant Palmer and Birgita (at FedUni).

The other project, which just started today, is a collaboration with Paul Sunnucks, Sasha Pavlova and Anna Polesskiy at Monash University to investigate the population genetic structure of Latham’s Snipe based on the samples we have been collecting from captured birds at Port Fairy and Jerrabomberra wetlands in the last 4 years. This will include sexing birds and determining whether the 2 “strange snipe” we caught at Jerra in 2019 are definitely Latham’s Snipe.

Finally, we have a new project commencing this year to develop a night time monitoring method for snipe using thermal imaging cameras along with more traditional techniques like spot lighting. An honours student will help with the feld-based research and be supervised by Birgita and Nick Schultz at FedUni, and Rohan Clarke at Monash Uni.

If you’re interested to know more about these projects, please get in contact with Birgita.

February 19, 2020

As of four days ago, our tagged snipe 59 was still in Gwydir wetlands and our other tagged snipe 64 was still dam hopping in the Lake Saint Clair / NW Newcastle region. Updated map below. The cool thing we found out today is that the two areas our Gwydir bird is using are quite different in habitat. The day time area is a mix of club-rush and cumbungi to about thigh height with some open patches of water, whereas the night time area has shorter and more open vegetation growing back after fire and drying. Very interesting to see similar behavioural patterns to that in urban areas in an essentially “natural” wetland.

February 10, 2020

Exciting news from our two tagged snipe! In the last two weeks they have both left the ACT and starting migrating northwards. ELF64 has stopped off in the Lake Saint Clair region north-west of Newcastle. The last fix was February 5, and the bird had moved a bit around that area in the previous 6 days. All fixes have come from small farm dams that look to be on private land.

ELF59 has made a surprise move by migrating through (or over) the Pilliga forest in northern NSW and onto Gwydir wetlands. Its last fix was on February 8 in the northern wetlands area. For those of you with good memories, this is a very similar path and stopover location our tagged bird Tsubasa took back in 2017. Hopefully, we have more luck with 59 and it continues onward from Gwydir (where we lost the signal from Tsubasa back in late February 2017).

January 28, 2020

This is just quick update to say that ELF59 and ELF 64 have been using the same day time and night time areas since the last update. ELF59 is in Jerrabomberra creek most of the time, even staying there sometimes at night. ELF64 hasn’t left the turf farm pivot since January 21. However, the fixes for both birds are now coming once every 3 days at midday and midnight, so we could be missing some daily movements. And the general lack of movement by both birds probably reflects their busy foraging in readiness to depart on northward migration.

There have been no further transmissions from ELF87.

Updated map will follow in due course.

January 20, 2020

All our birds appear to have been very active since releasing over a week ago. All three have been using the turf farm for midnight foraging, and almost always the exact same pivot! Obviously the regular watering of the turf is providing the birds with suitable foraging grounds where other choices are limited. Bird 64, which was our second bird released has been using some different daytime roost spots to usual, just north of the sewage farm. And bird 59, which has been sighted twice now by Alistair, has been in Jerrabomberra creek pool every day. 59 has even been snapped foraging during the daylight hours! So that has been great news so far.

Unfortunately, we have lost the transmission from bird 87 already. The transmission ceased completely the middle of last week, with no indications as to the cause of the problem. Given the abruptness of the changes, it seems like the tag might have failed. This is very disappointing so early in the piece, and with so few tagged birds out there. Nicki has been out over the weekend to see if she could spot 87, but with no luck.

The latest map is below. Midnight fixes are in yellow, and midday fixes are in blue. The last fixes from 87 around the paleo channels are in orange.

From January 18 onwards, the GPS program changes to once every 3 days, so that means we won’t get any more data downloads until next week.

January 13, 2020

Between January 7 and 10, the Canberra team plus their visitors from Japan including staff from the Wild Bird Society of Japan, braved the hot smoky conditions to make another attempt at snipe catching for deploying satellite transmitters. This follows an unsuccessful attempt at the start of December (2019), where a single bird was deemed large enough for a transmitter from a total catch of 3 birds over 2 days. Unfortunately, that bird had an issue during the holding and monitoring period and was released without a transmitter. So the team commenced the process again on January 7 of building the indoor wetland and undertaking 3 exhausting days of catching.

Building the indoor wetland proved a little more challenging this time as Kelly’s swamp, where we usually catch the birds, was dry! However, digging down into the dry mud revealed damp layers underneath so with a little water this was suitable to use in the holding tent.

We also assumed the dryness would mean no snipe around, but a recce done by Birgita and Lori on the Tuesday turned up a dozen birds roosting among the remnants of the reed beds. It was so dry that we were able to set up nets with sneakers and hiking boots on. What a pleasure not to have to put on the waders!

The first catch was made on Wednesday morning and three birds were caught. This was considered pretty successful, especially when we found out once we started processing that two of the birds were big enough for satellite tags. So Birgita and Heather spent the painstaking time fitting the harnesses to the 2 birds, then they were placed in the tent and monitored until Thursday morning. We took turns to monitor over that 24 hours, with poor, tired Lori doing the graveyard shift between 11pm and 4am. The birds seemed to settle down reasonably well and both were observed drinking and preening.

On Wednesday night, while Mieko monitored the birds, the team headed out to the paleo channels on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to set up nets in a new location where about 10 snipe had been seen. However, an attempt to walk into the mud by Birgita clearly demonstrated that no catching was going to happen there – the mud was like quicksand. So after much discussion, we decided to risk another attempt in the same location as the previous night in Kellys swamp. Birgita was adament it wouldn’t work and was proven completely wrong when another successful catch was made on thursday morning, in exactly the same spot as Wednesday morning! Four birds this time and two were big enough for transmitters! Everyone was very excited despite being quite exhausted. Heather and Birgita again fitted transmitters to the 2 new birds. They also retrieved the 2 birds from the day before, checked and re-fitted harnesses, and let them go.

The holding period and 24 hour monitoring demonstrated its value when one of the snipe had problems with its harness. Birgita retrieved the bird and found it had caught its bill in its harness. The harness was removed and the bird immediately released. This matches what Dutch researchers in the Global Flyway Network have found in their research on captive red knots – birds that are likely to have trouble with their harnesses will do so in the first 24 hours.

Our last bird was checked, harness re-fitted and released on friday morning. The first data transmissions started coming through from Saturday onwards. The latest track data is in the image below.

Birgita and Lori would like to thank all the volunteers that dedicated time and energy to catching and monitoring the snipe. It was a fantastic and ultimately successful collective effort. And many thanks to Nakamura-san, Usui-san and the whole Japanese team for helping with catching and being great fun.

December 19, 2019

Spring has proven to be an extraordinary season for snipe this year. With the extreme weather conditions in NSW and QLD caused by the drought, the reports of drying wetlands were already streamining in early in the season. With the hot weather and then the widespread fires, snipe numbers dropped off at many sites in the NSW, ACT and QLD, and numbers increased enormously in south, particularly along the Victorian and South Australian coastline. In fact, we had the highest count on the national surveys record at quite a few sites in September with Fox Lake at Robe bringing in another whopping count of 147 snipe. Not to be outdone, the numbers increased between September and November, such that we had the highest total count ever during the November with a total of 1636 snipe (see graph below). Sites like Phillip Island and Peterborough in Victoria, and Alstonville in northern NSW broke their own records. Many other sites also had high counts. These results suggest that the drought and fire conditions have pushed the snipe further south earlier than normal, and caused greater congregations than usual. Perhaps snipe are taking advantage of refuge sites when others have become unreliable.

We expect that numbers may drop off into January as the hot and dry conditions push birds into wetter areas, which we may or may not count. For example, the wetlands at Jerrabomberra where we usually catch snipe were already very low by the end of November and as of mid-December, have dried out. It doesn’t seem likely that there will be significant rains between now and mid-january to offset this drying.

Once again, these surveys would not be possible without the assistance of a large number of people and groups from across the eastern states and territories. We have been fortunate this time around to add a host of new sites in places in south-east Queensland, Newcastle, western Victoria, and a handful here and there in eastern Victoria and Tasmania (many on private land). Interestingly, while the count went up in September and November, the number of sites counted stablised. This is due to a number of people not being available for surveys. It is always tricky trying to manage our various volunteer commitments, so thanks once again to all snipe surveyors.

A merry snipe christmas to you all!

September 20, 2019

An important site for Snipe in Cairns in Tingara Street, Portsmith, has been virtually destroyed by the Port Authority, who has dumped dredge spoil on the roost site there. This site has held nationally important numbers of snipe on at least once occasion (during the 2019 northward migration season). But this hasn’t helped protect the site from Queensland Government-approved destruction.

On the morning of September 17, inspection of this snipe count revealed that the salt marsh was filled in, and in the big paddock where snipe regularly roost, nothing was left but a small plot of grass. The plot was otherwise filled with dredge spoil – a greater area than was originally approved. The small plot that remains has been severely mown, and is being used as a roadway, making the remnants of this site completely unsuitable for snipe.

This is a sign of the times, when governments seemingly place no priority on protecting the habitat for species that are supposed to be protected. It is particularly disastrous timing for snipe, who are only just arriving back in Australia after their long and arduous migration from Japan.

We are very disappointed that this has been allowed to occur.

August 01, 2019

The Latham’s Snipe season is almost upon us! Snipe should already be arriving back in Australia, so keep an eye open for our returning birds!

This season’s count dates are September 21, November 16 and January 18. Please keep those dates free.

Contact Birgita if you need details about the surveys or have any questions.

May 23, 2019

We were hugely excited when Nintai spent at least a week in Papua New Guinea during the middle of April. And then we were exceedingly disappointed that the transmissions from her tag ceased after PNG. She had made a monumental effort in flying to central Queensland, where she obviously spent additional time fattening up, and then flew direct across the ocean to PNG where she made her first stop in the southern lowlands (around 200m in altitude). Her last fixes were from >2500m in the central highlands (Enga Province).

Her use of PNG as a stopover site is a fantastic discovery and for the first time ever, we have some detailed information on where PNG snipe stopover sites might be, and what they might look like. Her last fixes were from a large swampy area close to a small village, around 10km NE of Laiagam.

While it is very sad that we have lost contact with Nintai, we plan to put all the new knowledge from her movements to good use next season when we deploy our remaining PinPoint Argos tags.

Thanks again to everyone who has supported this part of the tracking and I hope to see you all again next season.

March 15, 2019

We are very excited and thrilled to report that Nintai has started her migration and as of yesterday (March 14), was in the sugar cane growing district of Mackay, central Queensland.

Hopefully she stages for a while in Queensland and then heads safely on her way further north. It is possible she may stop next in Papua New Guinea before flying further north.

The resolution of the GPS data has been very good, and we can be fairly confident to within about 50m where she is at the time of the fix. The most recent Sentinel images (available to view in National Map) show the sugar cane field, where her latest fix came from, cropped and presumably, bare earth. This makes sense, as we would expect both sugar cane and corn (dominant tall crops for the Mackay district) to be too tall for either foraging or roosting.

Thanks again everyone who has helped get us this far, even if the help recently has been moral support!

March 12, 2019

As of March 5, Nintai was still in Canberra using the area around Jerrabomberra wetlands. Her fixes are now coming only at midnight and all the recent fixes have originated from the turf farm to the north of Fyshwick sewage treatment plant.

Unfortunately we haven’t had any daytime sightings of her, so we don’t know if she is returning to Jerrabomberra wetlands during the day to roost, or remaining in the turf farm.

The GPS tags need to be programmed in advance, and so Nintai’s tag was originally programmed based on T0’s and P3’s geolocator data. The timing of the foxes was set to approximately match northward migration and staging of T0 and P3. Because Nintai hasn’t left yet, it means that the fixes have dropped back to 1 every 3 days at midnight. So we are hoping that when she finally decides to leave the ACT, the GPS data will still pick up her stopover sites.

For some great photos taken of (flagged and unflagged) snipe at Jerrabomberra wetlands (as well as other ACT sites) see the Canberra Nature Map site

February 21, 2019

February has proved to be an exciting but challenging month, with the team in Canberra setting out to deploy 6 PinPoint Argos 75 satellite transmitters on snipe at Jerrabomberra wetlands. We learned much from our trial two years ago with the PTTs, so quite a lot of changes were made to our protocols to improve the deployment process. A big part of this was  holding snipe for a period time after the transmitter harness was fitted, to allow the bird to settle into its harness and us to monitor the bird to check it is OK.

With this in mind, we set about building the best ever indoor wetland! It took nearly two days and about a dozen people to set up. With the help of some of the parks rangers, the nearby Environmental Watering construction contractors (and their earth moving equipment), a group of people trudged into the wetland to fetch the enclosure “furnishing”.

We needed a tent, a tarp floor, dirt, wetland mud and plants, trays for wetland mud, water trays, plenty of live food like mealworms and small crickets, a way to recapture a bird and a even a security camera with night vision! Some poor souls even picked through the compost for fresh maggots!

On thursday 7th february, a large team of volunteers both experienced and new, set out nets in Kelly’s swamp north, in readiness for catching friday morning. At first light on Friday, the team caught 6 snipe, of which only one ended up being big enough to fit a transmitter. Also included in that catch was 2 recaptures – one juvenile from earlier in the season (engraved leg flag 78) and one from the previous year (ELF 90), which has been seen at Jerra on and off throughout the whole season.

Birgita, with help from Inka Veltheim, painstakingly fitted the harness. Once that was done, the snipe was weighed and placed in “Snipe Hilton”. After that, it was nearly 24 hours of walking on tiptoes, whispering, shooing away an unexpected arrival of two busloads of people wanting to tour the wetlands, eating crappy food and chocolate, and taking turns to monitor the camera and check how the bird was going.

The team was heartened to observe our snipe drinking, resting, picking at the mud like she was foraging and occasionally preening without any obvious signs of trouble from her harness.

After dark on friday, while 2 people were left monitoring our snipe, the rest of the team head back out into the wetland, this time to set nets at the south end of Kelly’s swamp. Unfortunately, during that afternoon Canberra had torrential rainfall and by the evening, there was water everywhere. Which meant the snipe that left overnight to forage elsewhere did not return. Only a single snipe was caught saturday morning in an area that is usually very successful for catching. And our single bird was not big enough for a transmitter. It was very disappointing, especially as we had out biggest team of helpers that morning!

We decided to check and adjust the harness on our tagged bird before processing the newbie. We let her go after re-weighing her and off she flew strongly, straight into the wetland right out the front of the wetland centre! It was fantastic to see her fly off, looking so well.

The team decided to name her Patience (Nintai 忍耐 in Japanese – we apologise to our Japanese colleagues if we have used the wrong Kanji here!). This is because she was the most patient bird ever the whole time the transmitter was fitted! But, also the patience of us as researchers and volunteers deserved some recognition.

During the first week, Nintai’s transmitter was programmed to take fixes twice a day, once at midnight and once at midday. During the week, she has spent most of her time at the nearby turf farm, although by the weekend, she had returned to Jerra wetlands.

Heaps of people helped with this catch and were amazing. Birgita would like to thank all the volunteers who were part of this fantastic team: Lori Gould & Kelly Bateup, Nicki & Emily Taws, Michael Maconachie, John Lawson, Inka Veltheim, Grant Battersby, Mark Jenkins, Heather Mcginness, The Callaway family, Chris Davey, Kristy Gould, Sophie and Lily Mills, Tristan Derwick, Adam & Tom Leavesley, Millie and John Sutherland Saines, Pete Morris, Shoshana Rapley, Jas & Ash Allnutt, and Jon Coleman. And a special thanks to Kristy, John, Kumiko and the rangers who had to dig up my pedantically-identified patches of wetland mud from the swamp!

November 30, 2018

I am thrilled to be able to report that after months of gruelling and often unsatisfying field work, we have finally retrieved another geolocator snipe with a full migration light record. This is the second only for the project and the first recapture for Canberra. The bird was originally tagged at Jerrabomberra wetlands on December 10, 2017. It was recaptured in the same area on November 18, and was in good condition. It was 1 of only 3 birds caught on the day, the other 2 were juveniles!

For those who remember T0’s track from 2016, they will immediately notice a difference. The analyses of these data were a bit tricky, and further refinement may shift some of the stopover locations. So it is possible you’ll see a slightly different map at some stage in the future. However, we can say for sure that P3 has staged somewhere in south-east Queensland on its northward migration, it has spent the breeding season in either the very north of Hokkaido or southern Sakhalin (around late April to early August), and then returned to Australia via central Honshu and possibly even Papua New Guinea.

We have now had a total of 4 confirmed recaptures / resightings of last year’s birds at Jerrabomberra wetlands this season. That corresponds to around a 18% return rate in the year following first capture. That’s pretty good numbers for snipe! These include a second geolocator bird ELF 94, which has so far eluded recapture, plus ELFs 90 and 92.

I would like to thank the volunteers in Canberra who have laboured alongside me in the swamps in Canberra, trying to catch snipe through severely sleep-deprived nights. And thanks to my broader Latham’s Snipe Project team, both my colleague Lori Gould in Canberra, and my original Port Fairy team.

September 2018 count results

In other news, not quite as sensational but still surprisingly good, was the results from the September 15 count. Despite the appalling weather conditions across south-east Australia that day, plus the horrendous drought conditions inland which may have affected southward migrating birds, we still had a total count of 562 across more than 110 sites. Given the weather, that compares well to last September’s count of 584 snipe across ~80 sites.

The results from the November count are still being entered, but early signs suggest the numbers might almost double. A large count of around 150 snipe in Robe has made a big contribution to the likely large numbers for that month.

Thanks once again to all the counters, those that diligently get out each survey and count their site, and those new comers this year who have added new sites and information.

October 19, 2018

The count data from the September 15 surveys is still dribbling in, but the numbers received so far show less birds this year compared to previous years. It is still probably too early to say if the drought conditions are affecting snipe, given we are waiting on a few more count results, and conditions on the count day were terrible (really windy and wet in SE Aus). But could this also be a sign of things to come this season? The Bureau of Meteorology has declared this year to be one of the driest on record http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/. And several unusual snipe observations and events have occurred , that hint at potential impacts on migrating birds due to the dry conditions (2 instances of birds that have suffered on migration, one in QLD and one in Gippsland; and 2 unusual behavioural observations).

If you see snipe doing something unusual let us know!

The November 10 count will be really important to see if the low counts are just due to bad weather or birds arriving late, or if there are drought effects on migrants influencing their choice of non-breeding terminus location.

July 04, 2018

Birgita is conducting a roving series of talks on the Latham’s Snipe project. These talks are open to anyone who has an interest, but they will also be providing updates on the key findings and outcomes from the project for volunteers who have been involved.

The last talks for 2019 will be:

• August 13 – BirdLife Ballarat
• October 12 – Yatmerone Wildlife Reserve, Penshurst

This page will be updated from time-to-time. So if you’re interested in attending talks but can’t make the next one, keep a watch on this page for the next upcoming talks.

Please contact Birgita (b.hansen@federation.edu.au) if you want more information.

NSW talks, April 6-10 2019

Birgita did a whirlwind tour of eastern NSW in early April, and gave three talks in the key regions where counters have been surveying snipe. She starting with the BirdLife Southern Highlands BigNet forum in Moss Vale on Saturday 6th April, where she was joined by Heather Mcginness and Laura Rayner who were also giving talks – Heather on the waterbird tracking and Laura on the Superb Parrot program in the ACT.

Birgita then drove to Byron Bay where she gave a talk at the Byron Wetlands Centre on Monday 8th April and did a tour of snipe sites around Byron Bay and Ballina with Jan Olley and Anne Jones.

Birgita returned south to Newcastle for her last talk to the Hunter Bird Observers Club on Wednesday 8th. This also included a tour of the key snipe sites in the area with Ann Lindsay. She also joined in on a drone trial, which was to test whether the drone disturbed the waders and whether they could be accurately counted from drone images. It was really interesting.

It was absolutely marvelous to meet some of the counters and connect with people surveying in the region. So many insights from visiting the areas where snipe and people live!

And all the regions face their various conservation challenges. In the Southern Highlands, a lack of recognition from Wingecarribee Shire Council of the importance of wetlands for migratory shorebirds has meant that the main snipe site at Bowral Botanic Gardens is gradually deteriorating over time. This is already reflected in decreasing numbers of snipe using the site. In Byron Bay, there is a burgeoning tourist population that vastly outnumbers the resident population by orders of magnitude, placing significant pressures on the council to increase land development. In Newcastle, the incredibly expansive and amazing Hexham swamp is a facing a mixed array of threats – microlight aircraft disturbance, poor grazing management, encroachment of mangroves and increasing development pressure at it the swamp edges. Pambalong swamp, which was once the most important site for Latham’s Snipe in NSW, has become largely unsuitable over time due to lack of appropriate habitat management. The sobering message from this tour was that conservation of habitat for snipe appears to be failing more often that it is succeeding.

Birgita would like to thank Peter and Penny Madvig, and Ann Lindsay, for so generously accommodating her during her travels. She would also like to thank Peter, Ann, Jan Olley and Anne Jones for devoting their time to take her around to see all the sites.

Gippsland talk, September 19 2019

This talk was well attended by BirdLife Bairnsdale members, and we had some great discussion and interactions during the talk. Birgita also got the chance to visit the wetland behind the Bairnsdale Aquatic and Recreation Centre, where good numbers of snipe are regularly seen during counts (range in the last two seasons 27-81). Several snipe were seen just wandering around in the open while piles of noisy school children passed, apparently oblivious to the wetland wonders so near them!

Birgita would like to thank Jack Winterbottom, and John and Pam Hutchison for organising the talk and venue. And she would like to thank Jenni and Jim Reside for hosting her.

South-west talks, July 7 & 8

Both the Mt Gambier and Port Fairy talks were well attended, despite crappy weather over the weekend which might have otherwise kept people at home! We had 25 people attend the Mt Gambier session, which was held in a really nice seminar space at the Public library – we even had catering. In addition to providing a project update, Birgita outlined the current survey coverage for south-east SA, identifying where there were survey gaps. She also visited Lake McIntyre with Rosey Pounsett and Noel Boyle.

The following day at the community centre in Port Fairy there were 26 people and we had a fabulous feast of sushi thanks to the South Beach Wetlands and Landcare Group. Birgita gave a similar overview on the project, and there were some great questions about the tracking and data specific to Port Fairy.

A short article was written about the event: News article in The Standard 

Birgita would like to thank Bryan and Toni for organising the talk and catering in Mt Gambier, and Jodie, Don and Sherril for organising the Snipe, Sushi and Swamps event. And many thanks to all the attendees who took time out of their weekends to attend.

Canberra Ornithologists Group, Sept 12

We had a good crowd of people turn to listen to Birgita give an update on the project, including news about the survey results from Hokkaido, just recently compiled by the Wild Bird Society of Japan, which demonstrated that over 50% of breeding sites have deteriorated in condition. Lori Gould also talked about the outcomes of the ACT snipe monitoring.

June 28, 2018

The Latham’s Snipe project team has returned from Japan after a fabulous trip to Hokkaido with the Canberra Young Rangers. Between May 18 and 23, Birgita, Lori, Jodie and Richard, accompanied by Ted, Carol and the Young Rangers Connor, Kelly, Olivia, Ryu and Sophie, joined the Wild Bird Society of Japan team at Lake Utonai Nature Center to exchange information and stories about Latham’s Snipe.

The trip began with a visit to Tomakomai City Council to meet with the Mayor Hirofumi Iwakura. Nakamura-san gave an overview about Latham’s Snipe research and monitoring in Japan and Birgita followed with complementary information from Australia. The mayor asked some very insightful questions about the birds and their conservation. This visit was a very great honour for the team and even featured in the local news!

After that we had a weekend of meeting and greeting children and their parents from the local community, learning about snipe research and monitoring in Hokkaido, and Then participating in snipe surveys around Tomakomai. On a freezing cold sunday morning at 5am, with snow still visible on the hills in the distance, the Australian team joined around 20 Japanese children and parents, and Hokkaido Television Broadcasting, lead by WBSJ members Tatsuya Ura, Takemae Asako, Hironobu Tajiri, Satoshi Nakamura, and Usui Shunji to count displaying snipe at survey grids (meshes) located around the area.

The following week, the team then visited 2 schools in the Tomakomai area, the first being Uenae Elementary School and the second being Utonai Elementary School. The team was really pleased to meet up again with some of the school students they met in 2016 at Uenae. Participants exchanged greetings in each other’s languages, learned about the current status of the global snipe population and then joined in on the snipe games and art.

A much bigger group of students awaited the team at Utonai, but all were fantastic and hugely attentive, remembering facts and figures about snipe provide during introductory talks by Satoshi and Birgita. The team also got a tour of the school and its fantastic facilities.

We are exceptionally grateful to staff at both schools for hosting our visit and giving us the opportunity to interact with school children. We are also immensely grateful to Nakamura-san for organising our visits and especially, arranging the honour of a visit with the Tomakomai Mayor.

After the school visits, some of the team members joined the WBSJ to undertake snipe surveys in other parts of Hokkaido. This was a really great opportunity not only to see snipe in their breeding habitats and observe their amazing display flights, but also to see the wonders of Hokkaido’s landscapes in spring when the cherry blossums were still flowering and the snow still lying on the hills.

And here’s a short video of a snipe display flight taken on Bigita’s phone – turn the volume up for this one! If anyone has a better video they’d like to contribute, we’d be very happy to replace Birgita’s video with it.

And of course tasting the local cuisine is always high on the list of visiting priorities!

Dinner on the last night with the WBSJ was at an Izakaya restaurant in Tomakomai where we were treated to delicious Japanese food – a classic Nabe (hot pot) pictured right.

The Latham’s Snipe project would like to thank all the staff at the Wild Bird Society of Japan for being such fabulous hosts and generously giving up so much of their time. We would particularly like to thank the nature center staff Satoshi, Rika, Rumi and Hiro for having us stay. And many thanks also to our delightful and entertaining translator Usui Shunji.

We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Australia Japan Foundation that allowed us to make this trip.

May 16, 2018

This May, the team is heading back to Hokkaido this time in the company of a small group of able youngsters from the Young Rangers program in Canberra. Birgita, Lori, Jodie and Rich will be accompanied by Sophie, Connor, Olivia, Kelly and Ryu. We have a fantastic program planned, thanks to Satoshi Nakamura at the Lake Utonai Nature Centre, Tomakomai. The team will be visiting some of the schools in Tomakomai including Uenae Elementary school, which we also visited in 2016. We are also honoured to have a visit scheduled with the Mayor of Tomakomai.

Some of the team members will stay on after the school visits to help Tatsuya Ura and his team at the Wild Bird Society of Japan with a census of breeding sites across a wide range of sites.

Find out more about Lake Utonai sanctuary and the Wild Bird Society of Japan.

February 19, 2018

The numbers are in, and what a great season it has been! The number of sites counted ranged from 88 during the September count to 100 in January! A sensational effort! And that brought with it totals of 585, 1459 and 914 snipe. The count in January was remarkable in some ways as, even though we didn’t have the massive count of 550 birds in Robe, we still had a big total count across all the sites. This was driven by larger than usual numbers in East Gippsland, north-west Tasmania, and northern NSW, as well as high numbers again in places like Geelong-Bellarine and Peterborough. And as with previous January counts, the numbers at many sites were higher than during spring. It was also interesting to see quite a few snipe in the north, as well as in the south at this time.

Once again, we’d like to thank our volunteers who have made such a great effort over the season. We are immensely grateful for the contribution from around the eastern states and we really hope that everyone can be available again next season.

The count dates for 2018-2019 are:

• September 15
• November 10
• January 12

January 22, 2018

With the last catch in Port Fairy the weekend of January 13, 2018, the Latham’s Snipe Project officially wound up its geolocator and radio tracking program in Victoria.

The project completed its third season of catching with various successes and disappointments. The well-known success of course was the recapture of T0 in spring 2016. Add to this success was the two between-year recaptures of snipe not fitted with geolocators, and a further 12 same-season recaptures (5 in 2016-2017 and 7 in 2017-2018). Other successes included the deployment of two years worth of radio transmitters and a heap of new information about night time foraging and day time roosting locations. And the sheer number of snipe captured, at nearly 130 birds, well exceeded the team’s expectations! As a result, we have learn so much about the species – how to catch them, more about their biometrics including ageing birds, how they behave, where they like to hang out, and most importantly, what migration routes they are using or are likely to use (given the limited migration information we could obtain).

The disappointments were of course the failure to obtain another geolcoator with a full migration track. This has been hard for the project team, who has worked tirelessly trying to recapture previous years’ birds. The large number of birds caught during the 2017-2018 season attests to the efforts the team has put in, but luck just wasn’t on our side this time. And movement of birds through the site was also greater this season, meaning that proportionally fewer radio-tracker birds remained around Port Fairy. But we consider that the knowledge and insights gained far outweigh these disappointments, and so look forward to new insights from the project.

The next stage of the project includes the compiling, analysing and writing up of the data. Andrew is on the case for the radio tracking analyses, as he nears the end of his field season and begins the next stage of his honours research. The team has another visit to Japan planned for May 2018. And the project is also continuing in Canberra, where a similar but smaller geolocator and radio tracking program is underway. The sighting of one of last year’s birds at Jerrabomberra during spring 2017 gives us hope that we may retrieve at least one geolocator in Canberra during the 2018-2019 catching season.

Finally, our other great success has been the SE Australian counts, which is a misnomer really as counts now cover all the eastern states. These have steadily built momentum over the last 2 years and now have input from a large number of people across a wide variety of sites and regions. During the November 2017 count, we had the highest snipe count on record of 550 birds at Robe. This was mind-blowing for the team and the counters, given that our maximum counts have never exceeded 200 during the surveys. On September 23, the count total was 585 birds across 84 sites, and on November 25 we had a whopping 1459 snipe across 90 sites. Absolutely fabulous!

The results of the January 20 count are slowly filtering in, and we hope to have more exciting snipe news to report soon.

Lastly, we farewell Rich Chamberlain from the field work teams. He has made an enormous contribution to the Latham’s Snipe project, and has been critical to the successes and experiences we have enjoyed. He will be greatly missed by the team.

Many thanks once again to all our volunteers, both our dedicated counters and our tireless catch team. What a massive difference you have all made!

December 22, 2017

Hi everyone,

As the end of the year fast approaches, we’re reflecting on another successful year on the snipe project.

We’ve caught record numbers of snipe at Port Fairy and Canberra (even though we didn’t get any more geolocators), had a great involvement in the two south-eastern snipe counts so far this year (stay tuned for results) and the radio-tracking at Port Fairy is delivering some fascinating results.

2018 is also looking busy with a trip to Japan in May to assist in population surveys in Hokkaido and outreach with Japanese schools, plus a lot data analysis.

Thanks for all your efforts and interest this year, and stay tuned! We leave you this year with a great little animation of snipe from a remote camera trap at St Helens from the Basalt to Bay Landcare Network:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL5xUezs30Q&feature=youtu.be.

Image (c) Richard Chamberlain

November 20, 2017

It has been a hectic time for the Latham’s Snipe project team, so much so that we have been very slack in providing updates! So here they are all bundled into one.

Firstly, the bittersweet news from recent catching. We have experienced phenomenal catching success, with 2 catches of 13 birds and our record-breaking catch last weekend of 14! These numbers way surpass anything from last year and we think are an indication of both our increased experience with this species, and more birds being present in Port Fairy than during the previous years of monitoring. But in all this success, we have only managed to retrieve a single geolocator from bird U8. U8 was first captured on September 11 2016 at Powling Street wetlands and was recaptured on Monday 6th November in the wetland itself. However, the logger battery had died so we sent it to Migrate Technology in England to try and retrieve the data. Alas! The logger battery died in early February, before the bird migrated. What a blow to the team.

We have also made 2 other between-year recaptures, but neither bird was fitted with a geolocator last year. So we have reached the end of 2017 after 3 months of intensive catching efforts, to not obtain another migration track. We are sorely disappointed, but will make one last attempt in January 2018.

On the plus side we have deployed 26 radio transmitters which our honours student Andrew is tracking as part of his research project. So far around a third of those birds have stayed in the area, providing an interesting comparison to the radio tracking results from last year.

Onto counting, and this year has proved far more successful in terms of count effort, site coverage and relative numbers of snipe observed. We are proud to say that well over 80 sites were counted on September 23, contributed by a large number of fabulous volunteers from across all the eastern states and territories. That produced a count of 584 birds, which compares favourably to last January when 639 birds were counted from a similar number of sites, but at a time of the year when there are typically more birds around at core sites. In contrast, a lot of the other sites which usually hold small numbers of snipe had few or no birds at all. The conditions this year have been quite unusual, with SW Victoria, SE South Australia and SW Tasmania all being quite wet, and everywhere being quite dry, particularly NSW and SE Queensland. We wonder if birds have overflown and overlooked smaller sites when passing through the drier lands to return to their regular and reliable sites.

We look forward to the result of this weekend’s count November 25, to find out if this pattern still holds. Please do join the counts if you can. Contact Birgita or Richard for more information.

August 30, 2017

Congratulations to Jodie for recently receiving an Environmental Achievers Individual Award from the Glenelg-Hopkins CMA. Jodie has been involved in monitoring, and more recently trying to protect, the Powling Street wetlands for the last 20 years, and has been a driving force of the snipe project since its inception.

Later this year Jodie will head to government house for the state awards. Congratulations and good luck from the snipe team!

This from the Glenelg-Hopkins CMA ‘As an educator, biodiversity officer and writer, Jodie has been a member of the South Beach Wetlands and Landcare Group in Port Fairy since the 1980’s. Jodie’s commitment to conservation and the community education around Port Fairy has provided an outstanding contribution to the protecting and enhancement of the area’s environment’.

August 13, 2017

Hi everyone,

After what we hope has been a good breeding season, Latham’s snipe are arriving back in Australia! At the same time, we’ve also had our first paper published – coincidentally on the arrival times of Latham’s snipe!

(more…)

June 12, 2017

By Richard Chamberlain and Jodie Honan

Jodie and Richard have just returned from a second trip to Japan to participate in a survey of Latham’s Snipe around the Yufutsu plain in Tomakomai. This is the same location that the team joined Japanese researchers from the Wild Bird Society of Japan (WBSJ) last year as part of their catching program and fitting of satellite transmitters at Lake Benten in July. From the visit it is apparent that the area not only constitutes an important staging area for the species but is also a breeding site for a number of individuals. Unfortunately, results from the survey show that the number of individuals present in the area has declined by about 28% when compared to the same survey in 2001.

(more…)

April 19, 2017

It is with some sadness that we report that we have lost transmission from Nozomi. Her transmitter had been providing fixes from Jerrabomberra wetlands and surrounds since the early days after catching. All fixes obtained during March and into April were originating from the same general area, but were becoming increasingly more sporadic. The last fix was April 6, so we have to conclude that the transmitter has fallen off the bird or the bird has been lost.

The upcoming 2017-2018 snipe season will focus on some of the other tracking techniques we have deployed successfully in Port Fairy, including radio tracking. We hope to expand our radio tracking program to Canberra, to learn more about wetland use in key areas within the ACT. In the meantime, we will be following closely advances in bird satellite tracking technology and improvements to device design and size.

In other migration news, we have again been receiving reports of snipe congregating at wetlands in both south-east and Far North QLD, including large numbers being observed at a Cairns site over the last fortnight. It is exciting to see the evidence again this year of migration through eastern Australia and hear about stopover sites.

If you suspect you have a snipe stopover site or are observing larger than usual numbers in your area, please let us know!

March 20, 2017

Hokkaido Television Broadcasting have produced a short YouTube documentary on their visit to Canberra in January. View the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezIf5wGmimA.

The Latham’s Snipe team would like to thank Nobu Yamagami and his hard-working cameraman for their diligence and attention to detail during filming in Australia. They were really great to work with.

And we would also like to thank Tatsuya Ura for joining the team and being an critical conduit between the Australian and Japanese snipe researchers,a s well as making a fantastic contribution to the project.

You can also read more about the Japanese Team’s visit to East Gippsland, where they met with RMIT researcher Peter Fisher and locals about the importance of Gippsland wetlands and lakes as refugia for migrating birds.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/japanese-film-crew-lathams-snipe-documentary-maffra/8352034

March 13, 2017

Nozomi’s transmitter is still sending regular signals from around Jerrabomberra wetlands. Many other snipe have now left the wetland on migration, so we would expect her to leave any day now.

We did not receive any signals from Tsubasa’s transmitter for about 2 weeks. And then around the middle of last week, it mysteriously “switched on” again. The signals were still originating from Gwydir wetlands, and the few transmissions received since them are from the same location. This suggests that the transmitter is no longer attached to the bird. We will continue to monitor it over the coming weeks, and if the opportunity arises, make an attempt to visit the site.

February 27, 2017

As of February 28, Nozomi has still been hanging around the Jerrabomerra wetlands complex, but moving around regularly, as evidenced by satellite fixes of varying accuracy. Other snipe have been sighted from the bird hides foraging in the wetland, so the conditions are obviously still good to support the birds’ continual fattening before departure. Presumably Nozomi and the other snipe are capitalising on this unusually wet summer season and the presence of water and food still in the wetland, so late in the season.

Unfortunately, we have had no further satellite transmissions from Tsubasa since early last week. We don’t know if this means Tsubasa had started its migration and lost transmission during flight, or transmissions were lost whilst still in Gwydir wetlands.

We now have fingers crossed that Nozomi lives up to her name and safely undertakes her northward migration.

February 21, 2017

After a challenging start we are thrilled to learn that P9 Tsubasa has begun its journey. Tsubasa left Canberra on 14^th February (clearly no valentines worth hanging around for in Canberra!), probably sometime during the early hours of the morning prior to dawn. The next satellite fixes late afternoon on Feb 15 showed that Tsubasa had stopped somewhere in central NSW west of Yeoval and east of Goobang National Park. There’s not much in that region except scattered farm dams and small, degraded watercourses, so Tsubasa was on its way again and was picked up by the satellites in Gwydir wetlands (northern NSW) on the February 17.

Meanwhile, Nozomi (R0) is still hanging around Jerrabomberra wetlands but her satellite fixes are becomingly increasingly unreliable so we hope that means she is readying herself for departure. Unfortunately some issues with P8 meant that we had to recapture her and remove her harness, so now we are relying on Nozomi and Tsubasa to fly the flag for Canberra snipe. Let’s wish them good luck!

See the latest new bulletin in The Chronicle (Queanbeyan Age) “Bush Capital with Brett McNamara” or view a copy.

February 02, 2017

Over Australia Day weekend, Birgita and Rich braved the hot weather of Canberra to again visit Jerrabomberra Wetlands for another attempt to catch birds big enough for satellite transmitters (platform terminal transmitter or PTTs). Birgita and Rich, alongside Lori and Michael from the wetlands centre were joined by a large team of keen volunteers, containing a mix of young rangers, experienced birdos and folk affiliated with Jerra and the Trust. The team was graced with the presence of Tatsuya Ura from the Wild Bird Society of Japan, plus two members of Hokkaido Television Broadcasting (HTB) who were filming the whole weekend, capturing the story of latham’s snipe in Australia. We were also fortunate to have Liza Watts (Australian Japan Foundation program manager) present for the saturday morning processing.

The catching started with net setting friday night and a catch of 2 birds saturday morning in the wetland below the office. Neither were quite large enough for a PTT. As with the previous visit, we discovered that birds were not all leaving the wetland after dark, like they do in Port Fairy. So we decided to change our strategy the following night, and catch the way they do at Benten lake in Hokkaido, by opening nets prior to sunset and checking throughout the night until dawn. This method was rewarded with 4 birds, 3 large enough for PTTs. These were fitted by blearly eyed Birgita and Rich at silly hours of the morning. The birds were released after a brief period holding them to check the harness fit. All flew away strongly, clearly anxious to escape the humans and captivity!

The team unanimously elected to call the first bird (R0) ‘Nozomi’, which means hope in Japanese. The other 2 birds, P8 and P9 are yet to be named, although the popular vote is leaning toward ‘Tsubasa’ (wings) for P9.

It was an exhausting but successful weekend, thanks to the hard work of everyone who participated. We’d like to Lori for everything she did to help organise the weekend, to Alana Simpson who so ably managed and interpreted for HTB, and to the Woodlands and Wetlands Trust and the Australia Japan Foundation for helping fund this trip.

January 20, 2017

Hi everyone,

While many of the blog posts focus on the scientific work of the project, our outreach and community engagement continues (and is at least as important as the science).

We’ve been priviledged to have acclaimed Warrnambool artist Fiona Clarke working with children at Port Fairy Consolidated Primary School to develop murals about Latham’s snipe and its journey between Australia and Japan. These murals will be located around Port Fairy, and add to the community awareness of the importance of the area of Latham’s snipe.

More information can be found here (link to the Standard article, and header image taken from the article)

December 05, 2016

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).

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.

Hopefully this will be reflected in another 2015 geolocator retrieval before the snipe return to Japan in autumn 2017.

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.

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…)

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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…)

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.

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December 07, 2015

It’s been a busy time here recently for the Latham’s snipe project team.

Catch attempts on November 20-22 resulted in another five birds being caught, and released with leg-flags and geolocators. This makes 13 birds out there collecting valuable data for us. The next catches are planned for early January, while a snipe count is also scheduled for later in January. Please let Birgita know if you would like to participate in either event.

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November 13, 2015

This Saturday (14/11/2015), teams of volunteers will be out and about their local wetlands in parts of Victoria, Tasmania, ACT, NSW and South Australia to look for snipe. Whilst we haven’t got all potential snipe wetlands covered, we will still get information from a larger area than on any previous count.

As it’s such a dry year, there are far fewer snipe in the wetlands and we are keen to work out where they might be.

Wetlands drying in south-west Victoria – what will this mean for snipe numbers in the 2015-2016 non-breeding season? (Photo: B. Hansen)

So if you have a local wetland or swamp with snipe and you’ve got some free time on Saturday, please have a walk through and see how many you can count there.

You can contact Birgita for more information b.hansen@federation.edu.au

November 13, 2015

We are excited to announce that the South Beach Wetlands and Landcare Group have been successful in getting funding through the Glenelg Hopkins CMA for wetlands restoration work around Port Fairy to enhance snipe habitat and raise awareness about the importance of Port Fairy’s wetlands & swamps. The grant includes funding to purchase radio transponders for tracking local movements of snipe around Port Fairy. We hope to get a better understanding of day-to-day movements by birds and which wetlands they use at night.

This project will be a great opportunity for school children and community members to get involved and help find snipe with radio tags. We will aim to start tracking in the new year.

Congratulations to Jodie and the landcare team on their grant success!

November 07, 2015

After a failed attempt at the Education Land near Powling Street wetlands on October 15, we tried again this morning (Saturday 7th) back at the wetland. Keen to capitalise on the recent rains across Victorian during the week, we went for nets over the wetland and over the kikuyu adjacent to the wetland. It was very windy over night and we were not at all positive about our catching chances. But Lo and Behold! A dozen or more birds lobbed into a wet grassy area around 530am and started foraging. We managed to twinkle several birds towards the nets set over the kikuyu and 2 stuck long enough for us to get them. Less success with the other nets which had been stretched by the wind. Regardless, we were thrilled to capture 2 more birds, one still bearing traces of breeding plumage!

Next attempt will be the weekend of November 21. Please get in contact with Birgita if you’re keen to help out.

And don’t forget the next Port Fairy / Warrnambool snipe count on November 14.

Snipe photo by Karin Lundström. Photo of Don (left) and Rich (right) by Jodie Honan.

October 08, 2015

To catch snipe, it really was a case of third time lucky.

After two previously unsuccessful attempts, where we learned a lot about snipe behaviour and even saw a couple bounce out the nets, and a lot of discussion with local experts, the catching crew assembled with a slightly new plan. On Thursday afternoon in Powling St wetlands we set two double nets higher than normal (thanks for the loan of new equipment from Simeon) where birds had been seen landing (previously we’d been setting them where they had been seen leaving). On advice from Clive Minton, we also set a double net over thick kikuyu grass adjacent to the wetland, where snipe often roost during the day.

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September 30, 2015

It’s a beautiful sunny weekend in Port Fairy and we have a team ready to go and catch snipe! Dave has joined Jodie, Don, Rich and Birgita for 2 days all out action. We also have Malcolm Brown, who has caught many snipe over the years, and Tracy-Ann Hooley, both from the VWSG, coming to join the team.

There has been a lot snipe around Port Fairy but unfortunately, there is also daily noise from machinery blasting out rock in the new development being built next to the wetland. Rich, Don and Jodie haven’t seen as many snipe leaving the wetland at dusk, so we don’t know if they are avoiding the area or have re-distributed themselves in other wetlands around town. We will find out tonight!

Powling Street wetland with earth-moving machinery visible in the background to the left.

September 11, 2015

The counts on September 5 were very successful with 11 people participating to cover 13 wetland sites. A total of 66 snipe were counted around Port Fairy and 81 in Peterborough. Thanks to Rich, Karin, Dan, Don, Bill, Jane, Janet, Michael, Peter and Chris for helping out.

Photos by Karin Lundström and Rich Chamberlain.

We will schedule another count in early October (on a weekend). Anyone interested please contact Birgita.

On Friday 11th September we start catching snipe at Powling Street wetlands. Any birds we catch will be fitted with geolocators and released again at the site. We hope they will undertake a full migration to Japan and back, and deliver us a story about the migration route they use.

September 03, 2015

Over the last couple of weeks, the first reports of Latham’s snipe returning for the non-breeding season have been trickling in along the eastern coast of Australia.

The earliest record this year for Australia was on 8 August, at Oxley Creek Common, near Brisbane (via eBird – see photo above showing some of the ideal snipe habitat at the Oxley Creek Common).

Hot on its wings were separate reports from three locations in Queensland on 9 August: one from Bundaberg (via eBird), another at Tyto Wetlands, Ingham (via eBird) and the third from Dunne Rd Swamp in Cairns (via eBird).

Further south, the first record for NSW is from from Yamba on 20 August, and from the ACT comes from Jerrabomberra Wetlands (ACT) on 16 August. This is about ~10 days later than the long term average for New South Wales (we’re working on this data at the moment).

In Victoria, the first snipe were reported at Begola Wetlands, Ocean Grove on 22 August, closely followed by two at Port Fairy and one at Torquay on 23 August (via Eremaea Birdlines and R. Chamberlain). There are yet to be any reported from Tasmania.

Do you have earlier records than these? Or do you have arrival records for snipe from a place you regularly bird? If so, we’d love to hear from you as we’re trying to build up a long-term understanding of migration patterns across Australia for the species.  Contact djdwilson@gmail.com with any information and we’ll tell you how your observations fit into the bigger picture of snipe migration.

Header photo credit – via http://www.peakstopoints.com.au/event/

September 03, 2015

The first snipe were observed at Powling Street wetlands on September 23 by our man on the ground, Rich Chamberlain. Since then quite a few birds have turned up around town including at Sandy Cove. We plan to start our first surveys of the season on Saturday 5^th September. Contact the project team if you’re interested in helping out with snipe counts.

Photo of two snipe at Sandy Cove by Rich Chamberlain.

July 31, 2015

Great news! We’ve just been successful in securing our first funding, which means we can start planning this season’s fieldwork. Funds from the Australia-Japan Foundation have allowed us to purchase 40 geolocators to put onto snipe at Port Fairy wetlands in the coming spring (September / October).

It’s also covering a trip to the species’ breeding grounds in Hokkaido, Japan, where we plan to meet up with our Japanese collaborators and undertake research and training on snipe at their breeding grounds.