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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Valuing Urban Wetlands — A Built Environments Biodiversity Project

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.