David Mitford and myself met Dick Jenkins on Saturday morning (4th December 2004) on Ash Island (approx.
150 km north of Sydney CBD) with the aim of finding the Painted Snipe that have
been seen during the past 2 weeks or so. It took 2 hours to find one of the
pair, a female Painted Snipe with its characteristic tail bobbing up and down
as it moved through the grass. After another half an hour or so after this bird
disappeared in the grass, we decided to look at the swamp at another angle from
the rainforest regeneration path (the one that has a sign saying something to
the effect of “one day you will get sick of seeing Regent Bowerbirds
along this trail”). We soon saw the pair (male and female) Painted Snipe
at about 200 metres away through our scopes, where
they again proved quite shy as they stood motionless on the edge of taller grass.
We had a brief good view of the pair until they finally disappeared back into
the taller grass. I have seen Painted Snipe a few occasions before and these 2
must have been the most elusive ones I’ve seen.
Other birds around this wetland included a White-necked
Heron, Plumed and Cattle Egrets (the later in nice breeding plumage), a Swamp
Harrier, 20 or so Sharp-tailed
Sandpipers, both Pied Stilts and Masked Lapwing chicks with their parents, Horsfield’s Bronze-cuckoo, Channel-billed Cuckoos, Rufous Fantail (the only rainforest bird in the young
rainforest regeneration path), Tawny Grassbirds and White-breasted
Woodswallows. We did not have time to check our usual
spot (along Wagtail way) on Ash Island as we
needed to get back in Sydney by mid
afternoon. On our way back home however we did see a Pacific Baza (a nice bird often seen while driving along the
Sydney-Newcastle freeway) circling high over the freeway near Lenaghan.
Edwin Vella
