This might be of interest to our Canberra “Snipers”…. See email below from Birgita Hansen.
On a local note – Birgita is coming to Canberra to give a talk at a COG meeting later in the year. I will make sure we put the word out for anyone interested in attending. We are also pulling together data from Jerra Wetlands over the past
couple of years as well as reporting the findings from our Snipe radiotracking project. We are still picking up most of “our” birds at Jerra Wetlands to which radio transmitters were fitted in early December. The birds appear to be staying at the Wetlands
(or at least returning there very regularly if they do leave - they are recorded there every 2-3 days). Similarly we have had reports of two of the birds caught this year and one from last year hanging around. Beautiful place to call home obviously.
Thanks for all your efforts – whether it be counting, photographing, reporting sightings, radiotracking, emailing me general observations, or just taking an interest!
Cheers Lori
From: Birgita Hansen [
Sent: Friday, 16 February 2018 4:44 PM
To: Jodie Honan <>; Richard Chamberlain <>; David Wilson <>; Lori Gould <>
Subject: Results from the January 2018 snipe count
Hi counters from all our count regions
Once again we had a fabulous and successful count. I think I have all regional counts in now and the overall totals were really great. Despite only having a score or so of snipe at Robe this time, we still totalled 908 snipe! We had some
especially high counts in East Gippsland (146), Geelong-Bellarine peninsula (111) and of course Peterborough and Smithton were solid as always with 101 and 127 snipe, respectively.
The region totals are listed below for the three 2017-2018 counts. As you’ll see the number of sites getting counted is slowly increasing, although there were a few sites from Sept and Nov that weren’t counted this time around – I have
gaps in the Ballarat, SE QLD regions, plus a handful of sites within some other regions that there was no count data for. Some of you weren’t able to make it out, but if there is anyone who has data that they haven’t sent to me please do. Nevertheless, the
3 count totals represent an increase in our knowledge about snipe distribution and abundance.
Thanks again all of you for your fabulous contributions to the snipe counts. This is the second year of counts across the 6 eastern states / territories and the fourth year of surveys since the start of the project. I will be looking over
the data in more detail in the coming months, to explore emerging trends.
The count dates for 2018-2019 will be:
September 15
November 10
January 12
On a final note, I would like to give some talks in a few of the regions hopefully in autumn or winter. I don’t think I’ll be able to get around all the states, but I will certainly look to get some talks closer to home scheduled. I’ve
been in touch with a few of you about this, and will follow up once I have some tentative dates. If you think there would be some interest from your region to host a snipe talk, please let me know how I might go about organising it, even if it’s a long way
from Vic and down the track a bit.
|
State
|
Region
|
Sept 2017
|
Nov 2017
|
Jan 2018
|
|
ACT
|
Canberra
|
26
|
43
|
41
|
|
|
NSW near ACT
|
27
|
34
|
41
|
|
VIC
|
Geelong-Bellarine
|
72
|
159
|
111
|
|
|
East Gippsland
|
59
|
95
|
146
|
|
|
Greater Melbourne
|
37
|
55
|
72
|
|
|
Peterborough
|
84
|
95
|
101
|
|
|
Phillip Island
|
55
|
84
|
47
|
|
|
Port Fairy-Warrnambool
|
109
|
100
|
79
|
|
|
Otways
|
nc
|
nc
|
nc
|
|
|
Central Highlands
|
nc
|
0
|
nc
|
|
|
Ballarat region
|
20
|
31
|
2
|
|
SA
|
South-east South Australia
|
0
|
653
|
31
|
|
NSW
|
Southern Highlands
|
46
|
13
|
20
|
|
|
Central Coast
|
7
|
23
|
38
|
|
|
Northern NSW
|
nc
|
4
|
51
|
|
QLD
|
Sunshine Coast, QLD
|
2
|
5
|
nc
|
|
|
Central Coast
|
6
|
nc
|
nc
|
|
|
Far north Queensland
|
nc
|
0
|
0
|
|
TAS
|
North-west Tasmania
|
38
|
53
|
127
|
|
|
Northern Tasmania
|
0
|
12
|
1
|
|
|
South-west Tasmania
|
nc
|
nc
|
nc
|
|
|
South-east Tasmania
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
Total
|
585
|
1459
|
908
|
|
|
No sites counted
|
88
|
94
|
98
|
Cheers all
Birgita
Dr Birgita Hansen
Research Fellow
Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation
Federation University Australia | Mount Helen | Suite 15 | Greenhill Enterprise Centre
PO Box 691 Ballarat Vic 3353
Treasurer
Australasian Wader Studies Group
Telephone
+61 3 5327 9952
| Mobile 0428 591 810
www.cerdi.edu.au
www.lathamssnipeproject.wordpress.com
www.awsg.org.au
