Snipe Catch Plans for this s''Kristy Gould' <>eason

[Lori Gould <>]

Hi Snipers,

 

Hope you had a good Snipe ‘off season’ and are ready for the next instalment of Snipe fun and excitement.

 

We have 4 more satellite transmitters to deploy, and like last year, will involve the construction of a wetland in the education room at the Wetlands and 24 hour GoPro monitoring of any birds that we fit satellite harnesses to. We would also like to try to catch another bird with a geolocator if we should be so lucky.

 

We plan to do our catches from Thurs 31^st October to the Sun 3^rd Nov 2019 and again from the 6^th – 10^th January 2020. We may or may not undertake a catch in between but that will depend on how the November catch goes. The January catch is timed to suit the arrival of our Japanese partners from the Wild Bird Society accompanied by some of their Young Rangers (in a similar style to when we visited there last year). This is really exciting and we will be holding some meet and greet activities amid other things. If you are interested and available to come along and help with either or both catches, can you please email me your availability and I will put together a roster. I will send out more detailed information closer to the time.

 

In related Snipe news:

 

Already this season we have had bird number 74 return to the Jerra Wetlands – a bird that we caught back in December 2018. In total we have had 6 recaptures in the same season and 5 recaptures in different seasons indicating that they are indeed returning to Jerra each season and that many stay there for the whole season.

 

We have also made good headway on the Snipe surveys (well Birgita has) and we are very close to having an interactive map showing their distribution. When the map is finalised you will be able to click on the dots and see the data behind it (i.e. number of Snipe) for the whole of Australia.

 

We are hoping to secure funding in the very near future to undertake genetic sequencing on over 200 blood and feather samples from all the Snipe we have caught in Canberra and Port Fairy. This will hopefully help us to determine genetic differences, confirm sexes and help us to identify the strange bird we caught last year.

 

Watch this space!

 

Kind Regards,

 

Lori

 

 

Lori Gould

Program Manager

Woodlands and Wetlands Trust (Jerrabomberra Wetlands)

 

M: 0439 030 058

PO Box 58 Fyshwick ACT 2609

 

www.woodlandsandwetlands.org.au