Stalked and shot by our forebears, these Japanese visitors are welcome in Gunning today

Latham’s Snipe, Japanese Snipe, Australian Snipe. Picture via Trove.

For perhaps hundreds of years Latham’s Snipe, a small wetland bird weighing only around 200 grams, has made the 8000 or more kilometre journey from their breeding grounds in Japan to Australia. It takes them only two days to reach our eastern seaboard with some then transiting further west including to the Gunning district. 

It is such a pleasure to see these little birds which have appeared for three seasons in succession now on the margins of our wetland dam at Ladevale. We are always on the lookout for them as the weather warms and the days lengthen. So too were people over 100 years ago, albeit for different reasons.

Latham’s Snipe at Collector: Then and Now

Gary Poile, responding to a Facebook post about the arrival of snipe in Ladevale this year, reported that they:

Visit Collector too. In past years I have often seen one in the reeds alongside the ditch just where the Collector/Gunning road meets the old highway at Collector end. They don't seem to mind the traffic and just stand still until you move on.

In August 1882, Mr John Poidevin, like Mr Poile, espied a snipe at Collector. According to the Goulburn Herald “A correspondent from Collector informs us that the first snipe of the season was bagged by Mr John Poidevin on the 25th instant”.

While the accepted common name for this bird is now “Latham’s Snipe” it is probable that Mr Poidevin went home with what he knew as a Japanese Snipe for the pot.

Mrs Poidevin’s Recipe

Alas, I cannot report what recipe Mrs Poidevin would have used to prepare her husband’s game for the table.  It is still legal in some parts of the USA to hunt snipe so perhaps she did much the same as a modern day hunter there does now.  His recipe: 

Ingredients

• 2 to 8 snipe, whole and plucked
• Lard or butter
• Salt and black pepper
• High-quality vinegar, sherry or balsamic or apple

Instructions

1. Preheat oven as hot as it will go, hopefully 500°F or even hotter. Smear snipe all over with lard or butter. Sprinkle salt inside the cavity and all over the birds. Let rest while the oven heats up.
2. Arrange the snipe in an oven-proof pan -- cast iron is perfect -- with a few tablespoons of water in it. You want just a little water in the pan, not enough to cover the bottom. This helps keep the snipe moist. Roast in the oven for 5 minutes. Take the birds out and baste them with more butter, lard or olive oil. Roast for 3-7 minutes more, depending on how you like your snipe. oven.
3. Take the snipe out of the oven and move them to a cutting board. Let them rest uncovered for 5 minutes before serving. Sprinkle some good vinegar and black pepper on the snipe right before serving.

The Secret to Mr Poidevin’s Success

Mr Poidevin may have owed his success in snipe potting to following the principles outlined in Old Bushman's Natural History Sketches which appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal of June 1897.

The habits of the Australian Snipe are very puzzling, and a man who is not used to Snipe-shooting may beat acre after acre without springing a bird and, perhaps, pass over the very place where the Snipe do lie.  Among fern and heather or on a dry, sandy rise, or in thick honeysuckle scrub, are the places to look for them. As the season advances they lie much under the shelter of any large timber near the swamps and in patches of tea tree which skirt the creeks and wet ground. They are never far in, and an old dog who knows his business will potter steadily along a yard or so in the tea tree, and tumble out the Snipe as fast as ever you can load and fire.

In the very heat of summer they get very much into the honeysuckle scrub; but always somewhere near their feeding-grounds, and here it is Snipe-shooting with a vengeance; for when they rise they are only seen for an instant. If by chance any large gumtrees stand in an open wet plain, they will generally get under them. I have often planted myself under a favorite tree and stood still while others were beating the ground round me, and killed as many as all the other guns.

There is no pot-hunting in Snipe-shooting. They must be killed in a sports manlike manner, or not at all.  The most I ever bagged here myself in the day was thirteen couple and a half, and though I have heard of some extraordinary day's Snipe shooting, I never myself saw twenty couples of Australian Snipe fall to one gun in the day. No bird has been driven from the southern part of Victoria more than the Snipe, and to get a good day's shooting a man must now go a long way afield.

Latham’s Snipe Today

We don’t see Latham’s Snipe in our local district today in the numbers likely to have been here a hundred years ago. However, it is not classified as an Endangered or Vulnerable species yet.  Researchers suspect its numbers are declining and, because far too little is known about where and how they spend their summers in Australia, Japanese and Australian scientists are combining to learn more so we can better protect this wetland bird.

Those of us lucky enough to see them arriving in our district today delight in doing so for the pure pleasure of it.  I like to think that Mr Poidevin and others of his era shared that delight – as well as benefiting from them as a food source.

Still to Come 

This is the first of a planned infrequent and irregular series of contributions. Currently in the pipeline are:

• Gunning's First Ever Magpie Shooting Contest a Banging Success
• Poisonous Pigeons Imperil Lives of Prominent Gunning Residents