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 roa...
Upper Lachlan Shire, Southern Tablelands, New South Wales