Gunning & District Historical Society

 November Bird of the Month Latham's Snipe:  Image courtesy Mark Lethlean    Image courtesy Wayne Weatherstone This is number eleven in a 12 part series in which we take a bird recorded in Gladstone Weatherstone's notebook between 1962 and 1981, see if anything is different today and, if so, try to explain why.   Gladstone was an expert amateur naturalist who lived on Lyndfield Park near Gunning from 1941 until 1996.             The Visitor from Japan On 11 November 1971 Gladstone wrote, “Japanese Snipe flushed today from reeds in creek.  First recording here” .  His words show no emotion, but he must have been excited.  This small wetland bird, weighing only around 200 grams, had just fetched up on his farm after flying some 8000 or more kilometres from Japan and south-east Siberia!     Snipe have been making their annual journey to Australia for perhaps thousands of years.  Their...

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...