Good Morning Good People,
Thanks to your support we have been busy making this exciting project happen. Since the crowdfunding campaign ended just before Christmas we have been organising the manufacture and delivery of the transmitters and now have three companies willing to contribute additional units as in-kind contributions. This means we can track more birds over the next couple of years and get a better idea of what Endangered Australian Painted-snipe are up to. We’ve also been planning our logistics, finalising ethics applications and developing the new website. Stay tuned for the launch!
But the best news is that there have been two recent sightings this month, confirmed with photographs. The first was from near Lake Cargelligo in central NSW, and the second came from the Lockyer Valley in south-east QLD. We have also made good connections with the landholders of a key APS area in the Macquarie Marshes.
We hope to be catching our first birds in March and April but we are relying on further sightings. If you can, please try to get out to some wetlands with shallows, mudflats and water plants. You never know your luck. Often, APS are associated with Red-kneed Dotterel, crakes, Black-winged Stilt, Latham’s Snipe and other birds with similar habitat requirements. If you see them then try extra hard.
We continue to shine a light on the plight of the species (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/08/vanishing-bird-the-mystery-of-the-near-mythical-australian-painted-snipe) and you can follow us on Twitter @TrackingASnipe and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087380940581
For those that selected ‘perks’, we’ll be in touch to organise delivery over the next few weeks.
Kind regards and thanks again for making it such a successful campaign,
Matt Herring for the Australian Painted-snipe Tracking Team.
