Snipe twitch 2

On the trail of the Painted Snipe

In November 2009, Emily and I headed 400km west to Dubbo to find a Painted Snipe that was hanging out in a small temporary pond in a random paddock. When we arrived, however, the pond had dried up the day before and the snipe was gone. But over the last couple of weeks there have suddenly been reports of Painted Snipe all over the place and two of these were from the west of Sydney by Windsor and Richmond. Apparently these birds will appear further east in greater numbers after good inland rains and then promptly disappear again. So no time to lose, especially with a couple of them allegedly right on our doorstep. We certainly weren't going to miss out again so we hooked up with Jarrod and headed out last Sunday. With my eye slowly improving but still very much in the 'dodgy' category, Jarrod's keen sight was required and he didn't let us down getting onto the Painted Snipe #416 as soon as we pulled up at the first of our two possible sites. Too easy!

Too far away for my little camera

In fact the only problem was dodging the hailstones from the angry thunderstorm passing overhead. With the snipe in the bag so quickly we popped up the road to Scheyville NP and that proved to be inspired as we shortly bagged a White-throated Gerygone #417 in the trees by the car-park. A summer visitor to Sydney, they're common enough in the dry woodland in the west of the Sydney basin but have somehow managed to evade me up until now.

Those folks with ridiculously keen attention may notice that these new bird numbers are not in sequence with previous entries. I was just going through my lists and was horrified to find a mistake way back at bird #45 and so almost the whole list has been out by one. All is fixed up now though and still a net gain for the week. Excellent!

The stuff of nightmares