Subantarctic Snipe
Band-rumped Snipe. taxonomy. It is endemic in New Zealand, where it can be found on the Auckland Islands (except the main island; nominate C. a. This page contains a photo of Coenocorypha aucklandica (Subantarctic Snipe). It'?s hard to get the money for a trip to the subantarctic. They're also looking for the rare subantarctic snipe. Auckland Island Snipe, which requires some effort.
Sharpshooter in the Subantarctic
Colin Miskelly, a birdwatching specialist, has recently come back from the subantarctic Auckland Islands, far southward of Stewart Island. Sharpshooter is a word that derives from snipehunt. Snipe is a wild animal and has a fast zigzag attack when bothered (e.g. by humans or hounds running through swamps).
Sniping is a good test of a shooter's skills - so the word "sniper" became a household name for someone who is a good shooter. It' kind of funny that we fish with handnets in New Zealand. The snipe has been a recurrent theme during my research careers and dates back to my first trip to the Snares Islands as an 1982 Understud.
Since they are only to be found on isolated archipelagos without imported carnivores, however, the possibilities of carrying out field work on them were occasional and often many years apart. We have three live New Zealand snipers: The Chatham Snipe, Snares Snipe, and Subantarctic Snipe, where the Subantarctic Snipe has its own variety on each of the Auckland Islands, Antipode Islands, and Campbell Isle.
The Auckland Island Snipe was the least in my life until recently. It was my only experiance to catch some for a few lessons on Enderby Island in January 2006. We were on our way to Campbell Island (further south) to visit the then rediscovered Campbell Island Snipe.
We had to tell Percy how Snipe smelled before we got to Campbell Island. Genetically, all five live species of New Zealand snipe were compared using specimens gathered on Enderby Island and Campbell Island during this voyage, which led to the Campbell Island snipe being described in 2010 as a new variety of subantarctic snipe.
Other Auckland Island woodcock specimens gathered by other farmhands on Adams Island in the southern and Rose Island, bordering Enderby Island, were also subject to testing. I was surprised that the snipe population on each of these three island was very different in genetics.
However, we only had small rehearsals of each of the islands Enderby and Rose (4 or 5 each), so we decided to mix them into a single'Port Ross' rehearsal. It has also been found that Snipe from Disappointment Island should be added to the survey as they are the most remote populations of Auckland Island Snipe.
The snipe are impoverished or at least rare flyers. Although they are likely to resettle the island of Auckland when it is possible to eradicate the cat, pig and mouse populations, nature protection leaders can opt to support the processes to secure a structurally resilient underpopulation. Knowledge of the genetics of each of the Auckland Island Snipe sub-populations is a necessary first stage before a decision is made as to whether post-eradication translocation will be useful and where it should come from.
The Snipe would have appeared everywhere on the Auckland Islands when the group was spotted (or rediscovered) in 1806 by the master of a whaler. Pig and cat were imported to the Isle of Enderby when Capt. James Clark Ross and his ships went to Erebus and Terre, where in 1840 bunnies later came to Enderby and the Rose Islands and the mouse accidentally arrived on the Principal and Enderby Islands.
Enderby, Rose and Ocean Island were used as pastures during the Hardwicke colony (1849-52), when the Auckland Island sniping was limited to the only three essential island in the group that were lacking in animals - Adams Island in the east, Disappointment Island in the east and Ewing Island in the east.
By chance, Ewing Island had a thick covering of Olearia Lyallii wood of daisies, which would have been fire and ax e-resistant, which provided shelter for snipers at a period when the pastures around Port Ross were still very limited. They were extinct or extinct by Enderby, Rose and Ocean Islands in 1993, so that their flora could recuperate.
The snipe are now found on all these isles and are believed to have recolonized of Ewing Island 1.4-3. 3 km away of course. It is possible, however, that the rose island got its snipe over Enderby or the ocean island, which reduced the maximal crossover to 2 km (e.g. Ewing Island to Enderby Island).
If Enderby Island were repopulated across the ocean and then the Rose Islands, the maximal distance across the sea would be even narrower (1.5 km). To understand the genetics of snipe communities within Port Ross, it was necessary to include Ewing Island (the suspected ancestor population) in the survey and to obtain large specimens from each of the islands of Enderby and Rose.
We' ve chosen Ocean Island to be too small to have a real shot at catching enough snipe. At the end we got the permit to gather up to 10 snipes' snipe on each of the islands Disappointment, Ewing, Enderby and Rose. Woodcocks were found and captured on Enderby and the Rose Islands, where it took only 8 to 16 hrs (with netting ) to get to our rate.
Disappointing Island and Ewing Island were more work. There were only 6 snipes captured on Disappointment Island during the available period (although we found a nest). It took six lands and 38 hrs in total to catch the 10th snipe on Ewing Island. Like so often, our Snipe fieldwork raised even more issues.
There was a very different hatching season on different islets - balls on Disappointment Island, feathery kittens on Enderby and the Rose Isles and a mixture of balls, young chickens and kittens that moulted into mature feathers (but nothing in between) on Ewing Island. Thanks to the Department of Conservation for allowing us to deal with snipe and board an island within the Auckland Island Nature Reserve, the Evohe staff who brought us to and from the island in safety, Parker Conservation for their help on Disappointment Island and Alan Tennyson, Nicki Atkinson and the Enderby Seallion Squad for their help in catching snipe on the island of Port Ross.