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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/08/vanishing-bird-the-mystery-of-the-near-mythical-australian-painted-snipe>
"“Near-mythical” is how the ecologist Matthew Herring describes the Australian
painted-snipe – one of this continent’s rarest birds.
“Some of these terms get thrown around,” Herring says, “but they really are.”
It is believed there are only about 340 individuals left, but that’s not all
that makes them rare. Australian painted-snipes exemplify the saying “out of
sight, out of mind”. Even birdwatchers with decades in the field forget they
exist.
“They’re a super-sneaky, cover-dependent, mud-loving, waterplant-hiding
shorebird,” Herring says.
A research project that correlated the evolutionary uniqueness of the world’s
nearly 10,000 bird species against their conservation status, as a way of
prioritising them, placed the Australian painted-snipe at No 29.
“So it’s definitely a weird bird,” Herring says.
And an elusive one. It ranges across a vast area, from the Murray-Darling Basin
to the Kimberley. Sightings are few and far between."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
