170 years of Latham’s Snipe Gallinago hardwickii arrivals in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory show no change in arrival date

Abstract

An understanding of migration phenology is critical to the conservation of long-distance migrants. Latham’s Snipe Gallinago hardwickii is a cryptic, dispersed migratory wader that breeds in northern Japan during the austral winter and migrates to Australia for the non-breeding period. Records of this species for New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) were extracted from a range of data sources including hunting reports, the Atlas of Living Australia, eBird and citizen science records, generating a dataset of first-arrival dates for 170 years (1846–2016). The first record in each year, corresponding to the expected arrival period of Latham’s Snipe on southward migration, was used to infer the date of first arrival. These dates were analysed using simple linear regression against Julian day to test the hypothesis that changes in climate (i.e. increasing mean annual temperature) might result in a corresponding shift in arrival dates. The mean Julian day of first arrivals in NSW and the ACT was 14 August ± 9 days, with no significant change over the 170-year span of records. This suggests that migration phenology of Latham’s Snipe has not been strongly influenced by changing large-scale climatic conditions at either the breeding or non-breeding grounds.