One of Australia’s most elusive birds, a 2,200km journey and a mid-winter mystery solved

A 2020 survey estimated there may be as few as 340 Australian painted-snipe remaining in the wild. Photograph: Peter Stevens

It had been three months without a peep, and the ecologist Matt Herring thought Gloria had perished. He had captured the elusive bird on 22 October 2023, on a property north of Balranald in New South Wales – the first Australian painted-snipe to be fitted with a satellite tracker.

But contact had been lost, and there was a sticky complication: Gloria’s tracker had been financed by a successful crowdfunding campaign. Herring started preparing an obituary for the avian pioneer for her species.