BreedingBreeding

Breeding

The Australian Painted Snipe may breed in response to rainfall patterns and wetland conditions rather than during a particular season. It has been recorded breeding in all months in Australia. In southern Australia most records have been from August to February; this coincides with winter-spring filling and spring-summer drawdown of temporary natural wetlands under the winter rainfall regime. Eggs have been recorded from mid-August to May. Breeding in northern Queensland has been recorded between May and October (Marchant and Higgins 1993), which coincides with summer-autumn filling and winter-spring drawdown of temporary natural wetlands. In the Channel Country and Barkly Tableland, where flooding/inundation is driven by summer-autumn monsoonal and thunderstorm rainfall, active or recently active nests have been found in January, March and May, several weeks or months after a flood peak (Jaensch 2003a, 2003b, 2009).

This species has mainly been recorded breeding in the Murray–Darling region but has also been recorded in coastal central Queensland (Black et al. 2010), south-east Queensland, eastern NSW, the Channel Country, south-east South Australia and the Mt Lofty Ranges—with a few records from Australia’s savannah bioregions. The most northerly breeding records include seven nests from near Derby prior to 1999 and one probable record from Taylor's Lagoon, near Broome, in 1999 (Hassell and Rogers 2002), followed by at least four confirmed breeding records on Roebuck Plains Station in 2017, and one in 2018 (N. Jackett pers. comm.), from Tarrabool Lake in the Barkly Tableland in 1993 (Jaensch 2003), and from Ayr, Queensland in the 1950s (Marchant and Higgins 1993). Though unconfirmed, there was evidence of breeding (a pair with the male consistently giving the distraction display that often indicates juveniles nearby) at an un-named wetland in the Sturt Plateau bioregion, Northern Territory, in June 2001 (Jaensch 2003b). This record was several months after exceptional rainfall across the bioregion in summer-autumn 2001.

In some situations this species is loosely colonial, although nests are widely separated (Lowe 1963). The Australian Painted Snipe has been recorded breeding near nesting Red-necked Avocets (Recurvirostra novaehollandiae), Pied Stilts (Himantopus leucocephalus), Red-kneed Dotterels (Erythrogonys cinctus) and Black-tailed Native-hens (Tribonyx ventralis) (Lowe 1963).

The Australian Painted Snipe defends a territory around its nest in the breeding season (Pringle 1987). Territory size has not been quantified, but as the species sometimes nests in loose colonies in which nests may be as little as 20 m apart (Lowe 1963; McGilp 1934), territories in that situation would appear unlikely to extend much beyond the area immediately surrounding the nest.

Australian Painted Snipe are known to lay two to six (usually three or four) eggs, and females may lay up to four clutches in a year. Incubation takes 15–21 days. Chicks are precocial (well-developed, eyes are open and are capable of moving around shortly after birth) and nidifugous (able to leave the nest shortly after hatching), but they are brooded and dependent for the first few days. The incubation of the eggs, and all care of the young, is undertaken by the male (Marchant and Higgins 1993).