Show Your Family The Woodcock Tradition
An unending for some birders is discovering the springtime skydance with the American Woodcock (Scolopax minor). The dancers are male woodcocks. The females observe in silence from nearby bushes. The song and dance performance will long be remembered as spectacular by all who attend this springtime ritual of courtship observation.
Visit a clearing near a thicket, preferably just a tad moist. Look and you should listen from a hidden and low viewing point. I often would go to the best observation post approximately a half an hour before the drama was scheduled to start. Quietly sitting still on my camper stool, with night binoculars on hand, my companions and I would wait for chunky little brown birds to reveal themselves.
How did I know when the dance would begin? It was very punctual at just about 22 minutes after sunset each evening when the weather was just right. I never saw them perform this ritual in the rain or on exceptionally cloudy evenings.
When the family learned of this event by way of reading Aldo Leopold’s 1949 classic A Sand County Almanac, it was impossible to skip this annual ritual. Leopold considered this the initiation of spring in the northern woods and named it the “skydance”.
It can be hard to think these stubby little gamebirds belong to the same family as the sandpipers we view skittering across the sands at the beach. They’ve got very short legs, an unusually long bill which has a specialized tip which is made for catching earthworms beneath the surface of the soil. Their mottled brown color looks a great deal like fallen leaves on the forest floor.
Sometimes there would be more than one male in the vicinity. Those were exciting times. Each male bird kept its own timing so you actually could see one ascending whilst you were listening to another make its “peent” sound on the ground. They would turn and “peent” again in another direction, repeatedly, presumably to draw the eye of females from all sides. The “peent” sounds like that from the nighthawk except its a bit deeper buzz.
The stout little gamebird shoots straight up into the sky silently. The simple truth is that with good hearing or an amplifier it is possible to hear his wings twittering with a tonal sound while he climbs and does spiral loops until he’s about 300 feet high before he dives back with twittering sounds at the beginning of his return.The twittering sound is produced by air passing between wing feathers. His zig-zag dive to the exact same place on the ground is silent aside from the flutterof his quiet wings flapping to a halt. The way he finds his exact place is a mystery to me. Seconds right after he lands and settles, he starts his directional peenting pattern again.
The American Woodcock male usually does the skydance and dive about 6 times each night through the season. So if you arrive in time you ought to have a fine display. They will resume a short while before dawn the subsequent morning. This complex courtship ritual persists every night for months, in some areas for about four months. It appears to be the activity the males do as the females hatch the brood and grow into fledgling size and leave the nest. When I first began my annual skydance observations, I thought it was all a courtship ritual to attract a mate. Now I wonder if in addition, it has another function that goes beyond the first courtship. Perhaps you would have to ask the fiesty little woodcock in the field.
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