Imagine, if you will, a sandpiper. Can you picture it? A plump shorebird on spindle legs with a long probing beak. Except now, imagine that sandpiper not at the beach, but in a shrubby forest, bobbing and rocking through the understory, adorned in cryptic mottled plumage, probing for worms in the soil.
Perfect. You are now picturing the American woodcock, known also as the timberdoodle, night partridge, or bogsucker thanks to its odd appearance and behavior.
Awake at dawn or wait until dusk to catch their springtime sky dancing, in which breeding males perform for females by spiraling up into the sky, wings whistling from the rush of air, before melodically zig-zagging back down to earth. Unfortunately, we are at risk of losing this upland spectacle.
Woodcock populations across the eastern and central United States have been declining for decades, due in large part to habitat loss. American woodcock rely on young forest habitats – also known as early, successional forests – rich in shrubby thickets and saplings. Due to historical land use and forest management practices, early, successional forests have also declined throughout the eastern U.S.
Photo of an American woodcock in winter.
But a timberdoodle homecoming is underway in Berks County.
Blue Marsh Lake expanded its American woodcock management zone in 2020 when 40 community volunteers – including members of the Tulpehocken Creek Watershed – helped to establish a new stand of early successional forest by planting 825 native shrubs and trees.
Berks Nature’s own Ontelaunee Wetlands Preserve is also home to this valuable, successional forest habitat and, perhaps, its own breeding woodcocks!
One Sunday in May of this year, Dean Kendall was exploring the newly blazed Wetland Trail, parts of which traverse through soggy and shrubby understory habitat, when just 10 feet or so ahead, a small group of American woodcock took to the air. The group stayed low – just 5 feet from the ground – and split.
That’s when Dean noticed the flight of one adult seemed labored, “No doubt because of a rather large something held or stuck beneath it!” he recalled. What could this bird have been carrying? Why who else than the adult’s chick, suspects Dean.
Rumors have long passed through the birding community, describing the curious even improbable feat of female woodcocks delivering their young from danger by scooping them up, pressing the chick against their undersides, and flying off. Dean too had heard such stories but never imagined he would one day bear witness himself.