senses. If the woods weren’t so hushed and barren, I would swear it was the onset of spring.
But true spring requires more than soft earth—it requires sounds: the hum of insects, the drumming of ruffed grouse, the croaking of frogs, and my favorite sound of all, the “peent” of the American woodcock.
As the owner of an online magazine devoted to upland bird hunters, www.uplandjournal.com, my partiality to my favorite sign of spring—the woodcock, or Philohela minor—is not hard to understand.
The American woodcock is, admittedly, a strange bird. Its brain actually sits upside down in its skull. Its ears are ahead of its eyes. And it sports a long prehensile beak—a marvelous appendage with an end that moves
independently and is used to seize and extract earthworms, its primary food. Like many of us, the woodcock is not the bird it used to be. Formerly a shorebird, much like a snipe, it has enigmatically evolved into an
oddball migratory upland bird. Sometimes called a timberdoodle, the American woodcock is about the size of a baseball, for lack of a better comparison, and about as round. It wears the earthy camouflage of the forest scatter, and being largely nocturnal, has oversized dark eyes that help it navigate the night sky, flitting like a bat from resting cover to feeding grounds. This migrant heads south for the winter months powered
by squat yet powerful wings, and is carried by the wind back to its birthplace in the spring, following waterways and mountain ranges on its unmapped airborne trail. And, like many of the forest’s shyest creatures, the American woodcock is often heard before it is seen, thanks to its buzzing, nasal “peent.”
Advertisement
One of my rites of spring is to watch the woodcock sky-dance, where he pulls out all the stops in search of a mate. Any small opening in the forest near a soggy swath of stunted alder will do. I choose a cloudless night and arrive just before sunset with the dogs, a lawn chair, and a couple of cold beers.
Peent!
Where is it? Did I pick a good spot? Then he is up, a silhouette against the darkening sky, short wings, plump body, and long beak, making sweeping passes up, up, up, until he is out of sight. When I think he has disappeared for good, he spirals down erratically, like a biplane out of gas or a windblown leaf, all the while
chirping a fluid, libidinous mating trill. He flutters softly to the ground and struts like a miniature turkey gobbler, his stubby tail with white black-tipped feathers spread and his round ochre chest puffed out.
Peent!
He will repeat this mating ritual until it’s too dark for me to see, or until a hen, a bit larger than the male, emerges from the thicket to accept him as her mate—for the evening.
Beyond its sheer entertainment value, the woodcock holds a special spot in a bird hunter’s heart. It is very cooperative for pointing dogs to hunt, provides relatively challenging wingshooting, and is considered a culinary delicacy by many. But the will-o’-the-wisp nature of this bird, and the concern over population
declines caused by habitat loss from development, is what endears it most to those who pursue it. Many seasoned bird hunters have stopped wingshooting the woodcock altogether, content to just work their bird
dogs over this unique game bird.
As I fold up the chair and gather in the dogs (who are running amuck after being made to sit quietly), I’m satisfied that spring has officially arrived and my strange little friend has found his way back home.
__
Brad Eden is an artist, writer, Registered Maine Master Guide, and owner/editor of the online magazine www.uplandjournal.com.
