ECONNECTION
Birds
by Karen Dusek

At last - Spring! It’s time for April showers, May flowers and all the other scintillating sights, sounds and smells that titillate our senses when we are tuned into the earth’s natural cycles. Spring peepers are peeping their mating songs, salamanders are meandering to wetland breeding grounds, migratory birds are returning to set up their summer homes and it seems the whole world is in love.

One of my favorite spring returnees is a squat little bird with a big beak and an even bigger personality: the American woodcock (also known as the timberdoodle, bog sucker, Labrador twister and night partridge). To see or hear this amusing upland shorebird, you have to be in the right place at the right time, usually from dusk to dark, near dawn or on moonlit nights in moist fields or forests with open areas. Bring a pair of binoculars. If you are lucky - and patient - you will be entertained with an aerial show that rivals any performance by the Blue Angels.

Near dusk, find a spot in an open field with forest nearby. Listen for a distinctive “peent” that, to me, sounds like the Roadrunner’s “beep.” Continually scan the horizon. Look for a plump bird about 11 inches long with a long, thin beak and rounded wings flying up into the air in circles that increase in diameter as the bird rises. You may hear a slight “twittering” as the air passes through specially shaped feathers in its wings. Suddenly, high in the air, the upward movement stops and, after a brief pause, the bird begins singing to beat the band and zigzags back to earth, beak first, a bit like a leaf dropping from a tree. You have just witnessed the “sky dance” of the male American woodcock. If you missed it, don’t fret, it will likely be repeated until it is too dark to see.

This spectacular display was not performed for your benefit, of course, but for a much more important audience: the females that have likely gathered nearby to look for a suitable mate. (This is not always the case. Sometimes the flight is done by a lone male and sometimes by a group of males with no females in attendance. Some males display in a number of different locations and may mate with more than one female.)

After mating, the male’s job is over. It is up to the female to construct a nest, either in a field or open forest, scratching a shallow depression in the ground and lining it with dead leaves and/or conifer needles or laying the eggs directly in leaf litter. She will generally lay four spotted buff-colored eggs, but may lay as few as one or as many as 12, which she sits on for about three weeks. The precocial (fully feathered at hatching) chicks leave the nest after just a few hours. When they are only a couple of days old, they begin probing the soil, perhaps practicing for the day when they will have to forage for themselves, since they depend entirely on their mother for food for the first week.

The woodcock’s brown, gray and buff coloration provides very effective camouflage, making it almost impossible to see on the ground, but the mother keeps a close watch for predators nevertheless. If one is nearby, she may try to distract it away from her nest by pretending to be injured. If they survive, they will be flying by the time they are two weeks old and living completely on their own at just five weeks.

Except, perhaps, for the mating ritual, nothing makes a bog sucker happier than finding an earthworm, since it has to eat up to its own body weight in worms every day to survive. Its long, narrow beak, perfectly adapted to poking and pulling up unwilling worms, is in constant contact with the ground, probably feeling for movement that indicates a subterranean feast. To make the worms wiggle and give away their location, it may stamp its front foot on the ground while shifting its weight. If it can’t find earthworms, it will settle for insect larvae and other invertebrates such as beetles, centipedes and flies and, if desperate, a few seeds here and there.

The bird’s large eyes, one of the features that make it “cute” to humans, are specially adapted for a creature that spends the better part of the day - or night - with its nose to the ground. Their large size and location toward the upper back of the head keep them free of splattering mud and low-lying vegetation and able to watch out for predators during feeding. While some birds, such as hawks and owls, have binocular vision that is concentrated toward the front of their eyes, the woodcock’s binocular vision is actually greater in the back of the eyes, which also helps in spotting predators during feeding.

Because the American woodcock population (now estimated at about 5 million) spiraled downward between 1966 and 1991 and continues to show a gradual overall decline, the species is listed as a “species of high concern” on the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan and has also been placed on the National Audubon Society’s “Watchlist.” Nesting on the ground as they do, you can imagine that woodcocks, which can live up to eight years in the wild, are in danger from domestic cats, as well as wild mammals and predatory birds. Their nests are sometimes also raided by snakes.

But, perhaps this appealing little bird’s biggest worry is humans, who not only hunt woodcocks in large numbers (about two million per year), but also place obstacles such as moving vehicles, television and cell phone towers, lighthouses, utility poles and wires and other tall structures, in their migratory flight path and destroy their habitat by draining swamps and allowing woodland thickets to grow into mature forests. Hydrocarbon insecticides sprayed on the bird’s breeding and wintering grounds are also a concern, although further study is needed to determine whether or not it is a factor in the species’ decline.

The Audubon Society, Cornell University, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other organizations and agencies are taking steps to increase woodcock populations, including providing habitat for breeding and wintering over, implementing hunting regulations and educating farmers about agricultural practices that help protect bird species. You can help by keeping your cat indoors, which also protects your pet (visit Audubon’s “cats indoor” Web site for more information, www.audubon.org/bird/cat/), or by making a donation to a national wildlife refuge.

Participating in the Audubon Society’s Christmas bird count (www.audubon.org/bird/cbc) provides valuable information on distribution and numbers of bird species, including the American woodcock. You can also report any sightings throughout the year to eBird, which is a collaborative bird monitoring project undertaken by Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (Go to www.audubon.org/bird/ebird/index.html for more information about this exciting citizen-science program). And, be sure to support regulations and legislation that protect water birds and other wildlife species, by writing letters to the editor and government officials and spreading the word about the importance of maintaining natural diversity.

Don’t forget: Earth Day is April 22. Let’s make it every day!

You may email Karen at karen@lakeshoreguardian.com.