FIELD NOTES: The Timberdoodle
~ by Jim Eagleman
Here is a bird question for you:“ What plump, shortlegged, long-billed bird spends most of its time hidden in fields and on the forest floor probing for earthworms?” It could be only one bird that meets those requirements. Then add that at this time of year it performs an aerial courtship that is well worth observing. It is the American Woodcock, or“ timberdoodle” to some. And what a sky dance this bird performs!
On spring nights, the male woodcock performs a very conspicuous display, giving a buzzy“ peeeent” call and then launching into the air. To mimic the sound pinch your nose and say“ peent.”
The timberdoodle’ s erratic, upwardly spiral fight includes a distinctive, twittering sound and ends with a steep, zigzag dive back to nearly the same spot where it took off. This routine is repeated from late March through April evenings and into May, just at dusk. Open, short-stubble fields is a good place to listen for and watch the sky dance. It’ s thought that the bird can’ t land or perform its ground portion of the mating ritual if dense grass or tree seedlings are higher than a few inches. The ground display is just as entertaining as the aerial part. Before taking off, the peenting is accompanied by a quick change in direction, with a short little hop and a slight hiccup sound.
This spring, on a bike ride through the state park just at dusk, we watched several woodcock perform, flying from one open area along the road to the next. The large playing field near the fire tower, Weed Patch Hill, was our destination since it is wide and open, but we heard the first call before arriving. We watched the bird perform into darkness. Lights from our bikes scanned the ground and caught the bird at each landing.
The woodcock is slightly bigger than a robin, but you may think of a robin with its usual long legs. Shorten the
legs, lengthen the bill to two or more inches, add a few more ounces of plumpness to the overall body, and you approach the woodcock. Shorten the robin’ s tail, too. It weighs about 12 ounces with a wingspan of about 16 inches. Some may think it isn’ t a game bird, but it is. Woodcock is hunted in Louisiana, the most populated state for woodcock in the country, and over 10,500 birds were harvested there in recent years. Along with hunted game birds like grouse, quail, and pheasant, woodcock season in Indiana is in the fall, October 15 – November 28, with a limit of three a day.
While it is technically a shorebird that lives and breeds in expansive coastal areas, the woodcock has forsaken the marshes for forested habitats. During the day, it prefers thickets with rich, moist forest soils. This is where it finds earthworms, a preferred food, but it will also feed on soil insects, their larvae, slugs, and sow bugs. The woodcock uses its long bill for extracting food from the soil. The upper mandible is flexible( visualize a pair of rubber-tipped tweezers), and it can open the tip of the bill under the soil to seize its prey. Evidence of this feeding can be detected by looking for probe holes in the soil.
A favorite author, best known for his addition of science to the field of wildlife biology in the early 1930s, is biologist, Aldo Leopold. He wrote extensively on how birds and animals live and interact with habitat, their food, predators, and breeding range with several textbooks on the subject. Perhaps he is best known for a more poetic work, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold wonderfully describes the woodcock’ s aerial ritual in a chapter called“ Sky Dance.” He recounts the annual performance like a detective, but as a scientist he hadn’ t quite figured out the entire story. Using students and repeatedly refining his data, he addressed the unknowns and revolutionized the discipline.
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