Wintering with a Woodcock

My wife’s little oval-shaped flower garden, resplendent with calla lilies, giant amaryllis, hydrangeas, and other tropical and semi-tropical variants, rests underneath a red mulberry tree in our backyard. Planted to attract songbirds during the spring migration, the tree spreads out like an umbrella shading the mulched ground below, providing the flowers a reprieve from the stifling Louisiana summer heat.

Through the years, the garden’s soil has become rich and loamy. So much so, that when a trowel is sunk into the dirt and the earth is overturned, exposing it to the light of day, creatures of the depths wiggle and squirm to rebury themselves.

By fall, the mulberry tree’s leaves cover the garden. Like a warm blanket, they insulate the ground and protect it from winter’s frost, though the terra firma in Louisiana never freezes to the depths it does in northern states.

[Read another story from our June 2021 issue about birding by ear here.]

Each fall, American Woodcock, also endearingly known as timberdoodles, night partridges, bogsuckers, and mudsnipes, make their way south to Louisiana, where at one time there were an estimated forty thousand hunters who pursued them. Today, hunters who respond to the State’s Annual Hunter Participation and Harvest Survey and claim to actively hunt timberdoodles are a tenth of those who participated back in the 1970s. In short, a relatively small group of enthusiasts who enjoy pointing dogs chase woodcock regularly in Louisiana. When other hunter’s harvest them, it’s usually by chance and often ancillary to a rabbit or late season squirrel hunt.

According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, woodcock numbers have declined one to three percent each year since the 1960s. The primary reason for the downturn is habitat loss in its northern breeding grounds, particularly the East, Upper Midwest and Appalachian Mountains. Woodcock prefer young forests or what’s known in the scientific community as “early successional habitat”. For the past fifty years, as younger forests matured and vast acreages of land were converted to strip malls, shopping centers, roads, and parking lots, woodcock numbers have been inversely impacted. Over the years, this has led to reduced bag limits and subsequently less hunter participation.

One thing Louisiana has an abundance of is moist soil and early successional forest. There are vast tracts of tangled bogs, pine cutovers, levees, bottomland swamps, and coastal marsh with oilfield canal bank locations—all tremendous habitat suitable for wintering woodcock. Though fewer hunters are pursuing woodcock these days, Louisiana remains important habitat for the species.

[Read a story about birding featuring an interview with John Flores here.]

Winter habitat also apparently includes small town subdivisions. This past winter, for whatever reason, a woodcock came to visit my wife’s flower garden, spending a month or so with us.

I was in the middle of a business meeting when I received the text message, then the call. Glancing at the number on my cell phone, I could see it was my wife and I temporarily ignored it. A few minutes later she called again. It was then that I said, “Gentlemen, please excuse me. I need to take this call. My wife never calls me twice like that unless it is something important.”

“Hey Doll, I’m in a meeting, did you need something?” I inquired with some concern in my voice.

“Did you get my text and see the picture?” Before I could answer, she excitedly blurted out, “There’s a woodcock in my flower garden!”

Yes, it was something important! Very important, in fact!

“Oh wow,” I replied, somewhat relieved, but just as excited. “Let me call you back when I’m done.”

“Did you get my text and see the picture?” Before I could answer, she excitedly blurted out, “There’s a woodcock in my flower garden!”

Of course, I laughed about the interruption, as she and I share a love for nature that includes birdwatching and photography. It occurred to me that the only woodcock I’d seen in the wild were some I helped the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries band while working on a conservation story after dark one night several years ago, and those that passed through the bead of my over and under shotgun. In this case, we had a live bird twenty feet from our back door.

In the days that followed, the bird became cautiously used to our coming and going. We observed the woodcock with great interest, watching it feed and hunker down to rest in our backyard winter oasis.

I marveled at how the little bog sucker was able to disappear into the fallen buffy-brown leaves of the mulberry tree just by remaining motionless. I could make out its shape if I looked really hard. And, once I found it, I could see the sun reflect a subtle twinkle in its eyes, set high and to the sides of its head, providing 360-degree vision designed to spot predators.

In the days that followed, the bird became cautiously used to our coming and going. We observed the woodcock with great interest, watching it feed and hunker down to rest in our backyard winter oasis.

The nice part about having a semi-docile woodcock in your backyard is what you can learn by observing it. It occurred to me that if it wasn’t for their reliance on a myriad of Brittany spaniels, English pointers, German shorthairs, and Llewellin English setters, many hunters would never know this species of upland bird actually existed.

We got a kick out of the woodcock’s rhythmic bobbing walk. Just after sunrise, the plump robin-sized bird would walk along the garden’s brick pathways, bouncing with each step.

Throughout the day, it would sink its prehensile bill deep into the garden’s moist soil to grab earth worms. Roughly 2.5 to 2.75 inches long, the tip of its upper bill is flexible enough that, using both bill and tongue, it’s able to grasp its prey.

The little woodcock seemed quite content being alone. We never heard the buzzy peent call the bird is known to make on their singing grounds in the north country.

It’s noteworthy to mention that each year, the FWS conducts a Singing Ground Survey, where volunteers spend an evening counting the number of singing males heard on a predetermined 3.6-mile route. The information is used to determine population trends.

Our little visitor didn’t overstay its welcome. One morning it was simply gone.

Our hopes are that it will come back next year and maybe spread a few “peents” to its friends up north this spring, spreading the word that there’s a southern oasis in coastal Louisiana worth visiting.