I Heard an American Woodcock Before the Storm

My next door neighbor texted the other night that she was hearing an American Woodcock (photo left) in her yard. I didn’t see the text until very early the next morning. They are only heard after dark. Regret gripped me – why had I not thought to listen for woodcocks – now is when they are arriving from the south! I really wanted to hear this bird, and a massive storm was coming which might drive it away. Then I realized it was still dark out – maybe I could still hear it. I opened the front door to listen. You never know.

Louis Brodeur/Macauley Library

At first I heard nothing, but if I have learned anything from my thousands of hours of looking or listening for birds, it’s to hang in there a bit longer than you’d prefer. I stepped out onto the front porch, trying to ignore the fact that it was well below freezing and I wasn’t dressed for an unexpected outing. A few minutes later and much to my surprise, I heard the the buzzy, distinctive “peent, peent, peent” call of the bird. “Ah, spring,” I thought, feeling thrilled and lucky.

This amazing video (below) shows what I would have seen in the dim early morning light if I’d walked over to the neighbor’s yard where the sound came from. The display flight and strutting of the woodcock, aka the timberdoodle, is a marvelous, magical spectacle.

I’m not sure how the woodcock fared in the foot of snow we had the following day, but temperatures are warming now, and it may still be here. If so, its display will attract females who will watch him from nearby cover. If one is impressed, they’ll mate, and she will select a nest site nearby. He’ll continue his nightly sky dance while she raises the kids. We’ll keep listening, and if we hear the display, we’ll start to imagine woodcock nests hidden on the nearby forest floor.

Everybody has different opinions about the arrival of spring. Before I was a birder, it seemed that, other than a date on the calendar, spring never definitely arrived. Winter always seems to sneak back in between warm, sunny days until all of a sudden it’s summer. But the arrival of an early migrant like a woodcock is an indisputable and reassuring sign of spring. Although it might look like winter again, the woodcocks are here to stay, and that means it really is spring.