Woodcock Wooing

     To me, the courtship displays of male American woodcocks, and the peeping of male spring peeper tree frogs and the trilling of male American toads, are THEE icons of spring in southeastern Pennsylvania where I live.  To hear them, usually in the same bottomland, overgrown habitats at the same times, is to know that spring has arrived.  Those displays, peeping and trilling, mostly at dusk and into the night, bring the genders of three species together to start a new generation of their kinds.      Soon after sunset every evening, except stormy ones, during March and April here in southeastern Pennsylvania, as in many wooded areas in the eastern United States, male American woodcocks present elaborate courtship displays to entice females of their kind to them to mate.  To experience those intriguing displays, find an open area or an overgrown field bordering shrubby bottomland woods where you think woodcocks could be and stand facing the glowing western sky after sunset.  If woodcocks are in the area, you will soon know it.
     Each male woodcock exits his home on the dead-leaf, woodland floor and flies to a nearby open area with patches of bare soil in it.  If he comes out of the woods before the sunset, he will resemble a giant bumblebee with a long nose.  The famed naturalist and nature illustrator, Roger Tory Peterson, called woodcocks "long-nosed recluses" because they have lengthy beaks and live individually hidden away on forest floors. 
     Each male woodcock lands on a bare spot of soil in a clearing near his woodland home and begins vocally "beeping" about once every second for about a minute.  Then he takes off in spiraling flight upward while his wings twitter rythmically until he is almost out of sight in the sky.  As he flutters across the sky, he vocally utters several short series of musical notes that float down to earth, "tu tu tu, tu tu tu" and so on.  Then he dives to the ground and lands on the same bare patch of soil, or another one, where he starts his performance again, and again as the sunset fades from the sky and he disappears from sight.  At times he will be interrupted by hunger and females coming to him to mate.      American woodcocks are inland sandpipers that have departed from the usual habits of their family.  Instead of gathering in flocks on mudflats and coastal beaches like most sandpiper species do, woodcocks are individuals on forest floors inland.  Their plumage takes on the colors and patterns of dead, fallen leaves of their habitat, allowing those birds to blend into their surroundings to the point of being invisible until they move.  Woodcocks poke their long beaks into moist, soft soil to pull out earthworms and other invertebrates that they consume.
     Almost all woodcocks go farther south for the winter and return north in March to reproduce themselves.  Each hen, after mating, lays four eggs on the forest floor.  All sandpiper species lay clutches of four eggs, and most species lay them on the ground, which demonstrates their descending from a common ancestor.  And like all sandpiper chicks, woodcock chicks hatch with their eyes open, fully fuzzy and ready to leave their nests to feed themselves on a variety of invertebrates.
     Woodcocks are interesting birds with intriguing courtship displays.  Though they are seldom seen because of their beautifully camouflaged plumage, their courtship displays are well worth watching near their woodland homes.