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January Nature Notes: The American Woodcock
Listen--and watch--for the courtship sky dance of the American woodcock.
“Peent!”
An American woodcock (Scolopax minor) suddenly announces his entrance on his traditional stomping ground at the edge of the tree line. “Peent!” he repeats his nasal love note. Head back and long bill thrust skyward, the plump little bird struts with wings drooping and stubby tail fanned. “Peent!” he buzzes. Like a wind-up toy, the fist-sized ball of feathers carries his springtime message in all directions with a stiff-legged gait. “Peent!” he insists with throaty voice, hunching his shoulders and puffing his chest in his courtship display.
Abruptly the raspy calling ceases as he explodes into flight in an exuberant sky dance choreographed by the millennia. Rising steeply, he utters a faint, twittering warble. He circles widely around the amphitheater of the clearing accompanied by the sound of whistling wings as his three outer primaries catch the air. Up and up he goes, his silhouette looking much like a bat’s, scribing steeper and smaller circles as he funnels upward, trilling louder and louder until he is as much as 300 feet in the air and singing a wild, ecstatic, bubbling love song at the apex.
Without warning, he cascades downward, slicing and dipping like a falling leaf, chirping as he descends. With tumbling notes, he spirals down, plummeting in a heart-stopping series designed to illustrate his ardor. Zigzagging earthward, he lands exactly where he began.
Particular about the lighting, the woodcock’s sky dance ends as abruptly as it began when the last glow of twilight leaves the sky. Night after night he repeats the performance. Buzzing, spiraling, circling, fluttering, whistling and warbling, he woos his lady love in the gathering gloom.
Carol McFeeters Thompson is a regular contributor to OutdoorIllinois and the site interpreter at Weldon Springs State Recreation Area.
By: Carol McFeeters Thompson