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This portly fellow is full of surprises, from a sensitive, food-seeking bill to a dramatic, sky-high aerial display.
An early spring arrival from the southern U.S., the American Woodcock is a phenomenal oddity, a master camouflage artist that blends perfectly with the forest floor. Although technically a shorebird, the plump, football shaped loner prefers the forest and fields to water, and goes by several nicknames, including timberdoodle, bog sucker, night partridge, and Labrador twister.
Wiley hunter
The American Woodcock has a long, ultra-sensitive bill that enables it to forage in the ground for earthworms and various insects. What is more, their bill has a flexible tip engineered to open while the bird totters back and forth, probing for prey underground. Add to that large eyes positioned high up on its egg-shaped head to give the American Woodcock 360 degrees of vision and you have a bird particularly adept at detecting predators.
The aerial gymnast
Virtually impossible to see during the day — unless you catch them waddling across the road rocking back and forth as they walk — this curious looking round-bodied brownish bird with a cinnamon belly and diminutive legs also happens to be an extraordinary aerial gymnast. In the spring — sometimes as early as March, when it’s still freezing — male woodcocks perform a high-stakes seduction display known as a “sky dance” in grassy field, usually at the edge of the woods. Every day, at dawn and dusk, he waddles into the field, emits a series of nasal “peents” and catapults himself 300 feet into the sky, his wings beating furiously and making a whistling sound as he flies upward in a wide spiral. The unlikely aerial gymnast zigzags into a descent, until he lands on the ground silently, and then performs the feat all over again, much to a female’s delight.
Family life
Male woodcocks mate with multiple females over the course of a season and have no role in caring for the young. Females make their nests on the forest floor, usually in twig and leaf litter, and incubate one to five eggs for three weeks. The chicks can walk within a few hours of hatching (they’re precocial, like Killdeer), however, it takes baby woodcocks a couple of weeks to learn to fly and probe the ground for food.
Seeing American Woodcocks in Toronto
Arrival date: late February/early March
Departure date: September
Where to see them: Catch the woodcock display at dusk (or dawn!) in Tommy Thompson Park in an open grassy field at the edge of the woods.
Want more birds? Read up about another Toronto summer resident, the Killdeer.
