April 22nd, 2013

“He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.”

This is how Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac, begins his poetic description of the “sky dance”, the spring courtship ritual of a little-known bird called the American woodcock.   It is of the shorebird family, but makes it’s home in forests and wetlands.   With short legs on a rotund body, big bulging eyes and a too-long beak,  “attractive” is not a word that immediately comes to mind.  But for entertainment value it has no match.

The male emits a nasal “peent”, and rotates through the cardinal points of the compass broadcasting his message to any females within hearing distance.  Then he takes to the air in a spiral pattern, his flight feathers making a twittering sound that becomes more frantic as he approaches the apex.   Finally he drops from the sky like a fluttering leaf and begins his calls anew.

 

I took the video below with an iPad this past weekend at our cottage near Tobermory on the Bruce Penninsula.  I coaxed my daughter Sydney and her friend Emma to come out to witness the ritual, then went back out on my own.  This is an event I love, and don’t get to witness often enough.  Like making maple syrup, there is a very short window in spring in which to enjoy the woodcock’s antics, and we were lucky enough to time our arrival with his efforts.

Ignore the orientation of the video if you can, but listen – against the backdrop of spring peepers and the wind and waves of Lake Huron – for the peenting, followed by the twittering of it’s spiralling flight.  Watch closely and you’ll see the bird – stage left –  flutter back down to earth and begin his amorous actions again.  Who wouldn’t be moved by such an elaborate show of affection!!

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