Woodcocks, pop culture’s oddball birds, are drawing fans to their nesting grounds | Canada Voices

Bryant Park hadn’t seen this many paparazzi since its heyday as the venue for New York Fashion Week.

For most of April, photographers, influencers, journalists and birders flanked the midtown park’s garden beds, fixated on a boogying, body-rocking charmer with unmistakable main character energy. When you’re an American woodcock, your fans come to you.

Also known as the timberdoodle, the American woodcock is an oddball. The brownish-tan bird is stout and short-legged, with a comically long beak and big, anime-character eyes. It looks like a child’s drawing of a bird come to life.

During April to mid-May – peak woodcock season in southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes region, the U.S. Upper Midwest and northern New England – you can see the birds dramatically strutting about while foraging in the grass.

At night, male woodcocks fill the air with a characteristic “PEENT” call between performances of their trademark “sky dance.” This involves launching themselves 60 to 100 metres into the air before free-falling back to the exact spot they started from. Their flight is announced by a twittering sound, made by air passing through their feathers.

The woodcock’s odd looks and behaviour are by design. Its long beak is perfect for probing for earthworms and catching the insects it eats. Its big eyes are set far back in its skull to provide nearly 360-degree vision. And that derpy, daytime foraging walk that lit up social media this April? There are two common theories.

“We think it’s some kind of mechanism to hear or feel the worms,” says Kathy Jones, a biologist with the conservation organization Birds Canada. “The other theory is the action somehow causes little vibrations in the soil and it brings the worms up to the surface.”

A high-effort courtship ritual

As for the “PEENT” call and sky dance, “That’s romance,” says Jones, who is based in Port Rowan, Ont. By vocalizing and landing in the same spot, the male is trying to lure a female to his (temporary) patch of earth.

“This is their little world and they want to bring the females to them … they’ll watch and decide if they want to have anything to do with this male or not,” she explains.

But any romance is short-lived. Both likely mate more than once, with females single-handedly building ground nests, brooding eggs and raising the quickly maturing young as single moms.

Jones co-ordinates Ontario’s participation in the annual American Woodcock Survey, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service project delivered in Ontario by Birds Canada. The survey monitors breeding populations of this bird species, which are currently in decline largely because of habitat loss (You can help woodcocks and other migrating birds by adding native plants and shrubs to your garden, says Jones).

Uniquely among birds, American woodcocks mate while migrating from their winter habitat in the southern U.S. to southeastern Canada and the Eastern U.S.

This rare behaviour is known as itinerant breeding, and recent research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences indicates some female woodcocks will even create multiple nests along the route of their migratory journey. This means they may have more than one brood per season.

With their expressive behaviour and quirky looks, it’s unsurprising that woodcocks are a top draw for bird watchers.

“They remind me of those animals that are so cute because of their striking uniqueness, such as frogs or capybaras,” says Anna Grindey, an Edmonton birder who sought out woodcocks in Halifax’s Crystal Crescent Beach Provincial Park during a mid-April visit. Grindey and her partner observed three males just before the couple were about to give up and leave the park.

How to spot a woodcock firsthand

Check the eBird app for local woodcock sightings and plan your visit from 45 minutes before to 45 minutes after sunset. Or opt for a guided event: Many bird and naturalist groups in southern Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia host evening woodcock walks in April through to mid-May.

“It’s our most well-attended event for sure,” says Jessica Brousseau, a facilitator with Feminist Bird Club’s Toronto and Hamilton chapters. Brousseau says the group’s annual woodcock events at Tommy Thompson Park in Toronto and McMaster Forest Nature Preserve in Hamilton, draw 100 and 60 participants, respectively.

“Trying to find this tiny, batlike, weird chaos goblin coming down from the sky with all the chirping” is fun, Brousseau says.

Fortunately, unlike reclusive owls, woodcocks don’t shy away from respectful observation. Stay on the trail. Don’t touch or feed them. Don’t play audio callbacks or use flash photography.

“Just be mindful you’re in their space,” Brousseau says.

Though it may take patience, all the waiting is well worth it.

“Watching and listening to the woodcock display was one of the moments that will live in my own personal birding hall of fame forever,” says Grindey. “Watching them fly was surreal and an experience I will never forget.”