Long Beaks and Big Eyes

 

Woodcock

        In Canada this week I will take time from fishing to hunt ruffed grouse.  Usually when I hunt grouse I find a few woodcock, but there are fewer each year.  The odd little birds are migrators because they are primarily earthworm eaters, and of course they feed on other grubs and insect larvae under the leaf litter.  So when the ground freezes hard up north, they have to move south.  With a small shotgun and light loads and a close ranging little bird-dog, I would have been elated to find a good flight of fall woodcock in another time, when I was younger. But they, like grouse, are birds of fairly thick cover or timber where they can find the worms in soft ground.

I haven’t often taken a full limit of woodcocks, never ever went out just to hunt them alone.  The taking of woodcock usually comes on quail or grouse hunts.  But northern friends often spend a day just hunting the heavy north-woods cover for a bird they sometimes refer to as a “timber-doodle”.  Woodcock hunters are dog-enthusiasts who once smoked pipes, wore tweed hats and carried 28 gauge doubles, which sold for more than my whole collection of shotguns would bring.  In   those days, years and years back, there were 3 or 4 times more woodcock than today.

Forty years ago in Arkansas, I dropped a limit of eight woodcock in an afternoon of quail hunting along the Buffalo River in early December.  That’s fairly late in the year for these little brown long-billed birds in the Ozarks. Brother are they different to hunt than quail! You find one or two together, but not in a covey. Should a hunter and a good dog have plied those woodlands along a half-mile or so of the river bottom, for a few afternoon hours, chances are there would have been several dozen to be found.  Those numbers are not to be found today. But a hunter who goes after woodcock has to get into the heavy cover, not typically the kind of place you’d look for quail until they are flushed and scattered.

       Woodcock are not much like a quail; they do not exhibit strong swift flight.  They just sort of flutter up from beneath your feet and away, but there’s usually so much heavy growth that they are not easy to hit.  They very often sit back down within 40 or 50 yards of the place they are flushed, but the flight gets longer and stronger when they have been shot at a time or two.

       And they aren’t bad eating; the meat is dark, like that of a dove, but not as dry.  You’d like it perhaps, if you could forget they eat grubs and worms.  That’s not a problem for us grizzled old outdoor veterans.

       Woodcock are beautiful birds, but without any bright color whatsoever.  Their feathers are brown and buff and tan and black with a little white.  They blend into a forest floor’s leaf litter carpet like a green caterpillar in a suburban lawn.  You can’t see one unless it moves. Thirty years ago they nested in the spring near a little wet woodland spot on my land, where worms were plentiful.  But I haven’t seen any here in 20 years. The woodcock I flushed in the spring and fall on my place were easily seen though when they moved, bobbing along looking for worms before they flew.   

       They are about the size of a quail…. heavy, chunky little birds, but with big eyes set toward the back of the head, and bills longer than their legs, for reaching way down into the soil for worms.  The last half-inch or so of the three inch beak is hinged, so that the tip of the bill can probe, search, feel for and grasp any retreating earthworms.  Their mating flight is something to see, with male birds flying high into the sky in a spiral, then gliding   back to the ground to strut before a female.

       I hope to see a woodcock while hunting grouse in Canada.  But I will never shoot another one. Those which come to the Ozarks come from Canada or Minnesota or somewhere up north in the advancing fall, then go on to the south when the ground freezes   Then we’ll have a few woodcock return during the spring, coming back from the deep south, to raise young and spend the early summer. But most go farther north to nest.  In the early spring, if you are lucky and spend a lot of time outdoors, maybe searching the woods for wildflowers or mushrooms, you may come across mating woodcocks flying straight up into the woodland sky in that high spiraling courtship flight.  And then in early summer you may come across a mother woodcock, leading her chicks through the woods, helping them to learn what a tasty morsel an earthworm can be.

 

If you want to learn more about our October 26 swap meet email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or call 417 777 5227.  Read more about the event by reading the details at larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com