American Woodcock (Scolopax minor)

Let’s say they were American Woodcocks, so charmingly known as Timberdoodles, although they may have been Ruffed Grouse. The American Woodcock attracts comment and is also called a night partridge, big-eye, bogsucker, and mudbat. I caught a glimpse—almost too generous a word given the brief time I saw them—of three that fed on the forest floor as they rapidly fluttered to camouflage themselves in the duff and shrubs that edged the trail. The Woodcock is a shorebird in the sandpiper family that forages in young forests and shrubby places, digging for worms with its long, slender beak, which ends in a flexible tip. As soon as I saw this passage about their hunting behavior, I knew I had to quote it, “A woodcock may rock its body back and forth without moving its head as it slowly walks around, stepping heavily with its front foot. This action may make worms move around in the soil, increasing their detectablity.” At first I read this as delectability, which I find a little more amusing, but I’m still left thinking that they are clever as well as pretty darn cute.