An unending for most birders is experiencing the springtime skydance with the American Woodcock (Scolopax minor). The males are the dancers. In nearby shrubs you may notice females observing in silence. The song and dance performance will long be remembered as extraordinary by all who participate in this springtime ritual of courtship observation.

Visit a clearing near a thicket, preferably just a tad moist. Look and you should listen from your hidden and low viewing point. I often would arrive at the best observation post approximately a half an hour before the drama was scheduled to start. Seated quietly on my tiny campstool, with night binoculars on hand, my companions and I would wait for chunky little brown birds to appear .

How will you know when the dance begins? It was very punctual at just about 22 minutes after sunset each evening when the weather was just right. I never watched them perform this ritual in the rain or on very cloudy evenings.

Once my family discovered this event by way of reading Aldo Leopold’s 1949 classic A Sand County Almanac, it became out of the question to skip this annual milestone. Leopold considered this the initiation of spring in the northern woods and referred to it as the “skydance”.

It can be hard to think these stubby little gamebirds are in the same family as the sandpipers we have seen skittering over the sands along the shoreline. They’ve got very short legs, an unusually long bill that has a specialized tip that’s designed for catching earthworms beneath the surface of the soil. Their mottled brown color looks a whole lot like fallen leaves on the forest floor.

Sometimes there would be more than one male nearby. Those were exciting times. Each male bird kept its own timing therefore you actually could see one ascending whilst you were hearing another make its “peent” sound on the ground. They’d turn and “peent” again in another direction, again and again, presumably to draw the eye of females from all around. The “peent” sounds like that coming from a nighthawk except its a bit deeper buzz.

The stout little gamebird shoots straight up to the sky in silence. The simple truth is that with good hearing or an amplifier you are able to hear his wings twittering which has a tonal sound while he ascends and does spiral loops until he is about 300 feet high before he dives back with twittering sounds at the beginning of his return.The twittering sound is air passing between wing feathers. His zig-zag dive to the same place on the ground is silent apart from the flutterof his smooth wings flapping to a halt. I have no clue how he finds the exact same location everytime he goes up and comes down. But seconds after he lands and settles, he resumes his directional peenting pattern again.

The American Woodcock male usually does the skydance and dive about 6 times each night through the season. So if you arrive in time you ought to have a fine display. They’d resume some time before dawn the subsequent morning. This elaborate courtship ritual persists every night for months, in some areas for approximately four months. It appears to be what the males do as the females hatch the brood and grow into fledgling size and then leave the nest. Initially I believed it was only to attract a mate. Now I wonder if it also has another sort of function that goes beyond the original courtship. Perhaps you would need to ask a woodcock!

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