Our Role in Woodcock Conservation

It is an interesting challenge to investigate the significance of Little Compton landscapes for various species. Conservation work requires us to think regionally, in terms of watersheds and larger areas, but how do we get scientifically valid information about the role of local places in the fate of a population or a whole species? For this article I sought to learn about our habitat for birds in general, and for the American Woodcock in particular.

The website of Partners in Flight presents a rich overview of the birds' situation. That organization highlights the urgency of our bird conservation responsibilities. Between 1600 and 1900, 75 species of U.S. birds and mammals became extinct; 75 more disappeared between 1900 and 1980. Current rates are roughly two per year, and some ornithologists estimate many songbird species are vanishing at 1% annually. Surveys of Woodcock breeding areas or 'singing grounds' indicate 2% annual losses recently (1985-95), and 2.4% annual losses longer term (1968-94).

The Woodcock, a plump quail-sized creature with mottled black, brown, buff and gray feathers, round eyes and a long spear of a bill, is my favorite bird. It's famous for its late winter and early spring flight displays. The males fly higher and higher over the breeding grounds, making a twittering sound. When they reach 200-300 feet they become silent for a moment, then plummet with a melodic cry in a zig-zag to land suddenly and give a call which most people describe as a 'peent,' but which sounds to me like a burst on a kazoo.

Because it probes for earthworms with its long bill, it needs dense, second-growth wet woods, which Little Compton provides in abundance. This past spring our air was lively with Woodcocks, flying at dusk and dawn, and sometimes late into the night with a full moon. The map accompanying this article displays results of a recent count by the annual Breeding Bird Survey. It reveals that Woodcocks are shorebirds. Little Compton appears in the thin black line, indicating relatively high numbers, down the Atlantic coast.

Woodcocks are disappearing. Hunters kill 1.1 million annually, but the main threat appears to be habitat loss. In one West Virginia study, 127 Woodcock sites were observed in the mid 70s and again in the mid 90s. Only 15% of the sites were still good habitat. 41% had become mature forest, 24% open fields or pastures, and 9% human developments. Multiply this pattern over the entire range of the Woodcock, and you see why every acre counts.

Living in pictorial landscapes as we do in Little Compton, we may not grasp the speed of land clearances across our region, and their effect on songbirds. When we consider bulldozing another lot for a project, it may seem a small loss in habitat. And this may be true for many species, such as deer, coyotes, crows, woodchucks and foxes. These creatures thrive in human-style landscapes, with fields and edges. But birds are another matter. Every patch of dense wet second-growth woods is precious to Woodcocks. And an acre saved for them matters a great deal in the big picture.

In this case the biological region, or bioregion, includes the East Coast and Mississippi River Flyways, and to a lesser degree much of the Northeast and the Southeast. Woodcocks are a mostly invisible treasure living among us, shyly displaying their strange ways. Everyone who seeks to understand their ecology shares a great intellectual task. Everyone who protects a green patch for them joins an aesthetic and ethical movement as well. Such a person is entitled to refer to that patch as 'my Woodcock singing ground.'