American woodcock

American woodcock
Brown bird with long bill, surrounded by vegetation
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Scolopacidae
Genus: Scolopax
Species:
S. minor
Binomial name
Scolopax minor
  Breeding
  Year-round
  Nonbreeding
Synonyms
  • Philohela minor Gray, JE
  • Rusticola minor Vieillot, LJP

The American woodcock (Scolopax minor), sometimes colloquially referred to as the timberdoodle, mudbat, bogsucker, night partridge, or Labrador twister[2][3] is a small shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America. Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage.

The American woodcock is the only species of woodcock inhabiting North America.[4] Although classified with the sandpipers and shorebirds in the family Scolopacidae, the American woodcock lives mainly in upland settings. Its many folk names include timberdoodle, bogsucker, night partridge, brush snipe, hokumpoke, and becasse.[5]

The population of the American woodcock has fallen by an average of slightly more than 1% annually since the 1960s. Most authorities attribute this decline to a loss of habitat caused by forest maturation and urban development. Because of the male woodcock's unique, beautiful courtship flights, the bird is welcomed as a harbinger of spring in northern areas. It is also a popular game bird, with about 540,000 killed annually by some 133,000 hunters in the U.S.[6]

In 2008, wildlife biologists and conservationists released an American woodcock conservation plan presenting figures for the acreage of early successional habitat that must be created and maintained in the U.S. and Canada to stabilize the woodcock population at current levels, and to return it to 1970s densities.[7]

  1. ^ BirdLife International (2020). "Scolopax minor". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2020: e.T22693072A182648054. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T22693072A182648054.en. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  2. ^ The American Woodcock Today | Woodcock population and young forest habitat management. Timberdoodle.org. Retrieved on 2013-04-03.
  3. ^ 10 Fun Facts About The American Woodcock. audubon.org.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kaufman 1996 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sheldon 1971 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cooper was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kelley, et al. 2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).