The Courtship Flight of the Woodcock

The sun had set as more than a dozen of us gathered around in a circle like a group of conspirators, or perhaps we were celebrants, preparing for a religious ceremony. We were not here to stage a ritual drama, but to observe one. We hoped to witness the amazing and bizarre courtship flight of the American woodcock.

Our leader led us out along the trail and hedgerow, and as we reached the center of the fields we began to hear the calls of the woodcock around us. Those with good ears could hear at least four males emitting a single loud, nasal buzz every two to three seconds. After a dozen or more of these calls, the bird would launch into the air.

There was enough light to see the fat-bodied bird as it flew low over the ground, the wings beating in a mad blur. With such an effort, the bird was barely moving forward at all. Slowly he circled around us, higher and higher into the gray sky, easily lost to view if your binoculars wavered for an instant.

Cascading down to our ears was a magical twittering of notes, each one high and hard and never ending in a jazzy repeated rhythm. It was only recently that naturalists knew the sounds came not from the bird's vocal cord, but from those wild wing beats.

As the bird reached a great height over our heads, the circles became smaller and the notes came faster, until they were a frenzied blur of sound. As they suddenly ceased, the bird fell, first like a leaf in the wind, then like a plummeting stone, slipping and sliding to and fro in random descent, until the ground seemed to come gently up to cradle him.

The bird landed near one of us, who motioned us over. From twenty feet away we trained three lights upon the bird, who ignored light and gawkers, caught up in courting bliss. The rare close up of this bird was enough to confirm the suspicion that this was either one of nature's greatest marvels or greatest mistakes.

He was light brown like the dead grass upon which he sat, the back and head decorated with darker streaking and patches. He had no tail and no neck, just belly, head and bill.

What a bill! It was six inches long, and slender as a dagger. Every few seconds it opened wide to let out the buzzy one-note song, and the tips appeared to bend away from each other. The bird had a huge deep, black, cyclopean eye on the side of its head. You could only guess that there was a similar one on the other side. What was the purpose of this amazing body design?

The bill was an efficient earthworm extractor, plunged into the damp earth and able to open at the tip to grasp the wily worm and pull it from its encasing home. The earliest morning bird would never beat this deadly night hunter. It deserves a better name, like whistler or bogsucker, two of its colorful nicknames.

It is even misnamed, living on the earth in moist thickets, not in deep woods, and always close to some open ground. There it stays, needing no tail to steer through trees, or neck to reach up high. With that bill so often buried in the muck, the bird needed a pair of sharp eyes near the back of its head so as to see all around in case of an approaching predator.

With that spectacular display our male was inviting the female, who kept hidden in the small grove of alders nearby, to come out to mate. She might eventually choose any or all of the males around this field in the mating period, depending on some subtle attraction in the aerial show.

Once that was done, she would lay three or four fertile eggs on the ground and plop her round body down upon them. Once hatched, the precocious downy bundles would join the worm team and be fully grown in three weeks. The mother has been known to grasp the flightless young between her stubby legs and carry them away from harm.

What mind imagined this intricate design unveiled by evolution? When we witness and stand in awe of it, we become the image of that mind.