American Woodcock in Roeliff Jansen Park, Hillsdale, Columbia County

I joined New York Breeding Bird Atlas this year. New York Breeding Bird Atlas is a citizens’ science project that aims to build an inventory of all the birds breeding in New York State. Participating birders submit data using the eBird app. (You can learn more about it by listening to my interview with Wendy Tocci, the regional coordinator of Hudson Valley, on my radio program Beakuency on WGXC. Listen here.)

I felt much more comfortable using the tools after I had got trained by Kathryn Schneider who is a chair of the Atlas’ steering committee and leading the atlasing effort in the county I live in. One of the specific things we tried here was the Woodcock challenge, as they had remained undocumented or just observed (as opposed to confirmed) in some of our priority blocks.

I had just learned about American Woodcock, the bird sometimes called timberdoodle, a couple of months before the challenge from Elizabeth LoGiudice, an environmental educator, a musician, and fellow programmer on WGXC who produces Echolocation. She told me about the noises they make and the display flights they take in the spring evenings when I interviewed her for the radio ((Listen to this Beakuency episode with Liz on here.)

The male woodcock’s evening display flights are one of the magical natural sights of springtime in the East. He gives buzzy peent calls from a display area on the ground, then flies upward in a wide spiral. As he gets higher, his wings start to twitter. At a height of 200–350 feet the twittering becomes intermittent, and the bird starts to descend. He zigzags down, chirping as he goes, then lands silently (near a female, if she is present). Once on the ground, he resumes peenting and the display starts over again. (via All About Birds)

So when the Woodcock challenge began, I watched youtube videos several times to learn how the flights would look like, and tried to memorize the sounds they make. Then, one April evening I visited Roe Jan Park, which locates in one of the priority blocks.

Me and my partner Pat strolled in the field in the twilight. It felt as if we’re launching a treasure hunt, looking for this strange bird that was new to us. The field was full of sounds but we couldn’t tell what they exactly were, except for the peepers. Little things on the ground hurried away scared by our footsteps, rustling into the grass. We couldn’t see them because it was getting darker and darker and they were small and sneaky. Spring was a noisy time. I wondered if we would be able to hear the quiet twittering sound of Woodcock’s flight.

We arrived at the other end of the field where the wood began. It was past 7pm and the wood looked pitch black inside. I think I had become so used to life not going my way that I didn’t even feel much disappointment. It was rather the feeling of, of course this is how things go, just have to do it many times before I find the bird. That’s when I heard very faint, “meep! meep!”

I gasped. “Meep! meep!” it said again, somewhere in another field that was behind the woods. I was not sure if it was truly their call, what people call peenting. It was irritating that Merlin app just couldn’t seem to hear it. We waited and waited. Finally it confirmed that it was indeed American Woodcock. It was a little hard to believe. But it’s actually not that hard to believe. If you take time to learn where a bird is, when and why it is there, the chance is you do see them. If you do it right, the wish will be granted. Since I started birding I’ve begun to feel a kind of trust that the nature will never fail. I wonder if this sense of trust for the natural world could be the most primitive form of a belief.

As we walked back to the parking lot, the fields that we had walked through were also becoming full of peenting. “Meep!” here, and then “meep!” from a little far. We stood quietly and listen hard, until we finally heard the flight sounds. Then we turned the flashlight on, and went home.