Last night Audrey and I took a wildlife class looking for Woodcocks.  It was a lot of fun.  We didn’t even know what a woodcock was, but we had heard them before.  You probably have heard them before too and thought they were frogs.  The males come out right at sunset and do this amazing sky dance to attract females.  They make this ‘peent’ sound and fly in spirals way up in the air.  When they come down they fall like a leaf and make the most amazing sounds with their wings!  They look like a sandpiper don’t you think?  They use their long beaks to hunt earthworms.  They do this dance from now until the end of March or early April.  You can find them in open farm fields, where there are small clusters of trees.  Once you hear the sound of them, you will find them easy to spot.  The best part?  They are pretty unconcerned with you.  Meaning, you can get right next to them and they won’t fly.  In fact, once our little woodcock almost landed on someone in our group! 

The video below let’s you see them in their habitat:

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“The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They live on the land, but not by the land”. Aldo Leopold