Weekend activity: watch (and listen) for this bird’s extraordinary sky dance
An American woodcock probes for worms and insects in the duff of the spring woods. (Deposit Photos/)This story originally featured on Field & Stream.My woodcock season opens right about now. The landscape is colorless, trees are still black skeletons, but these little birds are seemingly celebrating the coming of spring with a sky dance that few hunters ever witness. The performance may begin as early as February in some places, as late as May in others. Completing their night flights from the south where they overwintered, woodcock seek out hillside pastures or abandoned fields rimmed by woodland and studded with alders, cedars, or thornapples. Here the male—probably hatched in this very place a year or two before—stakes his claim and begins a search for a mate. But it doesn’t come without some effort.Painting a sceneThe opening act begins at dusk with the male making what is typically described as a...