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 ...

The American woodcock has one of the oddest appearances of any bird in Pennsylvania, with an amazingly long bill protruding from a round head atop a stocky, round body. It also has one of the more ...

The first day of spring is still a month away, yet many Georgia songbirds already are bursting out in song. Other are performing elaborate courtships to lure nesting mates.

In his classic A Sand County Almanac (1949), wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold described the male American woodcock’s courtship display as a “sky dance.” I call it my favorite harbinger of spring. A few ...

Our polite throng inched closer. Those with front row places where only 15 paces from the star. No fence, platform or bouncer separated them from the performer. And in a move suggesting a stage dive, ...

Woodcocks are known for their unique and almost comical way of walking, which seems a better fit for a 1970s disco than the woodlands in which they live. The birds in this YouTube video step forward, ...

I’ve decided this would be the year I would try to see some American Woodcocks and their famous spring “sky dance.” Do you know of any secret places where I should look for them? No way, Dennis, I’m ...

Bogsucker, night partridge, Labrador twister, mudsnipe, timberdoodle — the American woodcock goes by many names, but there’s no mistaking the odd-looking bird’s unique courtship call. “To me, it kind ...

One of the best of nature’s predictable shows begins in March — the dance of the woodcock. The exact time and place is difficult to know, but it’s a great harbinger of spring. Unless heavy rain or ...

Ice covers have begun to leave southern Minnesota lakes, and the first common loons have arrived. We have seen an increase in the numbers of waterfowl, such as canvasbacks, redheads and ring-necked ...

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Woodcock may be the strangest North American upland bird. They have upside-down brains, eyes on the backs of their heads, long probing beaks, red breast meat, and white leg meat. Their ...