by Gary G. Youngblood
In late February of 2019, I was driving west on Interstate-64 with my young English setter Patches. We were traveling to West Virginia to grouse hunt the last couple of days of the season. My daughter Jody called me in-transit. “Daddy, you aren’t going to believe this … Parker just found a quail egg in the woods,” she said.
“Jody, it’s way too early for quail to be nesting and laying eggs. It’s probably a woodcock egg. That’s the only ground-nesting bird I know that would be laying here in February. Yep, I’ll bet Parker found a woodcock egg. Wow! That’s a little surprising, this early in the year. That Parker, he can find anything, can’t he?” I said.
I told Jody to have Parker take the egg back to the woods and place it as close as possible to the exact spot where he found it. If he could place the egg very close to where he picked it up, the little hen might finish laying her full clutch of four eggs right beside the first one.
Soon, Jody called back and told me that when Parker took the egg back to the woods, he found three more eggs in the spot. The one egg he returned was added to three eggs to make a full clutch.
Those phone conversations with my daughter were the beginning of a grand little adventure of 10-year-old grandson Parker and a winter woodcock nest. The following day, February 27, the woodcock began sitting on her nest fulltime.
As we all expected, Parker began checking the nest daily to see if the eggs had hatched. We took close-up pictures of the woodcock but were careful not to disturb her otherwise. How long would the woodcock sit on her eggs before they hatched? I sent West Virginia biologist friend, Walt Lesser, a note, asking that question. Walt replied that the research literature indicated a woodcock incubation period of 19-22 days. Indeed, the woodcock chicks hatched on March 19, after at least 20 days of incubation.
The male woodcock may be the most amorous and romantic of all birds. Much has been written about the males’ spring breeding display and “sky dance,” yet I’ve seen very little acknowledgment about the courtship display during their southward migration, or even more pronounced, on their wintering grounds. Nonetheless, beginning in the late fall evenings at dusk, woodcock males will often spiral upward several hundred from the ground, twittering and chirping, then dropping down to an open area on the ground, sometimes concluding with their classic nasal “peenting” call that melts the females’ hearts.
The first time I observed this flight activity in mid-December, I thought it was just a matter of untimely spring fever. After seeing it repeatedly, I realized the male woodcock were reasonably serious with their twittering, chirping courtship display. The males are ready to mate anytime – they’re just waiting for the females to decide that such activity is a respectable idea. Like so much in the outdoor world, the females dictate the timing and the outcome.
While Virginia’s Coastal Plain is the more common location for wintering woodcock, a surprising number of birds winter every year in our southern Virginia Piedmont counties. The Piedmont is the mid-state region, the plateau that lies between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Blue Ridge/Appalachian Mountains, covering parts of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. The Piedmont birds seem to be more transient. In Virginia, lots of folks know about the over-wintering birds in our Coastal Plain. But when I started telling knowledgeable people about the woodcock that were wintering behind my house, on a ridge in the central Virginia Piedmont, I could sense their unspoken skepticism. Nonetheless, we have lived here for almost 15 years – in a 25-year-old hardwood clear-cut – and every winter, we’ve had male woodcock flying, twittering, chirping, descending and peenting. They fly from mid-December.
When arctic air masses or heavy snows move in, the wintering male woodcock move out, apparently going either south into Carolina or eastward toward the Coastal Plain. The males will be back when the weather moderates a little – usually within a week or 10 days.
Although we southeastern woodcock hunters and naturalists associate woodcock with wet bottomland areas, wintering birds are often found in higher, drier locations – cutover ridgetops and pine plantations included. Wintering on higher ground may well be a natural thermal adaptation for woodcock. On still nights, the coldest winter air settles to the lower terrain. The higher ground will be warmer during such conditions, so thermal temperatures may factor into the occurrence of wintering birds far removed from the bottomlands. Naturally, since the males are flying, displaying and singing in these areas, winter woodcock nests are found in surprising places. And so it was with Parker’s nest, located on the north side of a Piedmont ridge. The area had a timber harvest a few years before, leaving a scattered overstory of large yellow poplar trees, with briars, brush and young trees growing up underneath.
Woodcock nesting in Virginia is nothing new. In mid-May 1971, I found my first woodcock brood on the Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest in a stream bottom. Since that time, I have regularly found woodcock nests in the Virginia Piedmont Most of the foresters I worked with knew of my woodcock interests and would pass on their field observations. I have over a dozen documented woodcock nests and broods from my central Virginia files, many occurring very early in February and March. Can you picture a woodcock nesting in the mid-winter Virginia snow? They do!
Some of the more surprising instances include a full-clutch nest of four eggs, found on February 15 in Lynchburg. On March 14, one of my cohorts observed a woodcock hen followed by four chicks in the middle of Route 24 on a dry ridgetop near Vera in Appomattox County. Most surprising was a March 25 nest on a dry ridgetop in Amherst County. Tree-planters discovered the nest, which was in the middle of a recent clear-cut, and the hen had absolutely no overhead cover of any type. Except for her well-camouflaged body against the dead leaves, the bird was essentially nesting on bare ground. That’s so out of character for a bird that loves thick, brushy, briar and vine-infested cover. No problem – Mrs. Woodcock successfully hatched that brood with no cover at all. Woodcock are sometimes described as upland shorebirds. Shorebirds nest in the open. So maybe this hen was a genetic throwback to her shorebird and killdeer cousins. Or perhaps she was just a woodcock being a woodcock. Nature is so fascinating!
The earliest record I have of a brood of woodcock chicks in Virginia is February 15 – a hen was found with a brood of chicks in a Cumberland County bottomland. Allowing 21 days for incubation and four days for a hen to lay a four-egg clutch means that mother woodcock laid her first egg no later than January 21. Given that most states in the deep south run their woodcock season until January 31, there appears to be some overlap between winter woodcock nesting and late January woodcock hunting.
Many woodcock hunters will be surprised, and others shocked, to discover that they may be hunting over nesting birds during the last two weeks of January. However, it’s been common knowledge among woodcock experts for a long time that woodcock occasionally nest in the mid-winter.
I am indebted to Dr. Gary Costanzo, Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources Migratory Bird Program Manager, for sharing a 1901 copy of “Two Vanishing Game Birds: The Woodcock and the Wood Duck.” Reprinted from the 1901 Department of Agriculture Yearbook, this historical gem of a booklet was written by A. K. Fisher, Ornithologist, Biological Survey.
Fisher’s primary concerns for woodcock involved the impacts of market hunting, spring hunting on the southern wintering grounds, and mid-summer shooting that was legal in many states. Regarding winter woodcock reproduction, A. K. Fisher writes: “At Covington, LA, young birds fully 10 days old have been found as early as January 29, and in Florida, it is stated, eggs are deposited early in February.”
Among woodcock biologists, the initiation of nesting, whether in Virginia or Louisiana, is believed to be primarily driven by day-length or photoperiod. That’s not too surprising, given the well-recognized photoperiod impact on both bird migration and many reproductive cycles in nature. However, there’s considerable variation from year-to-year in the amount of winter nesting reported by outdoorsmen.
And, at least locally, some believe other factors may be involved. Dr. Jeffrey P. Duguay, Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries Research and Program Manager, points out the anecdotal impact of moisture, “There is occasional nesting in Louisiana, but it seems to be pretty uncommon. From what I’ve noticed, when it does happen, it tends to be in the wetter years.” A 1987 Alabama study by Causey et al. found a correlation between the yearly variations in January mean daily temperature versus the amount of winter nesting. Could a wetter winter also be a warmer winter? It certainly could: nighttime cloud cover reduces radiant cooling, resulting in warmer nighttime temperatures.
A study by Olinde and Prickett published in 1991, highlights both the low incidence and variability of nesting in Louisiana and notes the temperature’s possible impact. Titled “Gonadal Characteristics of February-Harvested Woodcock in Louisiana,” the three-year study found more than 90 percent of the males in gonadal reproductive condition. However, only 2.4 percent of the females were physiologically ready to breed. The ready-to-breed female condition varied annually from 5.9 percent to 1.1 percent. The authors attributed the inconsistent winter nesting in the deep south to variation in temperature combined with the physiological condition that correlates with day length. Their sample of 376 female birds was larger than any previous study, yet it showed that the February harvested birds showed only a very small proportion of the females with ovarian development. Keep in mind that this study was conducted on February-harvested birds, and no February seasons now exist.
Dr. Duguay summarized the current USFW guidance on season closing, “In the eastern region, February hunting for woodcock ended in 1984 and in the central region it ended in 1990 … the federal framework states woodcock hunting can go to January 31.”
And most of the deep south states run their seasons until January 31. Georgia is the deep south exception, with its season concluding in mid-January. I asked Greg Balkcom, Georgia DNR Wildlife Biologist, if their mid-month closing rationale involved winter nesting. “Our woodcock season has been fixed for several years (at least since we started the 45-day season) as the first Saturday after December 4, plus 44 days. Winter nesting wasn’t a big consideration; I just based the hunting season dates on migration timing and highest number of band recoveries by week through the winter,” he said.
Some late January woodcock nesting occurs across the southern wintering grounds. Is it an anomaly – so infrequent that we need not be concerned? Or should the winter nesting reality, albeit minor, be factored into our hunting seasons?
The five southern woodcock experts/biologists who I contacted were universal in their response. The strong consensus was that southern January nesting was infrequent, uncommon and of minor impact to the woodcock population. Michael Hook, Small Game Program Leader, South Carolina DNR, noted that, “January nesting occasionally happens here, but I receive more (reports) during February from my quail hunters pointing woodcock nests. Every three or four years, I’ll get one in January. What’s interesting to me is that there seems to be no difference between the mountains and the coast. We’re just as likely to have reports of nests in either place in February. South Carolina hunters come across January nests so infrequently that I doubt our January season is impacting the woodcock.”
The experts consider habitat, both quality and landscape quantity, to be of overarching importance in maintaining and improving woodcock populations. While mid-winter nesting does infrequently occur, research leads woodcock biologists to view it more as another eccentric oddity of woodcock: interesting, but relatively insignificant concerning population impact.
Dr. David G. Krementz, Scientist Emeritus, USGS Arkansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, has studied woodcock and written extensively about the bird and its management. With his background as a woodcock researcher, Dr. Krementz’s insights also carry some weight. “To be honest, what research we’ve done of the issue leads most of us to believe that winter nesting isn’t that important. We have much bigger fish to fry, for example, can we manage enough habitat on the landscape to make a difference?” he said.
I loved how Greg Balkcom summed it up. “If we can provide good wintering habitat across the south, we can send those females back to the northern breeding grounds in excellent physical condition, which typically leads to more successful nesting. Then hope she will bring all her young back to us next fall,” he said. Amen!
The complexities of woodcock never cease to amaze. It was the biologists’ consensus as well, that for those wintering birds that did nest in the deep south, once their broods were raised, those females would head back north later that spring. With some of the latest GPS research confirming truths about past speculations, more woodcock mysteries will indeed be answered in the future.
