Woodcock

How to Age And Sex American Woodcock

September 6, 2024 by Ruffed Grouse Society

by Stefan Nelson | RGS & AWS Forest Wildlife Specialist and Sam Lau | RGS & AWS Integrated Habitat Biologist Three Ways to Determine Woodcock Gender There are several ways to determine the sex of an American woodcock, although these methods should only be used on birds at least one month old or older. For the most accurate determination of sex, it’s best to use a combination of the methods below as individual methods may sometimes be unreliable. It’s also good to remember that females are typically larger than males. Two features on the wing can be used to help determine the sex...

Here in November? The Challenges of American Woodcock Migration and Identifying Stopover Habitats in the Southeast

September 3, 2024 by Ruffed Grouse Society

by Durrell Smith As we walked the trail into what seemed to be a never-ending mess of vines, thorns and briars, the question of traversing such nasty cover was disregarded. This was happening. Even more important to ask myself was, “Where was that last woodcock here in November?” Every year, the American woodcock undertakes a perilous migration journey, subjecting themselves to multiples challenges as they journey thousands of miles between their summer and winter ranges. As a southeastern woodcock hunter, I often think about how to better identify their stopover habitats in the Southeast. Yes, migration is a critical period in the...

Celebrating 10 Years of the American Woodcock Society

February 15, 2024 by Ruffed Grouse Society

Photo by Tim Flanigan Why American Woodcock? Why AWS? For more than 60 years, the Ruffed Grouse Society has fervently promoted stewardship for forest wildlife. Our vision is to create landscapes of diverse, functioning ecosystems that provide habitat for wildlife and opportunities for people to experience them. Ruffed grouse drove our formation and growth, and now we’ve expanded our work in sustainable forest management to new places. Across most of their range, ruffed grouse live alongside the American woodcock, a migratory gamebird that occupies an entirely unique geography during migration – the Atlantic and Gulf Coast Piedmont and Coastal Plains. In fact, research suggests that 1 in 3 woodcock...

Mid-Winter Woodcock Nesting

December 14, 2021 by Ruffed Grouse Society

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...

Ruffed Grouse Society & American Woodcock Society partner with onX Hunt to support our mission for healthy forests and abundant wildlife

April 5, 2021 by Ruffed Grouse Society

CORAOPOLIS, Pa. (April 5, 2021) — The Ruffed Grouse Society & American Woodcock Society are excited to announce a new corporate partnership with onX Hunt. onX Hunt is a mapping app that enables users to know where they stand, and features multiple disturbance layers where grouse and woodcock thrive. The onX Hunt partnership will directly contribute to the RGS & AWS mission, supporting healthy forests, abundant wildlife, and conservation ethic in 2021. RGS & AWS will also work with onX to increase access and opportunity afield. [Read more…] about Ruffed Grouse Society & American Woodcock Society partner with onX Hunt...

RGS & AWS Northeast Forest Conservation Update: Part 2

February 25, 2021 by admin

How the Northeast’s public and private landownership patterns influence RGS & AWS conservation approach.

By Todd Waldron, Northeast Forest Conservation Director

In the most recent RGS & AWS conservation update from the Northeast Region, we looked at the Northeast Upland Gamebird Technical Committee 2017 findings in terms of how diminishing forest habitat diversity is impacting grouse, woodcock and many other forest wildlife populations. One consideration for how RGS & AWS and our partners will need to approach this challenge is to consider land ownership patterns across the Northeast.

[Read more…]

Woodcock

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