Timberdoodling With Friends

We went out last evening at sundown with our friends Kate and Tim to listen and look for American Woodcock, aka Timberdoodles, doing their mating performance (description below). They live next to a rail trail that bissects several miles of fields and wetlands.

Kate and Tim strolling ahead of us. They are such a lovely couple. Tim is a
bird and nature artist as well as a birder

Our first sighting was of an American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) flying by. As it got darker, a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) hooted from the woods. At about the point it was fully dusk ... 

Swamp habitat along the rail trail. If you look closely, you can see Venus shining in the cloudless sky.

... the timeberdoodles started their displays. There must have been up to a dozen of them on the mile-long path we walked. They are difficult to see but unmistakeable to hear; at one point,  however, one burst into flight right in front of us and went right over our heads! 

Finally, as it faded to nighttime, we walked ahead to a marshy area where we heard the even more incredible "winnowing" sound of Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata). This wild sound, a little like the call of the Laughing Kookaburra, is indescribable -- and hearing it was a first for me. I tried to record it on my phone to post here, but wasn't successful. Next time.

All in all, a wildly successful outing!!

*The American Woodcock display begins with the male's making a funny "peent" sound on the ground. They do this every few seconds for what might be up to five minutes before they launch into the sky, flying higher and higher in circles as their wings make a whistling noise. At the apex, they begin their descent, and a combination of their wings and their voices produce rich whistling/warbling/chirping noises as they spiral back down to the exact spotted they started from. Then they do it all over again, for as much as an hour. All the males are competing for the attention of females who are watching from the edges and get to choose a winner to be their mate!

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