Weird & Wonderful Woodcock

They fly like bats, squeak like pigs, and behave like nothing else alive. But we may be about to lose them forever.

- Ben Macdonald

DUSK SETTLES OVER a forest clearing. A Nightjar churrs. Tawny Owls clamour from the heart of a plantation. Then strange croaks and ‘tiziks’ carry across the sharp outline of the fading pines. There follows an odd, bat-like apparition. The bird flies with a comical lack of urgency. It appears to go round in circles – repeatedly travelling the same prescribed highway in the evening sky. Observers often watch with a sense of bemusement. This is, we might think, a very strange bird. A woodland wader that flies around like a bat, squeaking like a pig. We puzzle, we shrug, and we move on with our daily lives. But in recent decades, breeding Woodcock in Britain have dramatically declined in numbers and range. Now is the time to understand their world.

Few actions are mysterious to those who perform them. Take the man who skips certain stones on a pavement. He does so for a reason. He may look bizarre to passers-by, but intent and purpose dictates his actions. Rarely, if ever, is human or animal action performed without reason. The same is true, of course, for birds. And the same is true for the Woodcock.

This bird may leave us in the dark, but they have a clear strategy for survival that leaves little to chance. Their secret life has as much purpose and order as our own. Woodcock obey the same fundamental ecological rules as any other species. The difficulty is, these rules are hard for humans to decipher. In this article, I will try to lay bare the Woodcock’s life – to show how it makes sense. Few naturalists have cracked the Woodcock.