A Shorebird in the Forest

A small strip of open water reflected the blazing sunset sky. Although my partner and I dug our toes into a sand beach at the Day Lake Recreation Area near Clam Lake, Wis., the punky ice with glimmering puddles of gold prevented any notion that we might still be on vacation in coastal South Carolina. Surprisingly, we experienced similar air temperatures on both beaches, but a stiff ocean breeze had chilled us even more than looking at this frozen lake.

Sunset at the Day Lake Recreation Area near Clam Lake, Wis., 

 

The beach in South Carolina got surprisingly chilly once a breeze picked up!

With one last glance at the fleecy orange clouds, we moseyed back to the car and started rolling slowly down the entrance road. In just the same stretch as last spring, a bit of movement caught our eye, and we followed the fluttering descent of an American woodcock as he returned to his dancing ground. Starting up his slow rhythm of distinctive peent calls, the small gent directed romantic messages to any female woodcocks hiding in the scrubby forest nearby.

Just having returned from a week of birdwatching on the Atlantic coast, the plump-bodied, long-billed silhouette of this “hokumpoke” reminded us of the sanderlings, dunlins, and willets we’d watched scurry ahead of the waves. It’s a strange fact that despite their preference for damp thickets instead of beaches, woodcocks are the most numerous sandpiper in North America.

American woodcocks are the most numerous sandpiper in North America.
Photo by Keith Ramos, USFWS.

Sandpipers are a group of small shorebirds in the family Scolopacidae who like to feed on little critters picked out of soft soil. Long, narrow wings aid in their impressive migrations from northern breeding habitat to southern wintering grounds. Their streaky gray-brown camouflage blends perfectly into the forest floor, or matches sand, rocks, dune grass, and wrack. And that camouflage comes in especially handy when they sit on their eggs, since their nests are just scrapes in the ground.

Sanderlings probe wet sand quickly for bits of food. Photo by Emily Stone.

This lesser yellowlegs stalked a mudflat and seemed to be catching aquatic worms.
Photo by Emily Stone.

Willets are shorebirds who breed in the Western U.S. and Canada. Photo by Emily Stone.

In the fading light, we could just make out the shape of the woodcock’s head bobbing and long beak opening in a hiccup-like reflex. Peent. Like all sandpipers, the tip of the woodcock’s beak is filled with touch sensors similar to those found in your tongue, but more focused on sensing vibrations. Can you imagine thrusting your tongue into mud and feeling a worm at the other end? Even if you could, how would you grab the tasty tidbit inside a narrow hole? Sandpipers solved this problem with rhynchokinesis (rin-koh-ki-nee-sis), which is just a fancy way of saying that they can flex open the tip of their upper mandible instead of opening their whole beak evenly like chopsticks.

Despite many similarities, sandpiper species forage using a variety of techniques. On the beach, we watched flocks of sanderlings chase the waves, then rapidly probe wet sand like feathered sewing machines. A willet spun in circles and grabbed for prey visible in the surf. Lesser yellowlegs stalked aquatic worms with staccato motions in the mudflats. I’ve never been lucky enough to watch a woodcock feeding, but in a video I found online, the bird repeatedly vibrated their beak into the ground like a gentle jackhammer, then paused thoughtfully. Presumably they were waiting to sense the vibrations of invertebrates in the soil with their beak.

What astounded me most about the video was how much time the “bog sucker” spent alone with their head in the sand—far more than any of the other shorebirds I watched feeding. For a tasty prey animal, that’s dangerous! Adapting to this behavior has rearranged woodcocks’ entire noggin. As their eyes moved upward and backward to give them a 360 degree view while feeding, their ears found a new home below their eyes and their nostrils approached the base of their bill. Then the parts of their brain that control movement migrated from the rear of their skull to the top of their spinal column. Their brain has essentially turned upside down to match their feeding posture!

After two minutes of peents, each preceded by a little hiccup if we were quiet enough to hear it, the “Labrador twister” burst up from the gravel with twittering wings. Rising in a broad spiral, the “timberdoodle” cleared the treetops and circled toward the gray clouds. Fatter than a robin, smaller than a grouse, the winged shape twittered ever higher into the navy blue. About 200 feet up, the twittering became sweet chirping, and the “night partridge” sideslipped down like a falling leaf. Peent. Back on his gravel dancing ground, the male continued his courtship display.

The entire sandpiper family is known for elaborate, fluttering mating displays with their own weird sounds. Maybe someday I’ll visit the Arctic tundra where many of them breed and witness that wonderful pageant of nature.

In the meantime, I’m happy to watch our most common local shorebird peent on a gravel road and flutter above a patch of tangled Northwoods. The female woodcocks laying low may pretend to be unimpressed by this display, but my partner and I have no reason to hide our delight.

 

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.