For this author, the arrival of the first transient woodcock in his north Buckinghamshire wood come October or November heralds the advent of winter. Across the British Isles, the woodcock population in the colder months is made up of both residents and visitors – and for interesting reasons.
FOR those FJ readers unfamiliar with it, the Eurasian woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) is a portly wader in the sandpiper family, related to the snipes and phalaropes. But unlike most wading birds, it is associated with woodland or heathland rather than water bodies.
It is largely crepuscular (dusk and dawn) or nocturnal, solitary or in pairs. Woodcocks tend to rest up during the day on the ground in wooded places – where they also breed – and venture forth at dusk as night falls to fly to more open areas to probe with their long beaks in damp ground for earthworms and other invertebrates before returning to their treed refuge at first light to huddle down for the day. There, woodcocks sit tight, trusting their camouflage to avoid detection and flush from almost under your boots to escape in their typical short but explosive zigzag flight.
Woodcocks are native to Britain, and many birds choose to live in our woods and forests year-round. However, we also receive and host a massive influx of hundreds of thousands of these birds each winter. Some reliable estimates are between 700,000 and 1,200,000 arriving during November, December, and January. They migrate from the frozen steppes and boreal forests of northern Europe, including the Baltic States, Russia and Siberia.
THE OVER-WINTERERS
These migrants tend to arrive en masse or in ‘falls’ in late October or early November, often against the backdrop of a full moon, sometimes called a ‘Woodcock Moon’.
Such long-distance travellers may break the journey in transit with a number of stop-overs each lasting several days.
A staple food of woodcocks everywhere is soil invertebrates, especially earthworms and grubs. As winter takes a grip in the boreal forest zone of Scandinavia across to Siberia, the frozen soil would make it challenging to probe down deep for such morsels, so birds such as woodcock need to migrate to warmer yet wetter climes such as the UK offers to escape the grip of the northern-latitude winters.
Most migrants will have departed Britain on their return flight by the end of March, though it may be one to two months later before they finally touch down in their boreal breeding sites. Globally, populations are considered stable. That leaves the residents behind.
THE LOCALS
So what is the situation for the stay-at-home UK woodcock?
At the start of the breeding season in May and June, males exhibit a bizarre behaviour called ‘roding’. Resident male woodcocks stake claims to their breeding territories by flying along or patrolling their boundaries at dusk and giving a mixture of calls.
Long-term studies of this bird in the UK are under the wing of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT). An army of volunteer birders and hunters collaborate with these two organisations and others in periodic structured surveys to monitor the numbers of such roding males in over 800 sites once a decade and track the trends in populations of this charismatic woodland component.
POPULATION TRENDS
In wildlife management, establishing and monitoring trends is more valuable than absolute numbers and guesstimates. And stay-at-home woodcock stocks are no exception. First conducted in 2003, and repeated in 2013, these 10-year surveys employ a specially developed, repeatable methodology that relies upon the male woodcock’s conspicuous ‘roding’ display to judge numbers and look for indicators of best habitats.
And what do the surveys reveal? The number of this woodland wader that breed in Britain dropped by 29 per cent between 2003 and 2013. The area in which they breed shrank too, having contracted by over half between 1970 and 2010.
Like other woodland bird species, reputable scientific organisations tell us how around a third of this avifauna in the UK have become rarer over the past 40 years. The findings of the 2023 exercise are being number-crunched and will be on the on the GWCT website soon.
Since the resident UK woodcock population is in frank decline, the woodcock was upgraded – or maybe downgraded – from amber- to red-listed in a 2015 review of the species breeding population status in the UK’s Birds of Conservation Concern, given its long-term decline in breeding status and range contraction.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
As with everything in nature, there are no hard-and-fast rules about anything all the time. The woodcock is no exception.
The reasons behind the erosion in our breeding stocks may be complex and cumulative, but they are likely to comprise declining woodland management, increased browsing by deer, the drying out of woods, maturing conifer plantations, growing recreational disturbance and more predation.
According to those in the know, woodcocks are a further casualty in the reduction of active traditional management such as coppicing, glade creation and ride maintenance in our much-neglected woodlands. These practices allow light to reach the woodland floor and encourage scrub and shrub layers which are vital for woodcock foraging, nesting and displaying. Overharvesting through shooting is not cited as a factor in the UK.
ON THE MENU
Traditionally, the woodcock is a prized quarry amongst the shooting fraternity because of the difficulty of hitting one given its rapid zig-zag flight – and it tastes good. The gourmets claim this species is one of the best-eating wild birds and know it as ‘king of the game birds’.
Shooting fraternities are adamant that taking birds for the pot is not a major factor in the demise of the resident populations. Post-COVID, the Shooting Times Woodcock Club refloated its annual gala dinner in Mayfair.
WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
Despite the woodcock’s name and strong association with woodland, to say they will settle in just any forested area here is a gross misrepresentation. For example, young sycamore or birch stands are much better at supporting earthworms, and as a result woodcock are commoner there, compared to, say, a drier, more acidic beech woodland.
Interpreting wildlife data is never straightforward but younger, wetter stands – including conifers such as Sitka spruce – are amongst the favoured haunts and the presence of birch trees seems a good positive indicator.
So let me dabble in a bit of crystal ball gazing.
Open, young, wet forest or treed habitats appear an essential feature for flourishing woodcock life here. Birch seems a good indicator of suitable sites. One wonders if the push to create new woodlands in these islands might actually provide additional favourable habitat for this bird for a number of years until the canopy closes. Possibly existing open woods that are being left to regenerate or rewild to spread naturally may boost good habitat and aid woodcock recovery as well.
Whether the vast areas of neglected woodland here will ever be nursed back into good or optimum condition through sustainable management remains to be seen.
Watch this space and await the results of the 2023 woodcock monitoring survey and the next in 2033.
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