Invasion of the Timberdoodles!

enjoying the stream in the morning light

The day after the big March storm, people noticed a huge fallout of American Woodcock (fondly called "Timberdoodles") in the city. (A "fallout" is when a lot of migrants descend on a place all of a sudden; usually because they;re forced by the weather.) The first #birdcp tweets came from the north end of Central Park, the Loch and Ravine area. Four woodcock...no, six woodcocks, um eight, no, make that twelve... Then the first report from the Ramble, two in the stream on the Point.

So I slogged into the Ramble on the way home from work. Didn't find the ones on the Point, but there were four down in the Oven in the fading light, and then two more in a stream between there and Azalea Pond.

had to share the stream with bathing Grackles, though.  noisy neighbors!

I went back in the morning. Much better light, and even more Timberdoodles. Still two in that stream, and then:

pile o' timberdoodles

A whole pile of them in the Oven. I counted and watched, and then this little scene played out:

into this peaceful scene...	...came a chilly interloper from under the bank!
who waddled over to the pileup...	...and pushed himself into the middle.

So that was six in the Oven before I left for work. Meanwhile, Anders Peltomaa saw nine at the Triplets Bridge, and a Wilson's Snipe. And then the reports really got going. Tom Fiore estimated that there were at least a hundred Woodcock reported in Manhattan, and many more in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Some of these birds were in trouble. Woodcocks have a tendency to fly into building. This is a problem for many birds, but Timberdoodles especially because they don't see directly in front of them very well. Their eyes are way high and towards the back of their head, which is great for scanning for predators, but not so great for flying. According to a New York Times story, the Wild Bird Fund (local wildlife rehabilitators; great people, you should send them money) had 55 Woodcocks brought to them.

Others fared even worse. Woodcocks, as I said, have their eyes placed so they can scan for predators. They need this because they are slow and tasty, and even with the nearly 360-degree vision, they rely heavily on their excellent camouflage. When they're on a forest floor covered in leaves or pine needles, they pretty much disappear. But when thy're on snow, or the bare muddy banks of a stream...well, that's a problem. Birders watched Timerdoodles get snatched up by hawks all day long. Probably at least 50 in Central Park alone; I heard from one birder that he watched a single young Red-Tailed Hawk eat three in close succession. It was a raptor buffet.

Wilson's Snipe!

So when I finally made it to Triplets Bridge, only three of the nine woodcock Anders had seen in the mrning were still there. But the Wilson's Snipe abided, foraging peacefully in the stream.

ruffled

At one point he ruffled himself up and preened a bit. I've never had such a good close view of a Snipe before.

survivor

The remaining timberdoodles were ware buy still active. One came out and walked across the stream near the Snipe, giving me a chance to see both of these similar birds together.

comparison

The Wilson's Snipe by itself gives the impression of being a largish bird. It is not. It was much smaller then the Woodcock, which is itself not huge, being rather smaller than a football.

in the hollow

That woodcock eventually nestled itself in a hollow, where it foraged.

more Snipe

Many of the surviving Timberdoodles flew out that night, but some remained in diminishing numbers. I saw one as late as Sunday in the Ramble. They should be close to finishing up migration at this point, though I know that Gabriel Willow is leading a group to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on Saturday to see their spectacular mating flights.

Return of the Timberdoodles, and other stories

So I've been letting the blog slide lately. Most of that was life getting in the way. Anyway, migrants are starting to come in, and before they become a flood, I'm going to try to catch up with tales of the late winter and early spring.

Late winter is the doldrums--not that much of birdiness in late February and March. In December and January, you have vagrants and too-late migrants showing up and often settling in around feeders or other winter food sources. But the late winter is kind of static--just waiting for the early migrants to show up.

The Killdeer above I found on the northeast shore of Randalls Island at the end of February. It seems to be teh first one seen in New York county this year, and a nice-looking bird. Last year, a pair tried to nest inthe wetlands area on Randall's Island. I wonder if this is one of them.

In a post late last year, I talked about the birds at the plaza of the old International Paper building in midtown. Some of them--two Thrashers, a towhee, a Swamp Sparrow--were still there in mid-January, and at least one was still there in early March.

The thing with unusual overwintering birds is that they tend to stay around whatever food sources they can find until the weather starts warming up around the beginning of March. Then they start moving around, maybe trying to figure out where the heck they're supposed to go in the spring. So if a vagrant or overwintering bird disappears in January or early February, that's a bad sign. For example, the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker I saw a lot in the Midtown East area in December and January, I last saw around January 18, so it probably died. But birds that make it to the end of February and then disappear, may well be OK. Anyway, I was glad to see that this Thrasher made it.

So by now you're probably wondering why this post is called "return of the Timberdoodles". Well, I'll tell you. Timberdoodles are American Woodcock, a football shaped bird with eyes set well back on its head and more nicknames than you can shake a stick at. Timberdoodle, bogsucker, Night Partridge, Labrador twister, hokumpoke, mudsnipe. They come north very early--late January through March--and have an awful time navigating through cities because they don't see very well straight ahead of themselves. As a result, they often get stuck in small urban parks, so it wasn't a shock when two of them showed up in Bryant Park at the same time.

I'm glad I saw these two there, because I didn't see any in Central Park this winter. Woodcocks like places with a lot of underbrush to hide in, and last year, for example, I saw a dozen of so in the Ramble over the course of the late winter and spring. This winter, the Central Park Conservancy in its wisdom decided to clear out almost all the brush and low shrubs in the Ramble, so no good habitat for the Timberdoodles. Because life wasn't tough enough for them on migration already.

The Conservancy's no-brush idea also means it's probably going to be a rotten spring to see migrants in the Ramble. You heard it here first.

Among the full-time residents, the Cardinals started singing in mid-January, and are still going strong. One interesting thing is that there have been several sightings of leucistic males singing, like the one above. (Leucism is a genetic condition of partial loss of feather pigment; in cardinals it makes a normally bright red male loot a lot like the mostly gray-brown female.) It's startling to see what at first appears to be a female Cardinal start belting out a song.