Walt LesserWoodcock are currently returning north from their wintering grounds in the southeast, presenting an ideal opportunity for those of us interested in training or exercising our setters. Working our dogs on returning woodcocks without a gun, practicing a “catch and release” form of hunting, is a great way to get exercise and extend training time of a young dog on wild birds. Woodcocks are usually found in West Virginia lowlands after February 20(weather dependent) while hunters are still pursuing grouse during the last of the season. These are males heading north from their wintering grounds and stop only briefly until reaching their desired breeding grounds. They preform a courtship display each morning and evening from the time they leave their wintering area. This is a display you must witness.
We have the responsibility to make certain we are within legal limits of the law before working our dogs after hunting season. Most states have dog training regulations and some Federal lands prohibit dog training outside the limits of hunting season. A further responsibility of ours is to limit the time we work our setters to avoid woodcock nest disturbance or abandonment. Typically, March is a safe month to work the dogs without interfering with nesting in the primary breeding range – with its southern limit being central West Virginia. I recommend that nesting peak times be avoided. Peak hatching dates for Massachusetts and Maine have been recorded as May 1-7 and May 8-15 respectively. Using an average incubation time of 21 days will give some guide as to when most nesting typically occurs at such latitudes. Note also, nest abandonment is less likely to occur in late periods of incubation.
This year, due to a very mild winter, early nesting may occur. there have been reports of early arrivals (late February) in several northern states and one report that said “woodcock have made an early arrival throughout Pennsylvania, and many never even bothered to leave this winter”.
Another benefit of working our setters on spring woodcocks – it gives us an opportunity to photograph our setters working a wild bird without distraction, and therefore perhaps better photos.
Woodcock nest disturbed and abandoned during egg laying or early incubation on April 9 in northern Vermont
Walt Lesser
Thank you Walt. If I’d had this guidance I wouldn’t have made the mistake of flushing a woodcock off a nest myself. It was in mid April in NY and the fishing was best in the afternoon (during the Hendrickson hatch) so I was running the dog in the morning mostly for fun but also to reinforce training. She pointed the hen and I noticed the nest after she flushed. I never followed up to see if she returned – I just quit running the dog – but in light of the knowledge that the nest in the photo above was monitored and the female never returned I feel like there’s a strong probability I caused the nest to fail. Not good. If we’re going to run our dogs on wild birds in spring we have an obligation to cease disturbing birds during the critical nesting period.
Your mention of reports of Woodcock returning to PA already piqued my interest so I took a look at this years reports on the eBird web site. If you’re not familiar with eBird, it’s a citizen science project run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Bird watchers are encouraged to submit their sightings and can use it to keep track of their personal records. At any rate they have a massive amount of data on occurrence/distribution of birds. So I looked at a map of Woodcock observations in March of this year and there are quite a few records already in the northeast US, in fact all the way to the Finger Lakes region of NY and southern Maine. Just for kicks I decided to check the Feb 2017 map and it shows widespread records throughout the eastern US all the way to Travers City, MI / Kingston, Ontario / Middlebury, VT / and Bar Harbour, ME. This URL is long but it will take you to a map of Woodcock sightings in February 2017:
http://ebird.org/ebird/map/amewoo?neg=true&env.minX=-80.09619622802734&env.minY=40.48185215650069&env.maxX=-69.54932122802734&env.maxY=43.80421422551231&zh=true&gp=true&ev=Z&mr=on&bmo=2&emo=2&yr=cur&byr=2017&eyr=2017#
I’m not sure it will be a link so you might have to copy and paste the address into your browser. Not only does it look like it’s time to get out there and enjoy the spring training season it also looks like there’s a strong probability Woodcock will be nesting earlier than normal this year.
Cliff
Good post. I’ve only seen one nesting female that had 4 eggs. It was late March and the next day we got 4 inches of snow. I suspect the hen survived but re-nested. I plan to start getting the dogs out next weekend, weather permitting.
Hello everyone, glad to see you folks in Idaho tuned into the Finger Lakes. So, here in the Finger Lakes, its uncommon but not out of line, to find a woodcock in late February if the weather has been unusually warm. We get to chase grouse in NY til the end of February, and who would not go out if its warm for one or two last chances? There are the ends of the curve, and there is what happens most of the time. I would think here in NY running dogs to find spring migrant woodcock would be disruptive after the second week of April or so, when warm weather is reliable. Are there any western Great Lakes banders that can comment on this?
Thanks to all of you who commented on this post. I would be delighted to hear about anyone’s personnel observation. Thanks to cliff for the bird.org link…this is a great site and contains so much more data than the RGS migration map which is what I used. As to JC’s comment…I would think peak nesting dates for Central NY would be no different than that of Mass. or even here at my elevation. If you want to check on this I suggest you contact someone in the wildlife dept. at Syracuse ESF or Cornell. I would think there should be someone ho has more recently collected data than I used.
Just today I had an interesting time, getting out prior to the expected heavy snowfall. In one hour Kade located 4 woodcocks with 3 points and one stop to flush on a wild flushing bird. This gave me a chance to get some photos and even handle her on one point to encourage staunchness — not that she needed this but it’s something I like to do after gunning season. All birds appeared to be males typical of early migration. I’m afraid this noreaster will put us out of business for a while or maybe even drive birds back in a southerly direction. (:
I’m in NW Minnesota, and I’ve seen nesting start as early as late March and as late as early May – it all depends on when the snow melts and spring arrives. The dates given above as “peak nesting” in MA are likely the peak hatch dates. Incubation takes three weeks. I’ve been a woodcock bander for about 15 years, and the nests that I have seen abandoned after a disturbance have usually had less than 4 eggs (so likely still during egg laying). It does seem like the longer the gen has been incubating, the less likely she is to abandon it. I expect to find the first doodles this week, given the weather forecast.
Thank you for the comments, Donna. Thanks also for pointing out my error – the dates given in my post were indeed peak hatching dates , not peak nesting dates. In his study of woodcock in MA, William G. Sheldon reported “52% of MA nests hatched before May 7 and 69% by May 15”. Incubation is 19 to 22 days. For many of us, I still believe that by halting the running of our dogs by the end of March ( unless we were banding chicks, of course) would get us by peak nesting periods. Granted, there is always a chance of encountering an early nester but this has not been my experience running setters at my WV latitude.