My woodcock banding season spring 2007

Just for info purposes, I have a banding permit since 1983.

Woodcock banding recovering. October 10, 1987. 

To accomplish this most delicate task, I've always been very anal about my dogs behaviour in the field. They have to comply to call backs and to the ''Down'' at a rate of 100%. Without these basic rules, the work becomes risky, and it's something I am nothing willing to let slide. In my own opinion, for a dog to become a somewhat broke assistant bander, it has to have a minimum of 2 years experience hunting in the field.

I found this nest on April 1st in Southeast PA. Kevin Weaver Southeast PA

I went out 31 times last spring with my dog Anouk. Most of these outtings were specific to banding woodcocks, but besides banding duties, I wanted to expose Anouk to her first woodcock in order for her to assist me in banding birds, so you can call it training if you will. She collaborated wonderfully and each and every nest that she found, none of the eggs were damaged. On occasion, some of the females had chicks with them and they would try to pull the wounded bird trick on her. Some of them would make all sorts of racket to further entice her to follow them, I realized what was happening and put her in the down position to calm her. She cooperated flawlessly and positively for her first season, which made me real happy.

                                    Foreground chick in mesh bag, background Anouk.                                         One chick 6 days.

                                                                                        Copyright:: http://www.celtick.com/photo_art/

After a warm March, listening from the back steps we heard our first woodcock peenting right on schedule the last week in March. Then came the cruel April fools joke of vicious cold and a new snowfall. We had high temps in the low twenties (F) and lows around zero. I was glad I was not a woodcock trying to survive that week and a half!

The twelfth of April the cold snap broke and a predawn walk with the dogs was accompanied by the sound of a woodcock peenting. Is it any wonder we love these birds?

Email conversations among Minnesota banders held stories of an early brood that proved that the hen had sat the nest over the cold snap but others questioned the impact on nesting for the spring.

We weren’t able to get out for our own look until the twelfth of May. We didn’t find anything in a quick look. Judy took Berta the Griffon with while picking morels and found Berta pointing what appeared to be a hen on a nest. Judy moved Berta out of the way, retrieved a morel five feet from the bird and moved on. A check later found no bird and no nest, must have just been a tight sitting bird or perhaps a hen just beginning to nest. On the second outing in the following week, Bartos a five year old griffon pointed a hen within a hundred yards of the house! I was so excited. I spotted one chick and after looking and looking in a 3-4 foot radius of where the hen flushed had three chicks located. I caught and banded the one day old chicks. Before releasing them I wasn’t completely satisfied with just three chicks and took another look in the area the hen flushed. In an area of a little taller sparse dead grass I spotted the fourth chick! What an exciting start to the season!

The weekend brought two friends with their griffons to assist us in our search. One gentleman from Larimore, North Dakota was with last spring and was eager to go again. The other gentleman from East Grand Forks, Minnesota was an experienced woodcock hunter, but this would be his first look at the other season for woodcock.

We were working through a white spruce plantation that had a good mix of brush and aspen. Some of these plantations mimic the slow encroaching of brush like the old homesteads and this site adjoined an old homestead. We had found several adult woodcock but no hens with chicks. One of the two griffons we were using pointed and while searching the area we found the ground was covered with morel mushrooms. The point was a moving grouse so we switched gears and quickly filled up one of the mesh bags we used for chicks and continued on. Just a hundred yards farther we found our first brood. It was a cool damp morning and as we put the brood down after banding I noticed a chick shivering. I hope the hen returned quickly to the brood.

In the afternoon the sun and the ticks came out and in another area we found another brood but could only find three chicks. It was a great day for us.

One more brood was found the next weekend then we couldn’t get out again. Some year we will have more time! All of the broods found were one to three days old by bill length. We didn’t find any older broods so I am guessing that the cold snap did have the effect of delaying the hatch as we also didn’t hear any courtship flights during the cold snap. We did keep track of our hours searching this year for the first time and had thirteen hours of searching for four broods in three different areas. This was an increase of one brood over last year. We hope we can continue to improve our technique and finds next season.

  Two new bander measuring the chick and and catching the banding bug! Photo Jon Coil.

Bartos the Griffon pointing a hen woodcock witch chicks. Photo Jon Coil.

Photo Jon Coil.

Jon Coil from Minesota.

                                                     Chick 3 days old..                                                                      Chick was 7 or 8 days old.. 

                                                                                                    Same chick 13 days. 

                                                                                                           Maggie and Brook.

Pictures, Greg Block from Michigan.

Last winter started out the as the mildest I can remember. I saw a woodcock while deer hunting in December. The latest I have ever seen one.Winter arrived in mid-February in the form of a nor'easter. We where inundated with three feet of snow.

Mid-March also brought with it another nor'easter, setting up a pattern of mid-month storms.

My friend Stan and I took two of the spaniels and my english setter, Tucker to one of my favorite coverts on saturday, April 14th.

We sent them ahead of us into a small area tangled with old apple trees, grape vines and popples. The dogs found no birds. We did see however, The tracks of a strutting gobbler, his wing tips dug deep furrows in the melting snow.

We crossed the dirt road and dropped down a gently sloping south-eastern hillside. It had been logged about ten years ago and was growing up with apples, alders, grapevine and small conifers which where interspersed with random openings. After about a half hour of exploring, I saw a woodcock in flight, heading towards the safety of more dense cover. Tucker was giving chase and I was not happy. At six years of age he should know better, but he still is very much a puppy.

I walked over, looking for a possible nest and located it under a small spruce. There where originally four eggs. Two had been destroyed by predation, one still had yolk in it, must have been recent. I knelt down and placed my hand on the two viable eggs, they where warm.

I wanted to go back and check on them, but the next morning came our third nor'easter and I could not make it. I was afraid too, of what I would find. I can not imagine the hen pulling of a miracle by hatching the two remaining eggs with the predation and heavy snow.

While turkey hunting in May, I was able to observe four different woodcocks on their singing grounds. It appears the timberdoodle population is doing well enough here, but I could not stop worrying about the hen trying to raise a brood against all odds in the lonely covert that I love so much.

Joel Layaw. NY

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Woodcock banding in France (Savoie)

July 19, 2007

                               Spot where the chicks were found.                                 Didier Liska with for chicks.                  

                                                                                                              Chick about fifteen days.

Picture: Joel Vittet.

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Woodcock banding

Three woodcock chicks (one day).

Since the spring of 1983, I have been practicing woodcock banding, and I use my dogs to find them.

Why would someone practice woodcock banding ? There is more than one reason. In fact. Here is two reasons. why I'm attracted to this practice, first, I'm studying their migratory flyway patterns, and second, I'm interested in the species habits and longevity. On a few occasions, I had the privilege of having my daughter as a banding partner, she had the opportunity of banding one bird. Four of the chicks I banded were harvested the following fall.

Bird banding data are useful in both research and management projects. Individual identification of birds makes possible studies of dispersal and migration, behavior and social structure, life-span and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth.

I was able to harvest during hunting season of the same year, 2 chicks that I had banded myself the previous spring.

3: Possibility of depredation?

This hen could not have fractured its wing during courtship because hens do not participate in this activity; flying Skyward is reserved for cocks. I went back to my car with Scolopax minor in my right hand, I went home to drop Zouky off in her kennel, and I took a cardboard box and placed the woodcock in it and soon after I was on my way to the SPCA. The employee at the SPCA filled a report and relieved me from the bird to put it in a safer and more comfortable place. The SPCA has a specific section reserved for wildlife.

Here is a copy of the document that the employee at the SPCA issued me.

MICHIGAN INCLUDED IN 3 YEAR, 3 STATE WOODCOCK MORTALITY STUDY
By Linda Gallagher

With the first warm breezes of March, woodcock will be returning soon to the state of Michigan from their winter haunts in southern states, many of them to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where a bevy of scientists are eagerly looking forward to their return, and the start of Michigan’s participation in a comprehensive three year, three state study of the effects of hunting on woodcock mortality.

Expected to cost $670,000, which is being funded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Office of Migratory Birds, as well as the various state departments of natural resources, and the Ruffed Grouse Society, research will also take place in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, which along with Michigan are the primary breeding grounds of woodcock in the Midwest.

Minnesota began their study last fall, while Michigan and Wisconsin will begin this year after acquiring additional funding from the respective state game agencies.

While most officials and scientists agree that the continuing decline in woodcock numbers in both the Eastern and Central Flyways of the U.S. is due primarily to the loss of habitat in both northern breeding grounds and southern wintering grounds in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, the study will determine the impact that hunting may possibly be having on the species.

“It will be the most extensive study of woodcock in the Great Lakes area that I’m aware of,“ said Steve Wilds, USFWS regional migratory bird biologist at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. “Singing ground surveys, begun in 1968, show that populations have continued to decline, but we haven’t been able to accurately determine the cause of the problem. Mostly, we think habitat is the primary culprit, but we haven’t been able to rule out the long-term effects of hunting a declining population.”

Daily bag limits throughout the eastern U.S. were reduced from 5 birds per hunter per day to 3 birds per hunter per day in 1999, but Canada still allows hunters to harvest up to 8 woodcock per day.

John Bruggink, who not long ago took over the position of now-retired Northern Michigan University woodcock researcher Dr. Bill Robinson, will be heading up the study in Michigan’s UP. A former student of Robinson’s, Bruggink spent several years of his career researching woodcock with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

With the assistance of NMU wildlife biology students and graduate students, Bruggink will begin trapping a total of 120 woodcock this summer, 60 in an area open to hunting, and 60 in an area that is closed to wingshooters. All 120 birds will be fitted with small radio collars equipped with mortality sensors, which will be monitored several times a week. Trapping and radio-collaring will be finished before the start of the 2002 Michigan woodcock season in late September.

Transmitters on the collars rarely last more than six months or so, which will make it necessary to trap new birds each year of the study.

Hunters will be asked to return the radio collars of harvested birds, and birds that survive the season or are trapped and collared in the non-hunted area will be tracked as they migrate south for the winter. Although scientists will attempt to track the woodcock as they make their way back from southern wintering grounds, doing so successfully will be difficult, said Wilds. “We doubt that the transmitters will hold up that long, but we’re hoping to get some information back.”

Airplanes will be used in Michigan to track transmitter signals, as ground monitoring is often difficult to impossible in the wilderness terrain of much of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Although many wingshooters reported encouraging numbers of timberdoodles last fall throughout much of the state, according to scientists the popular gamebirds have declined by as much as 50% since 1981 in some areas of the Michigan study zone, which will be primarily located in Dickinson, Marquette, and Iron Counties, one of Michigan’s most popular woodcock hunting areas.

                                                                           

Designers: Michel and Geneviève Gélinas
My E-mail: michel.glinas2@sympatico.ca
Last Update: August 15, 2007

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