Kevin from Up is (Kind of) a Real Bird

My first encounter with the Timberdoodle!

On Easter Sunday, after filling myself with ham and cheesy potatoes that didn’t sit quite right in my belly, Marc asked if I’d like to go birding. He wanted to revisit the woodcock he’d sighted a few days prior. Some veteran birders had kindly pointed it out to him as he wrapped up a session on his favorite mountain biking trail. The conversation turned into an impromptu birding session. While he caught his first glimpse of the bird, they told him stories of its elaborate courting ritual, which it didn’t reveal that evening, but would supposedly debut in the coming weeks.

The male woodcock tries win over females not just with song, but with his flying capabilities. In an attempt to impress, he will fly as high as 350ft into the air. For sports folks, that’s just ten feet short of a football field. All this is more impressive when you know what this bird looks like.

As a point of reference, I could ask you to picture a snipe, though many of you might picture Disney Pixar Up’s rainbow bird. And while Kevin the bird looks most like a Himalayan Monal Pheasant, Kevin still shares a somewhat similar physique to the snipe. And while a snipe hunt is a euphemism for a false errand, a snipe is a very much real bird.

Woodcocks are endearing creatures for a number of reasons. One of the strongest pieces of evidence is their nickname: the Timberdoodle. An adorable nickname, which to my surprise describes this fist sized bird rather than a mix between a Timberwolf and a Poodle.

The woodcock also houses disproportionately large eyes that sit at the back of its head. Factually speaking, big eyes make things much cuter. But the doe eyes of the woodcock are about more than looking cute. They help the bird keep a look-out while as it plunges its freakishly long beak into the soil to hunt for earthworms. With such a long schnoz, you might expect its body to share the lanky proportions of a heron or crane. However, your expectations would lead you astray. The body of woodcock is plump, pheasant and chicken-like, despite its classification as a shore bird.

The swagger of the woodcock should also be noted. While it searches for food it… bounces. Dare I say, it jiggles. Watching videos of a snipe on the hunt has moved me to belly laughter and tears. The bird is a bit of an enigma. Need I say more about why I wanted to see one for myself?

We arrived at the park about thirty minutes before dusk and killed time by walking the trails and stopping to identify faraway birds that mostly ended up being swamp sparrows and robins – though we did get a glimpse of a blue winged teal and heard the distant croon of some sandhill cranes.

Just after sunset, we wandered back to where Marc had previously spotted the woodcock. Marc played a clip of its call so I could know what to listen for. The woodcock is most often heard before seen. The Cornell Lab describes the call as a “pweet,” but I personally think it sounds a bit like a congested pre-pubescent teen crying out, “mooom?”

We waited awhile. In our wait we enjoyed the query of a barred owl: “Who cooks for you all?”

And then the woodcock revealed himself.

Contrary to reputation, we spotted him before he made his first call. He did, however, live up to the notoriously cute standards of the photos I’d seen. Big eyes. Plump body. Long beak.

He began his “pweet/mom” call, throwing back his head each time he opened his beak. He’d give a few pweets, then shift a few degrees to project at a new angle. After a few attempts to gain attention, he’d hop around, find a different angle, and resume his call. This carried on for minutes, giving Marc and I a chance to trade our shared binoculars back and forth as we followed the portly bird with our lenses.

But just as suddenly as he had appeared in our vision, he vanished. We missed his takeoff, but shortly after we saw him return to the meadow. His teetering twirl of a descent was paired with a twittering song that contrasted so much from his nasally “pweet” that at first we didn’t credit the song to him.

A few minutes later, we managed to witnessed his full display: both departure and landing. After arcing over the field, he began his ascent, up and up, trading his self-conscious call for a delicate song, followed by another teetering spiral back to the meadow.

Though the birders that tipped Marc off to the location had mentioned the bird’s courting ritual, we hadn’t expected to see it this early. Maybe it was the weather, barely above 30º, or the grey skies, but it seemed impossible that this bird would entertain courtship.

But here he was, trying to win over one of the females (or maybe just practicing for her arrival). One moment the bird was “pweeting” away, the next careening over the meadow.

I’m not quite sure what I’m doing with this newsletter, but I do know I’d like to use it as a way to take notes on the time I spend observing the swathes of flora and fauna I encounter this spring and summer. It seems trivial to try to force nature into an allegory to serve me better, so I’ll resist the temptation to turn this around into some moral. But I will say this sighting came after a long week with some gloomy weather. So I’m grateful. Instead, of turning this into allegory, I’ll just acknowledge that we do of course have things to learn from nature, and I’m excited to learn over the coming months what some of those things will be–whether those lessons fit into my life in the moment or months later in reflection.

I will readily admit though… there’s something we can all learn from the woodcocks’ dancing…