Would you know a timberdoodle if you saw one?

While driving to the Granddaughter’s this morning, so we could read some books, I saw something at the roadside in the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area that has me questioning my vision. I’m pretty sure I saw a woodcock (timberdoodle) right at the edge of the pavement. Why such a bird would be in such a location is beyond me. I got but a quick glimpse although the rotund body profile is mostly unmistakable.

driveway puddle woodcock

Photo by J. Harrington

Some years ago, in the spring, we had a woodcock visit the puddle in the driveway. In all my years of grouse and woodcock hunting, I reduced to possession only one woodcock. It was a real treat to see one this morning.

The reading session went well, although there’s a certain amount of tension between a Granddaughter’s interest in flipping though a book to look at pictures and a Grandfather’s inclination to read from page to page in an orderly fashion. We settled on taking turns flipping and reading.

This afternoon, our unseasonably warm temperatures are being tempered by a 20 mph breeze. The purple love grass hasn’t produced nearly the amount of tumbling seed heads we had last year so the breezes are blowing smoke and some early fallen leaves but not much more.

The Woodcock

By Terry Blackhawk

Weary of the daily terror I turn
to the mystic body of the bird.  A woodcock
I found crackling the twigs and ivy,
barely escaped from a cat’s clumsy claws.
I feared for the odd angle of its wing,
the surprised flopping it made there,
but I did not fear the extreme length
of its beak or the eyes popping diametrically
on either side of its head. I loved the feathers’
deckled edges and the light weight it made
as I scooped it up and put it, limpsy and weak,
into an old canvas book bag, and when I
released it from that soft safe space
some time later, out on the island, I missed it
at once, as one would miss a friend.
It whirred straight up, explosively,
toward freedom on the other side of the river,
its pulse now gone from my hands.

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