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["Scott Michaud" <mazhude@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bangor Daily News, Monday, October 21, 2002
Maine woodcock on decline
Biologist believes birds may be threatened by urban sprawl

MILFORD - In the moment between day and night, woodcock dart through the 
purple sky with a frantic rustling of wings. This brief, frenzied flight is 
probably the only time you'll see these odd little residents of the Maine 
woods.

Woodcock are essentially shorebirds that moved to the forest. Over time, 
they evolved a unique lifestyle to take advantage of disturbance, and have 
thrived while Mainers cleared land for farming and paper making.

But recently, the woodcock population in the East has been declining by as 
much as 2.5 percent each year. Human use of the land is changing, and nature 
hasn't been able to adapt quickly enough to a world of shopping plazas and 
industrial forest plantations.

Woodcock may be in trouble.

Every night, Dan McAuley hikes into the woods and raises gossamer nets to 
catch woodcock on the wing. The U. S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist 
is outfitting more than 100 birds with tiny radio transmitters in an attempt 
to study migration.

While McAuley and a group of assistants stand in the moonlight squinting at 
the nets, woodcock zip across the sky.

"They all just kind of buzz around," the biologist said, freeing an 
indignant young female from the net. The bird is a soft motley brown, its 
feathers designed to disappear into the forest floor, its long skinny beak 
made for plucking earthworms from the soft soil.

McAuley gently palms the downy bird and places his catch in a mesh bag. 
Typically, he would tuck the bag in his pocket, zip it shut and move on to 
the next net, the bird snug in his fleece jacket.

Woodcock are about the size of a robin, with a wobbly flight pattern that 
birders describe as erratic. Yet each fall, the birds travel more than 1,000 
miles from their summer nesting grounds in Maine to winter habitats in 
Florida and Georgia.

Woodcock fly one of the toughest migration routes in America, said Brad 
Allen, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Inland Fisheries and 
Wildlife,

"To get down there, they've got to fly through New York City," Allen said. 
"The hazards of migration for a little bird like that are incredible."

McAuley has studied woodcock for more than 30 years. The biologist believes 
that urban sprawl has destroyed woodcock habitat along their migration 
route, resulting in high mortality rates.

"We'll be able to tease out some of the puzzles," McAuley said. "It's all 
guesstimates."

Woodcock are a riddle to biologists, who struggle to understand how the 
birds survived before large-scale human habitation of the East coast. The 
birds require early successional forest habitat with swift-growing, but 
commercially undesirable trees like aspen and birch.

"The only way to produce this type of forest is to cut it or to burn it," 
McAuley said.

Woodcock also use newly cleared land for evening roosting and spring 
courtship dances. Because the woodcock has many predators, the bird rarely 
travels more than a mile between the grass where it roosts at night and the 
wooded area where it feeds during the day.

"They don't move around a whole lot if they don't have to," McAuley said.

Some biologists theorize that woodcock are closely related to sandpipers, 
and they developed their unique lifestyle fairly recently to take advantage 
of a new habitat created by European settlers. Others believe that small 
populations of woodcock have always survived by migrating from place to 
place as fires and other natural disturbances created clearings.

Either way, woodcock cannot return to their old survival strategies.

Thirty years ago, tremendous clear-cuts were made in Maine, partially in 
response to the spruce budworm epidemic that killed much of the Maine 
forest. Woodcock populations boomed.

Today, as forest practices change, Maine's landscape is becoming a mix of 
older stands owned by small private woodlot owners, and plantation-style 
softwood stands planted by industrial foresters. Herbiciding of clear-cut 
land may also impede the growth of woodcock habitat.

"Woodcock don't like big trees, and the habitat in Maine is going by," Allen 
said.

In Massachusetts and New Jersey, where woodcock need habitat for resting and 
feeding along the migration route, the situation is even more dire. Though 
parks and backyards offer shelter for some migratory birds, woodcock need 
the scrubby, unattractive landscape of a young forest.

"A lot of that habitat has been converted into housing developments," 
McAuley said. "That shrubby stuff, for a lot of people - especially urban 
people - is just nasty stuff they don't want to have to walk through."

In Washington County, biologists are working to create woodcock habitat. 
Every five years, the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in Baring 
clear-cuts a portion of its land. Older areas are burned to create 
clearings.

The intensive management has resulted in one of the only woodcock 
populations in New England that is not in decline.

Maurry Mills, a wildlife biologist who has worked at Moosehorn for 17 years, 
believes that increasing the number of young woodcock that survive to make 
their first migration from Maine can help the species regionally.

"By increasing the nesting population, we can make a difference," he said.

When Moosehorn was created in 1937, the interest in woodcock came primarily 
from sportsmen. Woodcock are still a legal game bird, with an October 
season, though interest has dwindled to a small group of devotees who hunt 
the swift birds with dogs.

Since the 1970s, the woodcock hunting season has been reduced from 65 to 30 
days, and the daily bag limit has been reduced from five to three birds, but 
to no avail. Populations have continued to decline.

"It's a habitat issue, not a hunting issue," Allen said.

Moosehorn has published a guide to managing land for woodcock in hopes of 
attracting private landowners to the birds' cause.

Engaging industrial forestry companies in boosting marginal woodcock habitat 
might be the key to the birds' survival, biologists said.

"As long as the habitat is there, they'll use it," Mills said.




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