As winter transitions into spring, careful listeners might notice the buzzy “peent, peent” call of the male American Woodcock in the evening. The sound, part of the bird’s courtship display, is an iconic soundtrack of the season.
At the Greenwich Audubon Center, it is also an encouraging sign that American Woodcocks are nesting and breeding on site!
That woodcocks are around doesn’t come as a surprise—they’ve been recorded at the center since at least 2003—but where they’ve been observed this year provides us with important insights about the center’s habitat, and how we steward it.
American Woodcocks are unique among shorebirds for their choice in habitat. Unlike their coastal relatives, they nest and breed in shrub thickets and regenerating forest. Their acrobatic mating displays also require access to nearby open spaces.
Lucky for them, the strategic land stewardship at the Greenwich Audubon Center’s main sanctuary property has created exactly the habitat they need!
To date, this year’s cohort of crooning male woodcocks have primarily been observed in two areas of the Main Sanctuary property: the Siwanoy Forest and the North Field meadow’s eastern woodland boundary. Both areas feature a combination of field, thicket, and mature forest, providing an ideal range of habitat structures for woodcocks to utilize.
Most important, though, is that both have also been the focus of transformative management projects in recent years.
The Siwanoy Forest Plot, planned in collaboration with members of the Siwanoy Tribal Nation, was established in 2023 as a demonstration site for indigenous land management techniques and the importance of plant biodiversity.
Staff and members of our Eco-Leadership Corps planted 53 trees and seeded nearly an acre of native meadow habitat as a part of these restoration efforts, transforming what was formerly heavily degraded vineland into a vibrant young forest stand.
In the North Field meadow, the restoration of habitat along its eastern woodland boundary took a different approach. In late 2024 and early 2025, we thinned the area’s canopy and removed a variety invasive species.
This process, known as “edge softening,” relies on natural regeneration to promote the development of transitional young forest and shrubland—the very habitats that American Woodcocks rely on!
That woodcocks are using both of these sites already lets us know that our land stewardship work and the strategies behind it are having real, positive effects on the health of the Greenwich Audubon Center’s ecosystem. Importantly, this also highlights the powerful legacy of indigenous land management and how important it is to let this traditional ecological knowledge inform stewardship work on our property and beyond.
American Woodcocks are what are known as indicator species, meaning their presence—or absence—from an ecosystem tells us a lot about its health. The sound of American Woodcocks courting at the Greenwich Audubon Center is these birds’ telling us “job well done.”
