These Rotund and ‘Charmingly Goofy’ Birds Are Delighting New Yorkers and Dancing on Social Media. What Is the American Woodcock?
The endearing animals make a pit stop in Bryant Park during their migrations to northern breeding grounds, gathering fans and starring in viral videos
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Where rare birds go, camera-toting enthusiasts tend to follow. But sometimes, all it takes to cause a commotion is a relatively common, though little-known, bird with some funky dance moves.
On Friday, more than 650 people congregated for a special bird walk in New York City’s Bryant Park, where American woodcocks have been stopping to rest and refuel on their migrations north for breeding. “We had to have bird security manage the crowds,” Gabriel Willow, a naturalist who leads bird tours in the park, tells Smithsonian magazine in an email. “It’s gratifying to see so many people charmed and delighted.”
The round-bodied, brown birds are the city’s—and the internet’s—newest avian celebrities. Perhaps their biggest claim to fame is their dance: Woodcocks rock back and forth as they walk, as if stepping to some silent beat.
Clips of the birds are going viral on social media, helping drive the surge in attention to the park’s bird tours. The videos feature the birds’ nasal, buzzy call—known as a “peent”—as well as their endearing dance, sometimes set to music.
But that’s not the only thing drawing crowds of onlookers to see the feathered visitors.
“They have this charmingly goofy appearance where a lot of traits are very exaggerated—the long, thin beak, the chubby body shape, the unusual placement of the eyes,” Liz Riegel, who organizes the bird walks at Bryant Park, tells Smithsonian magazine in an email. “They just don’t look like the typical bird you see in a dense urban area.”
Though they might look out of place, woodcocks have likely been using Manhattan as a migratory rest stop since before human habitation, she adds. Scientists have records of them in Bryant Park going back to 2002, when the bird-tracking site eBird launched. The park is just about the only green area in Midtown, so it acts as an urban oasis for the long-distance travelers. During spring migration, one to three of the birds can usually be found in the park at once, though in a rare case, five congregated there.
The birds’ dance, Riegel says, is “definitely the reason they’ve gone viral.” But the “woodcock-mania” seen in the city, she adds, has another draw: the community. “We’re regularly seeing groups of 30 or 40 people all observing one woodcock from a respectful distance,” Riegel says. “They’ll all get excited together when it catches a worm; they’ll tell curious passers-by what they’re all looking at. It’s been really sweet to witness.”
Here’s what to know about the funny-looking creatures strutting across your screens.
What is an American woodcock?
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Sometimes called the timberdoodle or bog sucker, the American woodcock (Scolopax minor) is a mottled brown, roughly robin-sized forest bird. The woodcock is technically classified among sandpipers and shorebirds, given its long beak—but it’s not one for the beach. The species instead camouflages against the leaves strewn across forest floors and pokes its beak into the ground to probe for earthworms.
These worms make up about 60 percent of the woodcock’s diet, with much of the rest consisting of other insects—like ants, flies, caterpillars, crickets and beetles. A woodcock may eat its own weight in worms daily.
Fun fact: Earthworm eaters
Initially, American woodcock chicks depend on their mothers for food (males do not care for the eggs or young). But it only takes them three or four days after hatching to begin probing in the dirt to find their own worms.
Why do woodcocks dance?
While these boogieing birds get a lot of attention for their moves, scientists aren’t sure why they walk this way. One idea is that it could help the birds find prey. As it steps heavily, bobbing its body around, a woodcock might prompt worms to move underground, making them easier to detect.
Alternatively, the dancing might deter predators. “I think it’s actually to be more obvious and basically tell the predator, ‘I pretty much can see you, and I can take off at will, and you’re not going to get me,’” Scott R. McWilliams, an ecologist at the University of Rhode Island, tells the New York Times’ Neil Vigdor.
Woodcocks are adept fliers
It might be hard to believe that a bird so potato-shaped is so skilled in flight, but the woodcock puts on an impressive aerial display. The male birds perform a stunning “sky dance” in the air during courtship.
This feat begins with peent calls on the ground. Then, the male takes off, gaining height in a wide spiral. Throughout this twisting flight, which can reach 250 to 300 feet in altitude, he chirps and makes twittering sounds with specialized feathers on his wings. He drops toward the ground but lands gracefully—near a female, if he’s lucky. The bachelors repeat the dance until they attract a mate.
For areas beyond Bryant Park, this prominent display marks the best time to find woodcocks, which are usually cryptic and camouflaged. As Brent Rudolph, chief conservation and legislative officer for the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, told Audubon magazine’s Andy McGlashen in 2021, “This is kind of as crazy and conspicuous as they get.”
Conservation of American woodcocks
Overall, the species is classified as one of least concern, and the birds are thought to number 3.5 million. But between 1966 and 2019, the American woodcock population declined, and the animals face several threats. Predation from cats is a big one in more rural areas, as is habitat loss. In cities, American woodcocks and other migratory birds are vulnerable to crashing into the glassy facades of buildings, bus stops and other structures.
On the upside, the newfound fame of Bryant Park’s woodcocks might be the most attention the species has ever received, and experts hope it could bring new momentum to efforts to protect the animals.
“I hope people are inspired by this fascinating and goofy bird to become bird watchers and conservationists and that it serves as a window to the wider wild world that surrounds us all, even in densely urbanized settings,” Willow says. “Nature adapts and survives and permeates all of our lives, if we just take a closer look to see what’s hiding right in our midst.”