Day's End

Bewitched by Woodcock

- Anthony Hauck

The bird whipsaws from the forest floor through the fraying canopy, and in a few wingbeats cloaks into the shadowy ether. This is the evening’s first vanishing act. But the stage is set.

The woodcock have arrived.

Migrating at night, these sandpipers of the saplings repeat north-south journeys each spring and fall, nudged along by photoperiodism, temperature, wind and mystery.

Finding our spot which we co-own with every Minnesotan vacant is something of a surprise.

We are not up north” or in a vast state forest but in a metropolitan-bordering wildlife area where the wooded edge is a hard stop to civilization and its many houses, roads and golden arches.

Like the woman sawed in half, the brain bends to the mirage and eyes believe the magic. Our trail cuts deeper and deeper until the final dwelling fades from view. Our grand illusion is complete: Three million of our neighbors have disappeared.

Soon, too, will the woodcock, who, despite having just arrived, will be forced south in a day or two by the freeze, the ground unsuitable for pecking their preferred meal, earthworms.

There are many peculiarities to the American woodcock, Scolopax minor, an ornithological oxymoron.