The American woodcock (Scolopax minor), sometimes colloquially referred to as the timberdoodle, mudbat, bogsucker, night partridge, or Labrador twister[2][3] is a small shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America.

Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage.

Its many folk names include timberdoodle, bogsucker, night partridge, brush snipe, hokumpoke, and becasse.

Because of the male woodcock's unique, beautiful courtship flights, the bird is welcomed as a harbinger of spring in northern areas.

[7] The American woodcock has a plump body, short legs, a large, rounded head, and a long, straight prehensile bill.

A unique bone-and-muscle arrangement lets the bird open and close the tip of its upper bill, or mandible, while it is sunk in the ground.

In late summer, some woodcocks roost on the ground at night in large openings among sparse, patchy vegetation.

[15] Woodcocks are thought to orient visually using major physiographic features such as coastlines and broad river valleys.

In the north, woodcocks begin to shift southward before ice and snow seal off their ground-based food supply.

Other items in their diet include insect larvae, snails, centipedes, millipedes, spiders, snipe flies, beetles, and ants.

In spring, males occupy individual singing grounds, openings near brushy cover from which they call and perform display flights at dawn and dusk, and if the light levels are high enough, on moonlit nights.

[9] This high spiralling flight produces a melodious twittering sound as air rushes through the male's outer primary wing feathers.

The male woodcock plays no role in selecting a nest site, incubating eggs, or rearing young.

When threatened, the fledglings usually take cover and remain motionless, attempting to escape detection by relying on their cryptic coloration.

This behavior occurs during foraging, leading ornithologists such as Arthur Cleveland Bent and B. H. Christy to theorize that this is a method of coaxing invertebrates such as earthworms closer to the surface.

[22] This theory is complicated by observations of rocking while slowly walking across ground that cannot be foraged, such as hard roads or deep snow.

[24] Heinrich notes that some field observations have shown that woodcocks will occasionally flash their tail feathers while rocking, drawing attention to themselves.

Colonial agriculture, with its patchwork of family farms and open-range livestock grazing, probably supported healthy woodcock populations.

[5] The woodcock population remained high during the early and mid-20th century, after many family farms were abandoned as people moved to urban areas, and crop fields and pastures grew up in brush.

In recent decades, those formerly brushy acres have become middle-aged and older forest, where woodcock rarely venture, or they have been covered with buildings and other human developments.

It is more tolerant of deforestation than other woodcocks and snipes; as long as some sheltered woodland remains for breeding, it can thrive even in regions that are mainly used for agriculture.