Conservation at the Greenwich Audubon Center: Welcoming American Woodcocks

As winter transitions into spring, cautious listeners would possibly discover the buzzy “peent, peent” name of the male American Woodcock within the night. The sound, a part of the hen’s courtship show, is an iconic soundtrack of the season.

On the Greenwich Audubon Middle, it is usually an encouraging signal that American Woodcocks are nesting and breeding on website!

That woodcocks are round doesn’t come as a shock—they’ve been recorded on the middle since a minimum of 2003—however the place they’ve been noticed this yr offers us with vital insights concerning the middle’s habitat, and the way we steward it.

American Woodcocks are distinctive amongst shorebirds for his or her selection in habitat. Not like their coastal family, they nest and breed in shrub thickets and regenerating forest. Their acrobatic mating shows additionally require entry to close by open areas.

Fortunate for them, the strategic land stewardship on the Greenwich Audubon Middle’s primary sanctuary property has created precisely the habitat they want!

So far, this yr’s cohort of crooning male woodcocks have primarily been noticed in two areas of the Essential Sanctuary property: the Siwanoy Forest and the North Area meadow’s japanese woodland boundary. Each areas function a mix of area, thicket, and mature forest, offering a great vary of habitat buildings for woodcocks to make the most of. 

Most vital, although, is that each have additionally been the main focus of transformative administration initiatives lately.

The Siwanoy Forest Plot, deliberate in collaboration with members of the Siwanoy Tribal Nation, was established in 2023 as an illustration website for indigenous land administration methods and the significance of plant biodiversity. 

Employees and members of our Eco-Management Corps planted 53 timber and seeded almost an acre of native meadow habitat as part of these restoration efforts, remodeling what was previously closely degraded vineland right into a vibrant younger forest stand.

Within the North Area meadow, the restoration of habitat alongside its japanese woodland boundary took a distinct strategy. In late 2024 and early 2025, we thinned the world’s cover and eliminated a spread invasive species.

This course of, often called “edge softening,” depends on pure regeneration to advertise the event of transitional younger forest and shrubland—the very habitats that American Woodcocks depend on!

That woodcocks are utilizing each of those websites already lets us know that our land stewardship work and the methods behind it are having actual, constructive results on the well being of the Greenwich Audubon Middle’s ecosystem. Importantly, this additionally highlights the highly effective legacy of indigenous land administration and the way vital it’s to let this conventional ecological information inform stewardship work on our property and past.

American Woodcocks are what are often called indicator species, that means their presence—or absence—from an ecosystem tells us so much about its well being. The sound of American Woodcocks courting on the Greenwich Audubon Middle is these birds’ telling us “job nicely finished.”