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P.J. Perea/NWTF
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Timberdoodle management for turkeys?
The woodcock is a popular game bird among upland hunters, especially those who train and run pointing dogs. Avid grouse hunters are often just as keen on hunting woodcock. After all, the birds are found in similar cover, so you can encounter both birds if the timing is right. In contrast to ruffed grouse, woodcock are migratory birds and are regulated by the federal government. These relatives of shorebirds that have taken to the woods are managed as two distinct populations in the eastern and central flyways. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sets the hunting seasons and bag limits every year.
Home Losses
Since the early 1970s, woodcock populations have declined in both flyways more than 30 percent. When wildlife managers noted the trends, they limited seasons and bag limits. It did little to slow the downward spiral. Most experts believed that habitat changes, namely the loss of early-successional habitat, were to blame for declining populations. Figures from Pennsylvania show that 30 years ago, 22 percent of the state was in early successional habitat. Today that figure is down to 11 percent. This trend is mirrored throughout the East and Midwest as forests matured and less timber was harvested from them. Along with the woodcock, a number of migratory songbirds such as prairie and golden-winged warblers, towhees, brown thrashers and gray catbirds need this habitat.
Woodcock can be classified as early-successional habitat specialists. They prefer habitat known as the scrub-shrub or seedling/sapling stages. Such habitat can be found in abandoned fields, clear cuts, burned areas and forest openings. Maintaining quality woodcock habitat requires intensive management. Abandoned fields quickly revert to a mosaic of grasses, shrubs and small trees that provide courtship areas and nesting and brood habitat for timberdoodles. As time passes, the shrubs yield to trees, and a 15- to 30-year-old field becomes a stand of dense young second-growth trees that provide areas for woodcocks to nest, raise broods and forage. After 30 years, the mature forest provides little suitable woodcock habitat.
Room for Turkeys
Unlike woodcock and grouse, wild turkeys are habitat generalists, meaning they use a variety of habitats and forest stages. Some of the important habitats essential for woodcock are useful to wild turkeys, too. Managing for woody early-successional habitat provides quality-nesting areas where hen turkeys can safely lay eggs and incubate. As forests mature, good turkey nesting cover has declined. The same factors affecting woodcocks have, to a lesser degree, impacted wild turkeys.
Chapters Step Up for Wildlife
NWTF’s state chapters are up to the challenge. All wild turkey strategic plans for the North American Wild Turkey Management Plan in the eastern and central states identify creating early successional habitats as an important goal. Recently, the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts state chapters supported important woodcock habitat projects.
Ben Jones of the Pennsylvania Game Commission said, “This cooperative venture, using funds from NWTF, the NRCS WHIP program and Game Commission labor, will enhance woodcock habitat and benefit wild turkeys, golden-winged and chestnut-sided warblers, brown thrashers and snowshoe hares by mechanically setting back natural succession and reducing competition from non-native shrubs with herbicide application.”
The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife completed a similar project on the Poland Brook WMA with funding from the Massachusetts Chapter Super Fund and the Wildlife Management Institute. The chapter was honored with an award in 2008 from the Department of the Interior.
“This is just another example of how our chapters improve conditions for many wildlife species of special concern, not only in Massachusetts but across the country,” said state chapter President Brian Korte. — Bob Eriksen, NWTF district conservation officer, and Doug Little, NWTF regional biologist
WANT MORE? > To learn more about American woodcock visit www.timberdoodle.org.