Woodcocks: The Story Behind the Photograph

Woodcock. Most photographers have never seen one, although these long-billed birds are found around the world. In North America, the American woodcock (Scolopax minor) can be found across most of the eastern half of the United States. They are extremely well-camouflaged and prone to sit tight, only exploding into flight if you’re about to step on one. In fact, an alternate name for this family of birds, “snipe,” gave rise to the term “sniper” due to the sharpshooter’s skill in concealment. Although you may not have seen a woodcock, you may have heard its call, a plaintive “peent” given in the fading light of dusk in an open woodland, meadow, or marshy field in early spring. That call is its courtship song, and if you watch carefully, you might see the dark, rotund shape of a woodcock spiraling above you as it performs a courtship display, its wings emitting a twittering note as the bird descends to earth.

I’ve seen my share of woodcocks performing this aerial display, and I’ve been lucky, three times, to find a woodcock on a nest. Its camouflage is so effective that a bird may remain still with an observer only a breath away — something, by the way, I wouldn’t try for fear it might spook the bird off the nest and endanger anyone or everyone involved. But it has been done. If you’re lucky enough to find a woodcock on a nest, photographing it is a simple matter, as the bird just… sits… there.

I wanted a more dynamic shot, one of the bird actually performing at the courtship grounds. But this happens at dusk and continues long after dark, and to get the image, I needed to use flash. I also used a bird-call app on my phone and a speaker to draw a bird in. Using calls is controversial, and many photographers and bird-watchers abhor them. Used indiscriminately or wantonly, with specific species, they can be harmful, as a call may distract a nesting pair from feeding their young or defending their nest, or otherwise make them vulnerable to a predator.

That said, many serious and successful bird photographers and serious bird-watchers use calls to attract elusive or rare species. All who I know do so. I’m on the fence on this, but for woodcocks, I know that this species calls and engages in a display flight to attract females before the nesting season begins, and I’m confident my calls in this time frame cause no harm. After locating a spot close to the roadside where I’d seen a woodcock peenting and flying off and returning to the same small clearing, I set up a chair blind nearby and placed a speaker in the center of the clearing.

Using flash is also a controversial point, and some wildlife photographers shun using flash entirely. However, for some subjects, and to capture some behavior, it is absolutely necessary, so you have to consider the effect your actions have on your wildlife subjects. At low power settings and/or if a flash is placed some distance from a subject, flash illumination appears to have no impact or effect upon most subjects’ behavior.

When I used flash on kangaroo rats (Dipodomys sp.), a strictly nocturnal species, I found that it was the sound of the camera firing, and not the flash, that initially triggered a reaction. On hearing the sound, they would flee to their burrow, but after a few minutes, these rodents dismissed the sound as nonthreatening and tried climbing into my pockets for the birdseed there. I verified my conclusion by hitting the test button on the flash, which produced no sound as the flash fired and no reaction from the kangaroo rats. Many animals may initially react or flinch because of the abrupt change of light, which could signal a predator suddenly swooping in, which causes a response.

I wasn’t sure exactly where the bird would be in the clearing, so I needed to cover a fairly large swath of ground. In the late afternoon, I placed seven flashes on light stands around the target area, positioning the flashes so that I’d have full coverage and a bit of flash-modeling too. I used my old Canon flashes (I use Olympus now), which work on manual mode and are triggered by a Phottix Ares II transmitter mounted on my camera hotshoe and correlating receivers attached to each flash. Because of the flash-to-potential-subject distance, I set the flash power ratio to 1/8th and used ISO 800, allowing apertures ranging from f/10 to f/13.

Mirrorless cameras really shine for this type of work since feedback can be immediate. I set my image review time for two seconds so that I could glance at the shot and make exposure corrections as necessary. My Olympus camera, the OM-1, also has a nifty feature called Night Vision, which provides an electronic brightness boost of the image, enabling me to see my subject in virtually no light. I taped a flashlight, set to a low power, to the hood of my telephoto lens as well so I could see the area even if I was not looking through the camera.

Well, either the call worked or the bird was especially homed in on the clearing, and I made several exposures as the bird pranced about and peented, flying off twice and returning to the same spot. Two hours passed, the cold settled in, and the woodcock, and others further afield, grew silent. I packed up and went home.