American woodcock Scolopax minor

Identification Tips:

• Length: 8.25 inches
• Dumpy, short-legged, short-tailed, rounded-winged shorebird
• Explosive takeoff when flushed, wings make twittering sound in flight
• Very long bill
• Very large, dark eye set high in head
• Buff-brown head, breast and belly buff to pale cinnamon
• Black nape crossed by pale lines
• Dark eyeline and auricular stripe
• Gray-brown back, with black and chestnut feathering interspersed between two pale Vs
• Upperwings reddish-brown; underwings brown, with rusty wing linings
• Rusty rump; dark rectrices tipped gray/white
• Found in woodlands and shrubby fields
• Sexes similar
• Juvenile similar to adult

Similar species:

Common Snipe is more slender and browner, without the crossbars on nape. In flight, the Common Snipe has much more pointed wings.

Length and wingspan from: Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B., Zim, H.S., (1966). Birds of North America. New York: Western Publishing Company, Inc.