Woodcock

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Woodcock
Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola)

Woodcock ( Scolopax rusticola )

Systematics
Order : Plover-like (Charadriiformes)
Family : Snipe birds (Scolopacidae)
Genre : Real snipe ( Scolopax )
Type : Woodcock
Scientific name
Scolopax rusticola
Linnaeus , 1758

The woodcock ( Scolopax rusticola ) is a monotypical species of bird from the family of the snipe birds (Scolopacidae). It is about the size of a hood with a stocky body, a long straight beak and short legs. The plumage is patterned brown, black and white. Due to the camouflage, the woodcock, whose habitat is richly structured deciduous and mixed forests, is difficult to spot in the field.

It is nicknamed The Bird with the Long Face .

description

The woodcock is very similar in shape to the common snipe , but is larger and has a shorter beak. A fully grown woodcock can grow up to 38 cm and has a wingspan of up to 65 cm. The woodcock can weigh up to 440 g and its straight, long beak is up to 7 cm in size. The shy loner hides during the day and usually only becomes active at dusk.

The back is patterned brown, black and gray and is very good for camouflage. Her eyes, which each reach a viewing angle of up to 180 ° - so she can also look backwards - are colored black. She has very short legs. Males and females have the same coloration.

Your call sounds sharp and high, something like "ziwitz", alternating with a long, frog-like "quorr".

Special springs

The mustache is a tuft of feathers about 1.5 cm in size that is located on the woodcock's gland .

In Central Europe, hunting the woodcock was particularly difficult, as this bird could hardly be hit due to its zigzag flight. It is therefore not surprising that a part of the body of the hunted bird, the outermost hand wing in front of the first wing feather ( painter's feather), is considered a trophy, which in feathered game usually only occurs for particularly large or colorful animals ( capercaillie , jay ). The painter's pen is 3 cm long and inconspicuously brown and is used for fine brushstrokes, e.g. B. used in calligraphy .

Distribution area

Distribution of the woodcock:
  • Breeding areas
  • Year-round occurrence
  • Wintering areas

    • The distribution area of ​​the woodcock is very large and extends over the forest zone of Eurasia from Western Europe to Japan. The species only has distribution gaps in the high mountains of Asia.

    The southern border of the breeding area runs from northern Spain and the Pyrenees along the southern Alps and northern Italy through southern Russia, along the northern Himalayas via Mongolia and Manchuria to the Pacific coast. The species also breeds on some Pacific islands and occurs, for example, on islands in northern Japan. In the north, the species occurs very rarely north of the Arctic Circle, but the species often breeds in tundra forests in Europe and Asia.

    Wetlands International distinguishes between a breeding population that breeds west of the Urals and winters in southern and western Europe as far as North Africa, and a second population that breeds east of the Urals and winters mainly in the Caspis region in Southwest Asia. Three other, very small populations that breed in the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands are generally resident birds.

    The woodcock breeding in northern Spain, Great Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium are predominantly resident birds. Woodcock, whose breeding area is in the west and north-west of Russia, migrate to France, Spain, Great Britain, Ireland and Italy for the winter. Woodcock overwintering in Ireland and Great Britain, according to studies from 2002, 37 percent come from Russia and Latvia, 25 percent from Finland, 12 percent from Sweden and 10 percent from Norway. Only 14 percent of the birds that winter here come from Great Britain. West Siberian breeding birds, on the other hand, overwinter predominantly in the Caspis region.

    habitat

    The woodcock, named after the habitat, lives in damp deciduous and mixed forests in almost all of Europe . As a rule, the forests are larger, whereas small-scale forests are hardly populated. In autumn and winter (September to November) most woodcock move to the Mediterranean area or to Western Europe on the Atlantic coast , where they can also be found in lower woody trees.

    nutrition

    Woodcock with earthworm

    The woodcock's menu includes worms , spiders , insects and their larvae . In the dark, the woodcock pokes in the ground with its long beak and grabs earthworms .

    In winter it also feeds on berries , fruits and other parts of plants (e.g. spruce needles).

    Reproduction

    Gelege, Museum Wiesbaden collection

    The breeding season in Central Europe extends from March to the end of July. There are two annual broods in some of the females. The brief courtship and mating season begins during or after the Nordic snipe has passed through. The males fly off more or less the same control areas within two to three weeks, which they patrol in the evening and morning for about 10 to 30 minutes. This typical courtship flight is called a snipe stroke. Although the snipe stroke with courtship song has a delimiting meaning when occupying the territory, there are no strict territorial boundaries, which is why two or more males can get close. Sometimes there is a so-called comment fight (ritualized mock fights with little risk of injury) in the air. The courtship flight serves to establish contact between males and females. The female attracts the flying male and a floor courtship follows with the following mating. It also happens that several males court a female together or one male mates with up to four females. Mating takes place there or near the nest before and during the egg-laying. After mating, the two birds separate again. Woodcock live promiscently , which means that females and males only come together to mate and then separate again. The female carries out the incubation of the eggs and the rearing of the young alone.

    Quorren and pecking at the snipe stroke are known as vocal expressions , since the melody "quorr-quorr'k-pßitt" sounds and - performed by the male - can be heard from afar. During the courtship and while the boys are being led through the undergrowth, there are various other calls to attract, warn and excite them.

    The nest is a hollow on the ground that is padded with leaves , grass , moss and other plant parts. It is often created on borders (aisles, forest edges, natural clearings) within the forest. The female usually lays four eggs (between three and five) and incubates them for around 20 to 21 days until the chicks hatch. The young birds flee nests and are born with short beaks. The mother provides the young with food and protects them in the event of imminent danger with warning calls and temptation by pretending to be unable to fly in order to lure away predators or humans. Woodcock also rely mainly on their camouflaging plumage and crouch on the ground for a long time. When a disturbing person approaches, adult birds only fly up at the last moment, sometimes only a few meters away.

    For a long time there have been different representations about the carrying away of the young from the nest. It seems to happen regularly that the mothers, while leaving the nest, carry the hatchlings a few centimeters to meters away with their beak to a nearby place, in order to then pasture them further. However, this apparently does not happen when there is a specific danger. This behavior is probably more than normal during the first Abwanderns the mother with the pullover ( Dunenjungen to be seen). Carrying chicks away with the legs or in the belly plumage has long been described, but not proven. After about 5 weeks, the young birds are fully fledged. After a first breeding and rearing period (March to May) some of the females begin a second brood (June / July).

    Stock, stock development and endangerment

    By bird strike died Woodcock

    Recording the populations is particularly difficult for the woodcock: the degree of coverage is very low in most countries, and due to the secret and promiscuous way of life, the composition of the breeding population, especially the gender distribution , is unknown and it can be assumed that previous assumptions about the population are more likely to be based refer to males indicating territory, but the frequent indication of “breeding pairs” does not take into account their way of life. The total European population at the beginning of the 21st century is variously estimated between 1.5 and 11 million "breeding pairs" or up to 25 million individuals. Most of the European breeding population lives in the European part of Russia (around 1.2 to 2.5 million “breeding pairs”). There are between 250,000 and a million “breeding pairs” in Sweden. Countries with more than 100,000 “breeding pairs” also include Belarus and Finland. The Central European breeding population is estimated at 42,000 to 142,000 “breeding pairs”, the German between 2005 and 2009 at 20,000–39,000. In 2005 the EU Commission stated a population of approx. 960,000 “breeding pairs” for 25 member states.

    In the 2015 Red List of Breeding Birds in Germany, the species is on the pre-warning list.

    German woodcock hunting route over a decade (2005–2015)

    For Germany, the officially designated hunting routes are mainly available due to the difficulty in recording the population. From 1959 to 1977 these show a largely stable route for the federal states of Lower Saxony , North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein . These three federal states represented the main hunting area for the woodcock in the old federal states. From 1977 the routes collapsed due to the suspension of spring hunting. Although the hunt practiced until 1977 during the mating, breeding and rearing season - i.e. during the time of the snipe stroke - is still today, the hunting routes in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia rose to a level by 2006 that was before 1977 reaches. The route for Schleswig-Holstein, on the other hand, has remained at a stable level since 1977.

    Currently (as of 2017) the woodcock is spared all year round in Berlin and Hesse, in North Rhine-Westphalia hunting is suspended from 2016 to December 31, 2020. In the 2015/16 hunting year , the entire German hunting range of woodcock was 8,835 individuals, which is the lowest level of the previous ten years. The high reached in 2008/09 (18,973) is more than double, the low reached in 1997/98 (4,256) is less than half. If one takes the hunting statistics as a basis, the relatively limited habitat within Germany to three federal states becomes visible. Lower Saxony seems to have the largest population by far. The annual kill made up about 50 percent of the German distance in the last ten hunting years. In 2015/16 it was 67 percent, the distance was 5,915 animals and was higher than in the previous year (4,685 or 48%). In Schleswig-Holstein the proportion with a total of 2,126 animals was 24 percent of the total distance (in the previous year with 1,337 14%). The size of the population in North Rhine-Westphalia is currently not apparent from the hunting statistics due to the suspension of hunting (in 2014/15 the distance was 2,891 animals or 30%); the total population is estimated at 3,000 to 6,000 breeding pairs in 2015. All other German federal states together with around 700 woodcock made up almost 8 percent of the total distance, as in the previous year. It is unclear, however, whether the woodcock caught in Germany are predominantly the native population or migrants or overwinterers.

    A comparison of today's hunting route with that of the State of Prussia from the hunting year 1885/1886 does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about a decline in the population in Germany. In the Prussian province of Hanover, 4880 woodcock were shot in the hunting year 1885/86. In today's Lower Saxony, the area of ​​which is around 23% larger than that of the former province of Hanover, 21% more woodcock, namely 5938 pieces, were shot in the 2017/18 hunting year.

    In North Rhine-Westphalia the species is classified as endangered , in Hesse it is on the warning list. In the Red List of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's breeding birds , the woodcock was classified as critically endangered in 2014 . In Berlin the species is considered critically endangered . Among 22,687 birds ringed in Saxony-Anhalt in 2016, there was only one woodcock.

    The Austrian hunting range was around 2,620 snipes in 2015/16, the share of Lower Austria and Burgenland together made up 56 percent. In Switzerland the woodcock is currently hunted in seven cantons, the distance was 2,470 birds. In the canton of Ticino , where bird hunting is traditionally particularly popular, the annual distance is 1,920 specimens, which corresponds to 78 percent of the total distance in Switzerland. Evidence of broods and young birds is extremely rare there, so mainly migratory birds are hunted in Ticino.

    According to expert assessment by ornithologists, the woodcock population, at least regionally in the low mountain ranges, may be threatened by the construction of wind turbines. The woodcock is classified as a species susceptible to disturbance to wind turbines by the Länder-Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vogelschutzwarten (LAG-VSW). The LAG-VSW considers a minimum distance of 500 m from wind turbines to courtship areas to be necessary to protect the species. Overall, density centers should be taken into account regardless of the location of the current breeding sites. Whether the species should be considered "wind force sensitive" is still a matter of technical dispute.

    literature

    • Günther Nemetschek: "Contributions to the biology and ecology of the woodcock (Scolopax Rusticola)", dissertation Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen 1977
    • Oskar and Magdalena Heinroth: The birds of Central Europe. Vol. III, pp. 40-43, Hugo Bermühler-Verl. Berlin 1912, reprint Urania Leipzig 1968.
    • Otto Steinfatt: "The brood life of the woodcock", Journ. Ornith. (1938), Vol. 86, H. 3, 379-424
    • Hans-Günther Bauer, Einhard Bezzel , Wolfgang Fiedler (eds.): The compendium of birds in Central Europe: Everything about biology, endangerment and protection. Volume 1: Nonpasseriformes - non-sparrow birds. Aula-Verlag Wiebelsheim, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-89104-647-2 .
    • Peter Colston , Philip Burton: Limicolen - All European wader species, identifiers, flight images, biology, distribution. BlV Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-405-13647-4 .
    • Simon Delany, Derek Scott, Tim Dodman, David Stroud (Eds.): An Atlas of Wader Populations in Africa and Western Eurasia. Wetlands International , Wageningen 2009, ISBN 978-90-5882-047-1 .
    • Heribert Kalchreuter : The woodcock . Hoffmann, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-87341-030-3 .
    • Colin Laurie McKelvie: The Book of The Woodcock . Swan Hill Press, Shrewsbury 1990, ISBN 1-85310-113-3 .
    • Axel Hirschfeld and Alexander Heyd (2006): Hunting-related mortality of migratory birds in Europe : Numbers of journeys and demands from the perspective of bird and animal protection . Bird Conservation Reports 42.
    • Wolfgang Makatsch : The Limikolen of Europe including North Africa and the Middle East. German Agricultural Ext. Berlin 1980, pp. 113-116.

    Web links

    Commons : Scolopax rusticola  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ https://djz.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/old_docs/054_055_ausbildung_0307.pdf
    2. ↑ https://www.deerhunter.eu/de/blog/ Klassen/wildbiologie/ waldschnepfe
    3. ↑ McKelvie, p. 17
    4. ↑ Delany et al., P. 257
    5. ↑ Delany et al., P. 255
    6. ↑ Christoph Münch, Karl Westermann: The male population of the woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) in the forest complex Wellenbösche / Schildbretthurst (northern Ortenaukreis) during the breeding season 2001. (PDF; 518 kB) In: Naturschutz südl. Oberrhein , Volume 3, 2001, p. 129 -142.
    7. ↑ Blaise Mulhauser, Jean-Lou Zimmermann: Individual recognition and inventory of the woodcock Scolopax rusticola on the basis of singing characteristics of courting males. (PDF; 193 kB) In: Ornithologischer Beobachter , Volume 107, 2010, pp. 39–50.
    8. ↑ Bauer et al., P. 476
    9. ↑ Bauer et al., P. 477
    10. ↑ C. Sudfeldt, R. Dröschmeister, W. Frederking, K. Gedeon, B. Gerlach, C. Grüneberg, J. Karthäuser, T. Langgemach, B. Schuster, S. Trautmann, J. Wahl (2013): Vögel in Germany - 2013. DDA, BfN, LAG VSW, Münster
    11. ↑ Christoph Grüneberg, Hans-Günther Bauer, Heiko Haupt, Ommo Hüppop, Torsten Ryslavy, Peter Südbeck: Red List of Germany's Breeding Birds , 5 version . In: German Council for Bird Protection (Hrsg.): Reports on bird protection . tape 52 , November 30, 2015.
    12. ↑ a b Jörg E. Tillmann: On the ecology and situation of the woodcock in Germany. In: Lower Saxony Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Consumer Protection and Regional Development (publisher): Game and hunting: Landesjagdbericht 2008. Hanover, 2009 (PDF)
    13. ^ Annual route woodcock , accessed on August 4, 2017
    14. ↑ Landesjagdbericht 2015/16 , p. 30, accessed on July 31, 2018.
    15. ↑ Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola L.) , accessed on August 4, 2017
    16. ↑ https://www.ml.niedersachsen.de/download/127198/Landesjagdbericht_2016_2017.pdf
    17. ^ Red list of endangered breeding bird species in Hesse , accessed on August 4, 2017
    18. ↑ Red List of Breeding Birds in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , accessed on August 4, 2017
    19. ↑ Ringing results in Saxony-Anhalt 2016 , accessed on August 4, 2017
    20. ↑ Hunting and Protection of Wild Birds in Switzerland , accessed on August 4, 2017
    21. ^ The woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) in Switzerland - Synthesis 2014 , accessed on August 4, 2017
    22. ↑ Länder-Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vogelschutzwarten (LAG-VSW) (2015): Distance recommendations for wind turbines to significant bird habitats and breeding grounds for selected bird species (as of April 2015). Reports on Bird Protection Volume 51. 2014: 15–42.
    23. ↑ Florian Straub, Jürgen Trautner, Ulrich Dorka: The woodcock is “sensitive to wind power” and is relevant in terms of species protection law. (PDF; 1.4 MB) In: Nature conservation and landscape planning. Volume 47 (2), Ulmer, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 49-58.
    24. ↑ Gudrun Schmal: Sensitivity of woodcock to wind turbines. In: Nature conservation and landscape planning. Volume 47 (2), Ulmer, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 43-48.