What does it mean to be all in when it comes to young love? That’s a question my wife Alex ponders in her latest Substack post, an absolute crusher entitled When All in Becomes All Out, and it’s been on my mind ever since. The phrase itself implies a no-conditions way of devoting oneself to something. I was all in when I re-dedicated myself to birding in 2020. No half-assing the birds like I had been my entire life. This time it was whole-ass or go home.
But birding is a hobby. All in is different when it comes to a romantic partner. I knew I was all in the moment Alex first walked into my house during my senior year at Ohio University. Likewise I was all in when we got engaged and married and rented our first real home together, a cozy one-bedroom apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. But what did it mean to be all in, really? Was it even wise to be all in? I didn’t care. I was going to embrace the whole person, all the things she was passionate about, including art. Especially art. Music, movies, books, and…
Broadway musicals?
Understand that prior to purchasing a pair of tickets to Phantom of the Opera in a gesture of sweeping all in-ness, I’d spent most of my life harboring a hatred for musicals that usually stewed at a low simmer but was sometimes brought to a raging boil, as when, thanks to a maniacal aunt, I was forced to attend a local theater troupe’s production of The Sound of Music at the tender age of seventeen.
That experience was traumatizing, and it wasn’t long after the curtain lifted on Phantom that I knew I was in for a similarly rough night. Andrew Lloyd Webber wasted no time turning my best intentions into misery, and because Alex was all too aware of the suffering in the seat next to hers, the experience was ruined for her too.
Never again, Alex told me. To my immeasurable relief, I was banished from Broadway forevermore. Alex attends annually, and instead of seeing one show with me, she sees two shows with her Broadway-loving friends, and everyone is happy.
What does any of this have to do with Woodcocks? My regular readers may recall how I bribed rewarded our sons William and Santiago with ice cream for joining my Woodcock expedition last year. The goal was to spark them with the silliest bird out there. Sound plan, to my mind. Kids like silly, and if this bird was silly, maybe more birds were just as silly…
Raising Young Birders
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April 10, 2025
For Christmas of 2020, I bought our sons William and Santiago, then aged nine and six, each a pair of compact binoculars and a Peterson Field Guide to Birds. The goal was simple—brainwash them with bird wonderment and cement a fourth generation of family birders.
A year later, our boys aren’t birders yet, but we had so much fun last April that I decided to make Woodcocks n’ ice cream an annual tradition. When I mentioned to Alex the time had come to experience Woodcocks in their spring courtship display, she volunteered to tag along. While certainly a bird appreciator, Alex is not a birder. When it comes to our family, however, she’s all in, and thus she was all in on Woodcocks, at least for one night.
Woodcocks 2026 would be our family’s third birding expedition together. The first was to see a Snowy Owl in our previous home of East Lansing, Michigan in March of 2022. The second was the Resplendent Quetzals of Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica last August. Neither of those experiences fanned a latent passion for birds in Alex. If anything, they had the opposite effect. What’s the opposite of spark bird? Splat bird? Maybe not, but we do need a term for that. Comment below with any ideas👇
I had no delusions that Alex was ready to dump everything and take up a pair of binoculars, but I’d been hyping Woodcocks, and maybe she was a bit curious because, and it needs to be said, American Woodcocks are ridiculous birds, in the best possible way. It starts with the name, comedy gold for giggling eight-year-olds and Michael Scotts everywhere. Same for its vernacular names like Timberdoodle, Labrador Twister, and Bogsucker, all of which survive, as Robert Francis points out in his latest post, where others species have seen their vernacular names fall out of use. Why? Surely not least because they’re funny. Funny names for a funny bird.
Funny looking too. Bulbous bodies with a preposterous pipettes for a beak. Dig around the birding apps and you’ll see that the Merlins, Sibleys, and Audubons of the world are fair in their assessment of the Woodcock—Plump, rotund, goofy-looking, odd-shaped, dumpy
Wouldn’t you know it—American Woodcocks make for great art, too. I love this rendition by my friend Cameron Archer from Colorflock. Be sure to check out Cam’s line of merch, especially for friends and family members who are all in on Woodcocks.
And I knew I could count on Kelly Ballantyne to have some Woodcock art to share. This image is available in her etsy shop as a sticker.
Let’s talk eyes for a minute. Woodcock eyes. Bulging, wide-set evolutionary marvels that allow them to see predators as they forage for subterranean delicacies—earthworms, spiders, grubs, and the like. If only Andrew Lloyd Webber had the presence of mind to compose Birds instead of Cats, one actor alone could have locked down the role of Timberdoodle.
Alas for missed opportunities.
We didn’t intend to miss ours. Monday, April 13th was the appointed date. The chosen location was the same as last year—North Park’s Upper Fields, reliable Woodcock habitat where they arrive every year to nest and breed. After dinner, our merry quartet piled into Janet, our peppy Nissan Leaf, and off we were!
Living with someone for 27 years gives you a certain fluency in their body language, and I knew there was trouble before we even got to the park. The twenty-minute drive to the Upper Fields includes one stretch of strictly enforced 15-mph speed limit. How close are we? Alex asked as the car inched along, nose scrunched in an expression I could easily translate. There’s a million things I could be doing that don’t include driving slowly to a park I don’t particularly like to maybe see a bird.
I watched the devolution happen in real time. For Alex, all in was now merely in.
Woodcocks reveal themselves via vocalization at dusk. Unfortunately for our mission, I’d miscalculated the amount of daylight that would remain at the time of our arrival. When I saw the sun’s position in the sky, I anticipated a solid half hour would pass before we heard the Peent! call that would give the Woodcocks away and signal their aerial courtship display was about to begin.
If there were any Woodcocks. I was doubtful. To my dismay, the vast majority of the Upper Field had been mowed and was largely devoid of ground cover. In place of grasses and brush, there was the stubbly equivalent of a three-days beard. Equally alarming was the lack of birdsong. Missing were the Fox Sparrows, Field Sparrows, and Eastern Bluebirds that usually fill the Upper Fields with music.
To break up the time, we took a walk, hiking to the far end of the field and back, where there remained enough cover to possibly satisfy the needs of the secretive sandpipers. Yes, Scolopax minor is a sandpiper. A woodland shorebird. If you can make sense of that seemingly flagrant paradox, I beg you to make it make sense to me.
Finally, the daylight began to fail. And with it our hopes. Nary a Peent! issued from the grass. Aside from us four, Red-winged Blackbirds, Wild Turkeys, and a smattering of Tree Swallows were the only willing participants on this forlorn Tuesday.
How much longer do we give them? Alex asked.
Five minutes, I replied.
Ten minutes later, enough was officially enough. I’m calling it, Alex said, asking as we shuffled back to the car who might be willing to give it another shot tomorrow. Excluding herself, of course, and I don’t think it would an overstatement to say she was exulting in her declaration that she would never go birding again. As with me and Broadway 25 years ago, all in had become all out.
And the boys? William was reluctantly still in. Santiago was out. Though the birds were a no-show, the boys had earned their ice cream. They chose Häagen-Dazs, strawberry for William, cherry vanilla for Santiago.
Nothing for me, thank you, except bitter pills.
I couldn’t blame the birds, though. Had I done my homework, I would have seen that no Woodcocks had been reported at the Upper Fields for over three weeks. A little research would have sent us instead to another part of North Park—the Mine Waste Field. The former site of a mine that today is rich in grasses, wildflowers, and birdlife. Woodcocks had been reported there three days earlier. Hope was kindled anew.
Rain kept us home on Tuesday, but the weather looked favorable for a Wednesday Woodcock redo. To my delight, Santiago changed his mind, and so after dinner Alex bade her boys good luck and we embarked again on a journey to North Park.
The sun was falling quickly by the time we arrived, and as we hiked down to the Mine Waste Field, we were serenaded by a certain unmistakable song.
Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?
Or maybe it was Wood-cocks-for-you! Whatever the case, a Barred Owl seemed a good omen, and I was hopeful when we reached what appeared to be suitable terrain—tall grasses near the woods, from which the Woodcocks would hopefully emerge to perform their twilight sky dance.
After twenty minutes, my hopes again were beginning to flag. We moved a little further down to where the trail overlooked a sunken meadow. The day was getting dark and boys restless. Meanwhile, I was wondering if Woodcocks were trying to excuse themselves from my year’s list for Allegheny County.
Shortly after William’s How much longer?, we heard the first Peent! Then several.
The Peents increased in frequency. They sounded like a countdown now. Peent… peent… peent… peent… peent… LIFTOFF!
Triumph! We reveled in Peent… peent… LIFTOFF! several more times before thunderous clouds gathered in the distance. As delightful as these winged yams proved to be again this year, we were unwilling to make lightning rods of ourselves for their sake. Janet transported us to the nearest gas station. The boys celebrated with lemonade and Spree, a terrible candy to commemorate a wonderful bird.
After that I steered Janet home, hopeful the boys would be all in for Woodcocks 2027.
Woodcock Impressions
Alex—I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, which rivals any city for horrific traffic. I spent many hours a week stuck in an unmoving car, and it made it so that when I’m out and about, I don’t like to stand still. I walk in nature almost every day, and there’s nothing I love more than being there, but I have to be moving. That’s how I get my best thoughts and how I feel energized by being there. Thus birding and its countless pauses to look up into trees is something I will henceforth never do again. But I love that the rest of you do. Even if the birds had shown up and tried to court each other, I would have still been frustrated by standing around all that time waiting for them.
Will you do it again next year? Never. I will just enjoy you guys enjoying it.
William—I liked the park. I didn’t really think we were going to see them. You could tell they were about to fly from the sound they made before. I liked the way they flew, and it was cool when you could tell there were two of them.
Will you do it again next year? I guess.
Santiago—I liked walking in the park, especially the one with the wires. The second one. It was a really nice place. I liked seeing the deer and the Turkeys at the first place, but the second place made me feel way better. It set a really nice mood. When I saw the Woodcocks I was excited and they were flying really fast. I was surprised that we saw them. I thought maybe we had the wrong time, but we actually got there at the perfect time so we saw them really clearly. Overall, I’m really glad we got to see what we went there to see.
Will you do it again next year? Probably.
Nate—Woodcocks are endlessly entertaining, and I got to see them with my kids for a second year in the row. Top-ten experience of my life. Maybe top-five.
Will you try to see them again next year? Hell, I’ll try to see them again tonight!
Anuj Ghimire (The Bird Guy) challenged me to submit at least one eBird checklist every day in the month of April. As of April 19th, the streak remains intact with 43 checklists submitted, including my first-of-year American Woodcock and…
Speaking of goofy-looking birds, one showed up here in Pittsburgh today and found itself on my 43rd checklist. Surf Scoters are beefy diving sea ducks that seem awfully out of place in a municipal reservoir, but this male was content to occasionally dive but mostly float as walkers circulated the perimeter and gawkers attempted to capture his comically large bill and vacuous grin. I wish him good luck whenever he chooses to continue his journey to his breeding grounds in the boreal forests of the Great White North (or possibly Alaska).
Special thanks to those who contributed American Woodcock photos and art in my time of need.
Anuj Ghimire (The Bird Guy)—Anuj is a real one. And he’s making sure I’m keeping it real by keeping up with my daily eBird checklists.
Edmund Berry—@EspressoBird. Twitter mutual. Breathtaking photo and video media you’ll want to follow.
Ben—@wildnewyorkshow. Another Twitter mutual. Please check out Ben’s stunning website while you’re at it.
Silas Wareham—Silas is fast becoming a favorite writer of mine on Substack. Please subscribe to Raw Nature and treat yourself to a rising star.
Cameron Archer—The talent behind Colorflock. Get your favorite bird on a shirt, mug, hat, and more!
Kelly C. Ballantyne—Birder, artist, writer, educator… Kelly does it all. And does it well.
ryan mandelbirder—Amazing writer, amazing educator. Subscribe to Ryan’s Substack and buy his fantastic book, Wild NYC!
Lisa Velasquez—@RelayLisa. Though her Pittsburgh fandom is questionable 🤨, the quality of Woodcock photos is not 😃!
Bo—@boehnerce_jr. Tons of great bird photos and representing the CLE!!
Alyssa Camacho—@babysaiy. Finally met the Bryant Park Timberdoodles and was kind enough to share them.
That’s all for this week. Have you seen American Woodcocks this spring? How do you feel about musical theater? Have you ever had to pull the all-out card in the name of a healthy partnership? Do you have any exciting first-of-year birds to report this week? Let’s rap in the comments👇
Until next time, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to bird your whole ass off!
nwb
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This post was human-generated. All media by Nathaniel Bowler, except where noted.
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