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The American woodcock (''Scolopax minor''), sometimes colloquially referred to as the timberdoodle,〔(The American Woodcock Today | Woodcock population and young forest habitat management ). Timberdoodle.org. Retrieved on 2013-04-03.〕 is a small chunky shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America. Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage. Because of the male woodcock's unique, beautiful courtship flights, the bird is welcomed as a harbinger of spring in northern areas. It is also a popular game bird, with about 540,000 killed annually by some 133,000 hunters in the U.S.〔 The American woodcock is the only species of woodcock inhabiting North America.〔 Although classified with the sandpipers and shorebirds in Family Scolopacidae, the American woodcock lives mainly in upland settings. Its many folk names include timberdoodle, bogsucker, night partridge, brush snipe, hokumpoke, and becasse.〔 The population of the American woodcock has fallen by an average of slightly more than 1% annually since the 1960s. Most authorities attribute this decline to a loss of habitat caused by forest maturation and urban development. In 2008 wildlife biologists and conservationists released an American Woodcock Conservation Plan presenting figures for the acreage of young forest that must be created and maintained in the U.S. and Canada to stabilize the woodcock population at current levels, and to return it to 1970s densities.〔 ==Physical characteristics== The American woodcock has a plump body, short legs, a large, rounded head, and a long, straight prehensile bill. Adults are long and weigh .〔 Females are considerably larger than males.〔 The bill is long.〔 The plumage is a cryptic mix of different shades of browns, grays, and black. The chest and sides vary from yellowish white to rich tans.〔 The nape of the head is black, with three or four crossbars of deep buff or rufous.〔 The feet and toes, which are small and weak, are brownish gray to reddish brown.〔 Woodcock have large eyes located high in the head, and their visual field is probably the largest of any bird, 360° in the horizontal plane and 180° in the vertical plane.〔 The woodcock uses its long prehensile bill to probe in the soil for food, mainly invertebrates and especially earthworms. A unique bone-and-muscle arrangement lets the bird open and close the tip of its upper bill, or mandible, while it is sunk in the ground. Both the underside of the upper mandible and the long tongue are rough-surfaced for grasping slippery prey.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「American woodcock」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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