Flying fast and low down the gravel path, the bird disappeared round the corner of our house. Maybe it was a sparrowhawk from the blurred impression of brown bars. I followed quietly, but there on the terrace wall was a female woodcock, Scolopax rusticola, the UK’s only woodland wading bird, and quite a surprise.
Later on I saw her again, standing by the terrace bench in cryptic leaf-litter plumage. I thought her the most beautiful bird I had seen. Undulating waves of chestnut, umber, bronze and mahogany marked a rounded body, methodical in symmetry like the wings of a moth. Deep brown and sandy triangles that somehow also looked random. A straw-coloured breast striped by rusty bars. Three pale lines across a dark brown head, long straight bill for probing and gleaming black eyes. Strange eyes set far back on the head for 360-degree vision – often the only thing noticeable when a woodcock lies camouflaged in woodland.
Over the next couple of weeks I watched from the window as I learnt her routine. Hot days needed an afternoon break from incubating eggs. From the narrow border on the terrace she would slip out between irises to preen with her long bill beneath each wing, ruffling and cleaning like someone stretching when they’ve just got out of bed. Then she’d take off silently into the woods by the river, coming back to the hidden nest after half an hour.
She seemed used to our movements – the filling of watering cans, harvesting of strawberries and even, before we knew she was there, sitting a metre away having tea on the bench. The most secretive of birds and astonishing to have a nest so close to the house.
One morning her behaviour changed. Sitting on a mottled cushion of seedheads dropped from a nearby sallow, she appeared plump and puffed up. Then, from beneath protective wings, out bobbed four chicks, dappled tan and walnut with diminutive woodcock beaks.
She ushered them away with guttural croaking to disappear into our huge flower borders and the safety of thick cover where also this year a partridge raised 12 chicks. By making this garden multilayered and undisturbed for wildlife, a nesting woodcock felt like the ultimate acceptance.
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