Started in 1968, the American Woodcock Singing-ground Survey exploits the conspicuous courtship display of the male American Woodcock. The survey consists of two-minute counts of singing males conducted along permanent roadside routes across eastern North America. Counts are conducted by staff from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), Environment and Climate Change Canada, U.S. Geological Survey, Bird Studies Canada, many U.S. state and provincial agencies, and volunteers.
These data provide an index to woodcock abundance and are used to estimate woodcock population trends for states, provinces, management regions, and the continent. The survey results are used to set the annual woodcock hunting seasons.
Breeding population indices (singing males per route) are based on the 1968-2016 trend that was estimated using hierarchical log-linear modeling techniques (see the U.S. FWS annual report for more information).
The results presented on this website were extracted from the USFWS annual report: Seamans, M.E., and R.D. Rau. 2016. American woodcock population status, 2016. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Laurel, Maryland. 17 pp.
Please visit the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s web page on the American Woodcock Singing-ground Survey for more information.
