Woodcock Watch

Yes, a woodcock watch, that's where I went tonight. I wasn't even sure what a woodcock was, although it sounded like a bird to me. A friend wondered whether it would just be a painted tree stump? :-) Got out my bird book, and yes, there it was, the woodcock. Looked a lot like the snipe I saw last year on one of my birding outings.

It had been a very gray and dreary day, and I just wanted to get outside, I didn't really even care what a woodcock was, or whether we would see one. I figured I would just enjoy the outside air.

Well, one thing I hadn't realized was how COLD it was. I had walked earlier today, and it was gray and wet, but not as cold. Tonight the wind made it really really cold, I was freezing! And that with my own internal space heater! I am usually not cold at all when pregnant.

It took a while before the first woodcocks appeared, they only come out at dusk. Then suddenly, we heard this 'bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz' buzzing sound and knew that there were some woodcocks around. After a bunch of buzzing, the sounds changed to a more twittering, high pitched sound, and there was our first woodcock! It flew up, and up and up, and up, way higher than I had expected. It circled for a bit and then came down again and went back to buzzing. The males do this to impress the females. We didn't see any females, not sure whether they were just ignoring all the males showing off or whether they were watching too.

It was cool to see them take turns doing the flying up, spiraling, coming down again. I was surprised that they were relatively small birds, or at least smaller than I had imagined. And the way they were flying made them look almost bat like. I enjoyed watching them, but I also was really really COLD, so I didn't mind when it got too dark to see them and we could head back in the warm car. At home, I made a nice hot soup and turned up the heat high!

I led my first LLL meeting today! I had been pretty nervous, even although I knew that that was silly. But things went pretty well. There were some things I forgot to say, but I think every one had a good time. We had a newborn baby, only two weeks old, which fit in very well with the meeting topic 'The arrival of the baby'. It was a pretty small group, all regulars, which helped. It would have been harder with a lot of new moms I think.

Baby is still kicking along, very active. I just love it! Guess I should start getting ready for him soon, only five weeks to go, ok, maybe a few more with my history of overdue babies :-)