Waiting For Woodcock

      Doesn’t that sound like a movie—Waiting For Woodcock? It would probably be about an odd older guy living in a rural area, who frequented swampy areas and whose only understanding friend was a dog.

     The middle of this past week the weather felt like spring, and, on a morning walk out back with the dogs, I wondered when the first woodcock might show up. February is the only month I have never seen a woodcock in New England.

     Snow fell that night, about three inches of fluffy white stuff, and, when I walked the next morning, I decided that it would be a while before the woodcock showed up.

     The day turned out warm with the temperatures in the forties and by the middle of the afternoon most of the new snow had disappeared. A friend, Tom Flaherty, called to tell that he had run his Brittany pup in the next town over and she found three woodcock in some poplar near a gravel pit. 

Do you see him in there?

     Imagine that, woodcock in February.