STUDIES ON BREEDING WOODCOCK IN MASSACHUSETTS 
William G. Sheldon 
Massachusetts Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit 
| Introduction 
Beginning in the spring of 1949 personnel of the Massachusetts 
Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit began intensive studies of wodcock 
on their breeding grounds in central Massachusetts. Student and out- 
side cooperators during the spring of 1951 included FE. Howard, J. Baird, 
Re C. Wood, D. T. Ford, Gordon Hobart, Gardiner Hobart, F. J. Wojcik, 
R. T. Norris, and F. Scott. This is a progress report with insufficient 
data to support any definite conclusions. 
Objectives 
The long range objectives of these studies include banding, behavior 
and movements of singing males, state populations, detailed ecological 
studies of state habitat, migrations, and such life history data as can 
be gathered. 
Methods 
Data included in the following report is based largely on the re- 
sults of trapping singing males with the Unit automatic decoy-trap. 
Details on the construction and trapping techniques are available in 
mimeograph form from the Unit. Traps were set on singing grounds from 
late March to May 25 without interruption. 
Spring Migration 
The earliest wodcock arrivals in the Amherst region were confined 
to the lower reaches of the Connecticut Valley. One banded woodcock 
picked up dead in Fall River, Mass., on March 3, had been banded on 
January 5 of this year in Louisiana. Observers nearer the coast sent 
records which indicated the migration was a few days earlier in that 
region. The height of the early spring migration in the Amherst. area 
was April 8-10. Regular spring censuses and trapping results indicated 
a later influx of birds in early May, a phenomenon which will be dis- 
cussed in a later paragraph of this report. 
