
SUMMARY OF INVESTIGATIONS OF WOODCOCK, SNIPE, AND RAILS IN 1954 
John We Aldrich | 
U. Se Fish and Wildlife Service 
The purpose of this annual compilation of reports on woodcock , 
snipe and rails is to aid investigators in keeping track of work other 
than their own that is being conducted in this field,and to attempt to 
call attention to the gaps in information necessary for the proper 
management of these migratory game birds. 
Woodcock wintering ground studies.--Winter counts of woodcock with 
the use of dogs over the past 5 years by Reed and Goodrum (see their 
report beyond) indicate that this method may have good possibilities 
for obtaining an index to over-all wintering populations. It would help 
in the appraisal of this method if similar operations might be conducted 
simultaneously in a number of other study areas, including bottomland 
as well as upland habitats. Studies of winter habitat factors effect- 
ing these birds in progress under the auspices of the Louisiana Wild 
Life and Fisheries Commission should help to throw light on their 
distribution at that time. Obviously, the relative ability of the dogs 
used to locate the birds would be one of the greatest variables in this 
system. It would seem to be very important to use the same dogs in the 
same areas each year. 
Banding of woodcock on their wintering grounds was conducted by 
the Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Commission. A total of 5627 wood- 
cock had been banded in North America at all times of the year, but 
particularly in winter, and 255 of these had been retaken at the end of 
1953. 
Woodcock breeding ground studies.--Information continued to accumu- 
late which will enable a more sound approach to obtaining information on 
the amnual variation in abundance of woodcock on their breeding grounds. 
One of the most important mileposts in this advance was a statistical 
analysis of data obtained by cooperators in the annual singing ground 
counts over a 5-year period (Kozicky, Bancroft and Homeyer, Journal of 
Wildlife Management 18:259-266, 195) . These authors point out one of 
the most important weaknesses in the organization of the singing ground 
counts to date has been the lack of randomization in the selection of 
the routes, with its possibility of injecting a constant component of 
error, due to bias, which does not decrease as the number of routes is 
increased. It was recommended that further stratification of areas be 
attempted, based on Inowledge of relative usage of these segments by 
woodcock and that a minimum of two routes be selected at random in each 
stratum to obtain unbiased estimates of sampling error. It was noted 
that since detailed banding studies are showing that woodcock frequently 
change singing grounds there appears to be little value in running the 
routes more than once each year. It was suggested that more routes 
