
SUMMARY OF MASSACHUSETTS WOODCOCK STUDIES, 1953 
William G. Sheldon * 
Massachusetts Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit 
Massachusetts woodcock trapping and banding studies were continued 
throughout the spring months for the fourth consecutive year. Heavy 
precipitation curtailed activities during late March and April. Includ- 
ing chicks and returns from former years, 149 wodcock were captured. 
In addition to the trapping activity, a graduate student, Herbert 
Maxfield, is making a detailed ecological study of winging grounds and 
spring feeding coverts. This phase of wrk was begun two years ago by 
the writer. Vegetative features, earthwrm counts, and soil analyses 
are included in this special investigation. 
Every effort will be made to evaluate wodcock breeding and summer 
habitat with the objective of eventually making an inventory of such 
areas in the state. Also, of fundamental importance from a long range 
management point of view, is the analysis of the relation of vegetative 
succession to woodcock breeding territories. The Massachusetts studies 
are being conducted in areas where rapid vegetative succession is taking 
place, and its effects on woodcock breeding population will soon be 
measurable. 
opring Behavior of Breeding Males 
All 1953 records of repeats and returns on breeding males added 
corroborative evidence to results recorded in earlier reports. 
Accumulative data on returns over a four~year period suggested 
that former calculations of population turnover based on the percentage 
of recaptured males banded in former years is too subject to error to be 
considered valid. 
This year's trapping yielded the first information obtained in the 
study.on the return of chicks to their rearing grounds. A male chick 
banded on its nest, just after hatching on May 2, 1952, returned with 
the first major influx of migrants in early April and occupied a sing- 
ing site 200 yards from its hatching site of the previous year. 
* Cooperators: Ethan Howard, Jr., Gordon Hobart, Gardner Hobart, 
Robert Wood, Ernest Duart, Thomas H. Ripley, E. M. Pollack, R. Cronin, 
J. McDonough, C. R. McLaughlin, L. Campbell, Herbert Maxfield, Donald 
Blais, R. Norris. 
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