Drumming up worms - the American woodcock

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The curiosities of the animal kingdom fascinate me and I’ve done a lot of articles over the years about various creatures. One which I found very intriguing was the American Woodcock (Scolopax minor). I wrote about this bird on both Bubblews and Infobarrel and thought, as we have so many Americans on myLot, that I would share it here. This chunky shorebird is also known as the timberdoodle, night partridge, bogsucker and hokumpoke. It is the only woodcock species in North American and spends most of its time on the ground. It is well adapted to finding worms in the ground. The beak is between 2 and 3 inches long and has a flexible tip. The end has sensitive nerve endings and it can tell when it has a worm in its grasp. To find worms, it will rock back and forth without moving the head. Stepping heavily on the ground with the front foot makes the worms move around. Their exact position is then easier to find. A unique arrangement of muscles and bones enables the birds to open and close the tip of their beak while it is in the ground. The tongue and underside of the top mandible are rough giving them better grip on slippery prey Males, when looking to attract a mate, have individual 'singing grounds'. At dusk, the males will circle high in the air while singing. They twitter continually then will plunge in a zigzag fashion towards the ground. The outer wing feathers make a loud noise as he plummets down. American woodcocks also have a few tricks up their sleeve when food is scarce during dry seasons. Earthworms disappear deeper into the ground during dry weather as they follow the moist layers of earth. When it rains, the drumming of the raindrops brings the earthworms to the surface so they won't drown. The woodcock will drum on the surface with its feet, fooling the worms into thinking that it is raining. So have any American readers witnessed the singing grounds of these birds? Do you know of them at all? The image is from Wikimedia courtesy Matt MacGillivray (https://www.flickr.com/photos/qmnonic/2497494899/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons