American Woodcock Framed Print
American Woodcock Framed Print
Size & framing
12 × 12 in overall, in a 0.75 in wood frame (Black or Red Oak). The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, like a matted print.
Printed on 189 g/m² enhanced matte paper, behind an acrylic front. Hanging hardware is included.
Prefer to frame it yourself? It also comes unframed.
The timberdoodle, bog-sucker, mud snipe: long bill, barred crown, eyes set far back.
The print
- The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
- Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
- Keep out of direct sunlight; dust the frame with a dry cloth.
Shipping & production
Each print is printed and framed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, then shipped in its own box (separate from any shirts in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.
Returns
If your print or frame arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.
Plate 012
From the book
- Species
- Scolopax minor
- As named in the book
- Woodcock; Philohela minor.
- Artist
- J. L. Ridgway
- Book
- Second Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, Game and Forests of the State of New York, 1897
“…eyes inserted at an unusual distance from the bill.”
Then and now
Those high-set eyes give it nearly all-round vision while it probes for worms.
Field notes
Its eyes moved so far back that its brain turned upside down.
The 1896 New York game report didn't waste words on the woodcock's looks. It noted that the eyes are "inserted at an unusual distance from the bill" and listed its names: bog-sucker, mud snipe, blind snipe. Most people who know it best say timberdoodle.
Those eyes are the key to the bird. A woodcock feeds by pushing its long bill deep into soft ground for earthworms. Head down, it's exposed, so its eyes sit high and far back, giving it nearly all-round vision while the bill is buried. The rearrangement went deep: its brain is essentially upside down compared with other birds'.
In the hand it looks like an evolutionary joke. In the air in April it's anything but. At dusk the male calls peent from a clearing, then spirals two or three hundred feet up on twittering wings and tumbles back down singing. Aldo Leopold called it the sky dance.