American Woodcock

Open encyclopedia reference

The American woodcock (Scolopax minor), sometimes colloquially referred to as the timberdoodle, mudbat, becasse, bogsucker, brush snipe, night partridge, or Labrador twister is a small shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America. Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage.

The American woodcock is the only species of woodcock inhabiting North America. Although classified with the sandpipers and shorebirds in the family Scolopacidae, the American woodcock lives mainly in upland settings.

The population of the American woodcock has fallen by an average of slightly more than 1% annually since the 1960s. Most authorities attribute this decline to a loss of habitat caused by forest maturation and urban development.

In 2008, wildlife biologists and conservationists released an American woodcock conservation plan presenting figures for the acreage of early successional habitat that must be created and maintained in the United States and Canada to stabilize the woodcock population at current levels, and to return it to 1970s densities.

Wikipedia contributors, American woodcock; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T06:08:33.331530+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Scolopax minor J. F. Gmelin, 1789

Name authority

J. F. Gmelin, 1789

Common name

American Woodcock

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Aves

Order

Charadriiformes

Family

Scolopacidae

Genus

Scolopax

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classAves
9. orderCharadriiformes
10. familyScolopacidae Rafinesque, 1815
11. genusScolopax Linnaeus, 1758
12. speciesScolopax minor J. F. Gmelin, 1789

Close classified relatives

These entries share the source’s genus, Scolopax. They are not necessarily the closest relatives established by molecular evidence.

Browse 81 records assigned to Scolopacidae.

Names & synonyms

Names explicitly linked to this accepted taxon in the source. Synonymy can change with revision.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=176580 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:6XXHP. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.