4-April-99 Woodcock Walk

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I made a batch of Passover bagels this morning for breakfast. The only thing they have in common with real bagels is the shape, but they sure beat a chunk of matzo for something to spread cream cheese on.

For the curious, here's the recipe:
1/2 C oil, 1 C water; bring to a boil; remove from heat and add
1 1/2 C matzo meal, 1 1/2 T sugar, 1/2 t salt;
Beat 3 eggs, add to mixture, stir well.
Keeping your hands wet with water, form into about 16 balls, rolling to make them nice and round, and place on baking sheets. Flatten each ball and with a wet index finger make a hole in the middle of each to make a bagel shape. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. Fresh out of the oven they're not half bad, but I have never heard of anyone making this recipe when it's not Passover and you have the alternative of baking with flour and normal leavening.

Here's more about birds, but this one isn't even well enough known for its name to be a joke. Woodcocks aren't at all rare, but are very good at keeping out of sight. The only way to see them at all is to meet them on their own terms, which means eavesdropping on the woodcock singles scene. In southern New England, that's at dusk in late March or early April in a weedy field, preferably near woods. About the time you want to turn on your headlights, the male woodcock starts calling. He sounds more like a buzzing broken transformer than like a bird, a bzzzzzp about a second long, then maybe 10 seconds of silence, then another bzzzzzp. Maybe you'll spot him on the ground if you follow the sound, but it's pretty dark and he's pretty well camouflaged. You're looking for a rotund brown bird about the size of a pigeon with a bill almost as long as the body. Most likely you'll only hear him until he takes off, bursting out of the weeds, circling behind you, and gaining altitude like a 737 taking off. In seconds he's so high overhead that you've lost sight of him, but now his call is a constant twittering that gets louder as he descends. If you walk ten or twenty yards towards where his bzzzping was coming from, and hold still, he's likely to fly in right over your shoulder and land in the same place he started from, so this time you have a better chance of seeing him on the ground. Maybe there's already one on the ground there when he lands. It's a female who has noticed him strutting his stuff, and we discreetly leave.

Why bother shivering in the dark to see a bird? It's just another thing that confirms that the world is still working the way it's supposed to. Once you know what to listen for, the sound is the key to a pattern that you never knew existed, and your community of acquaintences has expanded past just human beings.