Timberdoodlemania: I went looking for the internet's current favorite bird

Why are people obsessed with the American woodcock right now?

We squished our way through the rain-sodden fields at Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden; about ten of us, trying to be somewhat quiet so as not to disturb the flora and fauna. The sun was setting on an overcast day, and the air was thick with both April mist and the sound of thousands of tiny frogs, desperately trying to out-peep each other for the possibility of maybe, just maybe, getting to mate.

We weren’t listening for horny peepers, though, or the pair of barred owls hooting in the distance, or even the loons in the nearby pond. Our ears and eyes were keyed to one sound only; a sound so distinctive it would likely be hard to miss.

“Peent.”

There it was; the sound I’d heard approximately 40,000,000 times over the past few months on TikTok videos and Instagram reels, and now finally in the wild. 40-something years in New England, and finally, I’d heard it for myself.

“Peent.”

Our guide, a friendly and knowledgeable fellow named Nathaniel, pointed into the ever-darkening sky, and we spotted an American woodcock - aka the timberdoodle, the bog sucker, the mudbat, the Labrador twister, the hokumpoke, Nagwibagw sibs in Abenaki languages, and (my favorite) the “little russet feller.”

This little russet feller launched up into the air like a bottle rocket, arced above our heads and eventually dive-bombed back to the ground. The “sky dance,” the spring mating display of the woodcock, involves many dramatic swoops, dives and aerial acrobatics, accompanied by a high-pitched, liquid kind of twittering sound which Nathaniel pointed out is not a call or a song, but is instead made by the wind whistling as it passes through the bird’s wings. And, as you might expect this time of year: it too is all in the service of finding a mate.

The sky dance was very cool, of course. I wish I could have seen the little back-and-forth, Pee-Wee Herman-esque shimmy they make on the ground. And I’d love to have been able to get much closer to it in order to take a more in-depth look at this weird bird, with its eyes nearly on the top of its head, its long, skinny beak, and its round, fluffy body, like a little woodland chicken.

A gorgeous photo of an American woodcock. Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For me, though, the best part of joining Maine Audubon’s Timberdoodle Thursday walk at Fields Pond was to hear, in the wild, what has become one of my favorite sounds of all time: the sound the woodcock makes on the ground before it flies up into the air.

“Peent.”

I would not call myself a birder; rather, I am a general purpose animal enthusiast, who delights upon discovering any creature under the sun, both accidentally and intentionally. I love to be out in nature, and I’m reasonably good at spotting both common and unusual species as I encounter them, but I’m afraid I am simply too lazy to devote myself fully to the all-consuming pastime of birding. Mad respect to those who do.

I am also, however, to my significant psychological detriment, a chronically online person. And while I also think I’m a very discerning person with excellent taste, I’m extremely susceptible to cute, weird and/or silly animal memes (sure beats doomscrolling political content). I’ve followed along with Neil the Seal’s reign of chaos across Tasmania. Fat Bear Week should be a national holiday. The FDA should classify the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Instagram account as a type of antidepressant. I’m old enough to remember the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger. My TikTok FYP is regularly dominated by parrots, ravens, crows, geese, owls and other charismatic birds. I love all the creatures of the Earth - living, extinct, rare or right outside my window.

So, yeah, my little expedition last week made perfect sense. The American woodcock is the internet’s favorite bird right now, and that’s the main reason why I went to go find one.

Why is the woodcock having a moment? I asked Nathaniel, our guide at Fields Pond, why he thinks some people are obsessed with these lil guys, and he thinks it boils down to the fact that they’re very cute and very weird. That’s the obvious answer, and it’s the correct one - the big eyes, the roundness, the “dance” they do in the leaf litter as they look for worms, their primary source of food. It’s adorable. It’s silly. It’s irresistible.

It’s also a weird bird! Woodcocks are technically related to shorebirds like the sandpiper and the curlew, even though they’re almost never found near the ocean. Did you know that the woodcock’s brain is upside down? Because their beaks are lower on the skull, their eyes are higher on the top of their heads and their ears are closer to their lower jaws, their brains have evolved to flip upside down to accommodate. Their long beaks are equipped with sensory organs so they can root around in the dirt and schlurp up worms and larvae; they also have a little wiggly tip at the end of the beak so they can manipulate their food and not swallow a mouthful of dirt. A flexible beak! Weird!

And then, of course, there’s the peent - or is it a meep? A beep? Whatever it is, it’s an objectively hilarious and ridiculous sound.

There have been scattered incidents of American woodcock peent memes in years prior; this one featuring Collective Soul’s 1993 alt-rock hit “Shine” has long been a favorite. That clip, I suspect, is what has more recently inspired an entire universe of timberdoodled memes utilizing its remix-ready “peent” or “meep”. There are entire meme accounts dedicated almost entirely to them - my favorite is There I Meeped It, by user martin_gr.exe. I don’t know which one makes me giggle more - Rick James’ “Superfreak”? Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” (with a cameo from another ridiculous bird, the willow ptarmigan)? The one that’s probably made me laugh the most is “Sultans of Swing.” I have watched this video probably 30 times. I have laughed out loud for each of them.

Meme-i-fied woodcocks can be found shopping at Home Depot for worms (würms), enjoying a würm buffet, and enjoying a croissant (quaso?). A friend of mine got a woodcock tattoo earlier this year. And a few weeks ago, New Yorkers suddenly became obsessed with woodcocks as a few appeared in Central Park and Bryant Park. While they’ve been semi-regular visitors to the city for a while now, for some reason, this year’s visit inspired a kind of Timberdoodlemania, with huge crowds gathered in both parks to watch the little guys poke around.

Nathaniel from Maine Audubon said it’s not surprising the woodcock can thrive in a dense urban area like New York - they’re generally pretty used to having people around, whether it’s at Fields Pond, the Bangor City Forest, or in the middle of Manhattan. They’re also relatively common birds, especially here in Maine, despite my never having seen one before last week - if there’s a shrubby, wet field near some forestland between Atlantic Canada, the Mississippi River and Virginia, there’s a very good chance you’ll hear some peents from March well into the summer.

We didn’t have any trouble finding our woodcocks at Fields Pond. Within 15 minutes of stepping outside, we heard our first peents, and we identified at least three birds, possibly more, in the hour or so before night fell. We didn’t get particularly close; certainly not close enough to admire their plumage, a camouflage so precise that people have accidentally stepped on them in the woods while they’re hiding in the leaf litter from predators during the day. And not close enough to see them dance, much to my chagrin; I wanted to make my own woodcock remix video to add the meme universe, but alas, all I recorded was a handful of peents.

There are lots of bad things about the internet. Most of this place is trash, if we’re being honest; an ever-deepening morass of AI slop, scammers, hateful people and advertising. It’s engineered to be addictive, and one must remember to look up, to step away, to go outside, to remember that you are a human animal who must also look for food and mating opportunities, and who also may, occasionally, wish to dance around in the dirt and then dart into the sky in the search for love.

And yet, there are corners of the web that lead you to places that are full of wonderful things - things that make you laugh and cry, that inspire you to think new thoughts, that teach you a new skill or connect you with a new friend. You can be led to a portal of sorts, that sends you into the real world to do something you’ve never done before - like walk through a muddy field with a bunch of strangers to find a weird little bird on a drizzly Thursday night in April.