Leopold's essays from A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC for April prove his keen ability for observing nature and his rare gift of writing about it. "Come High Water", "Sky Dance", "Bur Oak" and "Draba" resonate with events of the Spring season. In the essay "Sky Dance" Leopold reveals the display of the American Woodcock. Here is part of the selection, taken from the Illustrated Edition produced by Michael & Denise Sewell and Kenneth Brower, 2001, in conjunction with the Oxford University Press 1949 edition.

"SKY DANCE"

"I owned my farm for two years before learning that the sky dance is to be seen over my woods every evening in April and May. Since we discovered it, my family and I have been reluctant to miss even a single performance."

..."The stage props,like the opening hour, reflect the temperamental demands of the performer. The stage must be an open amphitheater in woods or brush, and in its center there must be a mossy spot, a streak of sterile sand, a bare outcrop of rock, or a bare roadway. Why the male woodcock should be such a stickler for a bare dance floor puzzled me at first, but I now think it is a matter of legs. The woodcock's legs are short, and his struttings cannot be executed to advantage in dense grass or weeds, nor could his lady see them there. I have more woodcocks than most farmers because I have more mossy sand, too poor to support grass."

"Knowing the place and the hour, you seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock's arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk."

"Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting."

Please read more of Aldo Leopold's April essays in A Sand County Almanac. Has anyone ever experienced the woodcock's performance in our SE Iowa area?