American woodcock, short, plump shorebirds with long, thin beaks, are widely known for their bobbing stride and nasally "peent" calls, but not for being aggressive. Yet one April afternoon, when a deer sniffed around a woodcock hen's ground nest looking for food, the hen lunged at it, scaring it away.
University of Maine researchers captured what may be the first recorded evidence of nesting birds aggressively driving away deer, revealing an unexpected defense strategy against a little-recognized nest predator. Their findings suggest woodcock can respond to deer in multiple ways, challenging the assumption that these large herbivores pose little threat to nesting birds.
Woodcock typically rely on their cryptic feathers, which act as camouflage, to avoid nest predators. They also deploy a "broken wing" display to lure predators away from their eggs or chicks.
In six instances during April 2024, however, five nesting woodcock in West Virginia chirped, postured, charged and even flew into approaching deer, UMaine researchers found. The deer either walked away or fled the area in response.
The video depicts several instances of a female American Woodcock defending its nest from a white-tailed deer on April 24 and 29, 2024.
"While we only recorded a handful of instances, documenting these behaviors got us thinking more deeply about how birds could respond to deer as nest predators," said Kylie Brunette, lead researcher on the investigation and UMaine Ph.D. student in wildlife ecology. "That small birds are willing to aggressively defend their nests against something as large as a deer, using different strategies based on the situation, opens a lot of interesting questions about how these unexpected interactions affect wildlife communities."
Researchers deployed the cameras that captured the footage in 2024 and 2025 as part of the Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative research project. Of the 73 instances in which deer approached a nest, only six — including two involving the same woodcock — resulted in hens actively defending their nests. In the remaining cases, the woodcock did not respond to deer.
"Woodcock incubate their eggs for three weeks which is long for smaller birds. The longer a hen sits, the more dedicated she becomes to defending that nest," said Amber Roth, associate professor of forest wildlife management at UMaine and collaborator on the investigation. "This study shows that there is more than one way a hen can successfully protect her nest from potential predators like deer. Some hens relied entirely on remaining motionless and their cryptic plumage to hide from the approaching deer while others decided to be more assertive in their response."
Throughout the study, deer were detected at 68% of nests, but only interacted with nests a fraction of the time. None ate eggs from the nests under surveillance, according to the researchers.
"Deer populations are sometimes considered over-abundant in many parts of the eastern United States, raising concerns about impacts to other species," said Erik Blomberg, professor of wildlife population ecology who also worked on the investigation. "This research illustrates that nesting woodcock are resilient, and can use a variety of behaviors to defend their nests in systems where deer are abundant."
Researchers published their findings in the journal Ecology.
The Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative is an international study co-founded by Blomberg and Roth in 2017 to help conserve a species beloved by hunters, birders and nature lovers.
Collaboration among dozens of government agencies, nonprofits and universities has generated a dataset with nearly 700 individual woodcock tracked by GPS as they migrated through 32 states and seven Canadian provinces. It has also given graduate students like Brunette real-word research experience and opportunities to publish their findings as they advance through their academic and professional careers.
The research was conducted through a collaboration with the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, and was supported by the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station.
