The Dusky Woodcock or Rufous Woodcock, Scolopax saturata, is a small wader. It is smaller than Eurasian Woodcock, and has much darker plumage.
This species is restricted to wet mountain forests on Sumatra, Java and New Guinea. It nests on a bed of moss in light undergrowth. It has a "roding" display flight like Eurasian Woodcock, but the calls are different. It can be very tame.
The subspecies S. s. rosenbergii (Schlegel, 1871) is sometimes given species status.
Further reading
Shorebirds by Hayman, Marchant and Prater, ISBN 0-7099-2034-2
There is a kind of innocent simplicity in our Woodcock, which has often excited in me a deep feeling of anxiety, when I witnessed the rude and unmerciful attempts of mischievous boys, on meeting a mother bird in vain attempting to preserve her dear brood from their savage grasp.
It is that the Woodcock, although a prober of the mire, frequently alights in the interior of extensive forests, where little moisture can be seen, for the purpose of turning up the dead leaves with its bill, in search of food beneath them, in the manner of the Passenger Pigeon, various Grakles, and other birds.
On observing the Woodcock while in the act of emitting these notes, you would imagine he exerted himself to the utmost to produce them, its head and bill being inclined towards the ground, and a strong forward movement of the body taking place at the moment the kwauk reaches your ear.
Woodcocks are typically roasted without being eviscerated, as the entrails are considered a delicacy.
The woodcocks are a group of seven extant very similar wading bird species in the genus Scolopax, characterised by a long slender bill and cryptic brown and flish plumage.
Due to their close relationship to the Gallinago snipes, the woodcocks are a fairly young group of birds, even considering that the Charadriiformes themselves are an ancient lineage.
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