Pennsylvania Game News - March 2011 - 17

numbers of acres. Patch cuts of two to five acres can supply pockets of feeding and brood-rearing habitat that woodcock will use. A landowner can set up a cycle, with cutting taking place every five to ten years, so that a timber stand will perpetually have different age classes of trees providing different kinds of woodcock habitat. Owners of private property can take an active role in creating habitat, as Chris Young has done in Columbia County. For instance, a landowner can “daylight” apple trees by cutting down competing vegetation that casts shade on the fruit trees, stunting their growth or killing them. Woodcock often probe for worms in the rich soil beneath vigorously growing apple trees, and a host of other wild species eat the apples that the trees, restored to sunlight, abundantly produce. Mowing strips in hayfields is an effective tool for creating roosting habitat. The mowed strips allow woodcock to roost in the open, while the edges not mown shelter them from avian predators. Strips four to six feet wide can be mowed in hayfields starting in mid- to late-summer and continuing through the time of the first frost. Game Commission wildlife diversity biologists can point a landowner toward funding from the federal Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program (WHIP) administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Funds can make noncommercial logging jobs practicable, or defray expenses for daylighting apple trees. Other funding may be available through the Federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) or Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). Diversity biologists can put landowners in touch with private contractors to carry out various management practices. If a landowner enrolls in a Game Commission public access program, PGC land managers may assign Food and Cover Corps workers to plant shrubs, cut down unmarketable timber and otherwise create
MARCH 2011

Interested landowners can contact the PGC office in their region to learn more information about the Private Landowner Assistance Program.

the habitats that woodcock need. PGC crews also cut back field edges to promote brushy areas next to fields; these activities let more sunlight reach fields, so that both wildlife habitat and farm productivity are improved. To get a better picture of how to manage land for woodcock, landowners can visit demonstration areas scattered throughout the woodcock’s breeding range. Pennsylvania is a leading state in the Appalachian Mountains Regional Woodcock Initiative, in which a host of partners, including the Game Commission, are creating young-forest habitat. At the William H. Goudy Memorial Habitat Project on SGL 82, Somerset County, the PGC, Ruffed Grouse Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several other partners have improved habitat on 83 acres of old fields and alder flats. At the Steve Liscinsky Memorial Project on SGL 278, in Blair County, aging alder and aspen tracts have been set back to a younger growth stage where woodcock now find increased feeding and brood-rearing opportunities. (Goudy and Liscinsky were well-known woodcock biologists.) Demonstration areas are being established on other Game Lands, in state parks, and on lands managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At Bald Eagle State Park in Centre County, wildlife technicians have used chainsaws, a hydro-axe machine, tractor-pulled brush hogs, and a skid loader with a mower and tree-shear attachment to cut strips and blocks in wooded and brushy areas. Many of the strips stretch from low, damp areas
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Pennsylvania Game News - March 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - March 2011
