Still Here!

I'm checking just a dusk each night to see if the male woodcock is still singing in my front yard.  As of last night he was still here ever hopeful – as am I  about this upcoming fall.  Although we've had some rain over the last week the temperatures have been relatively mild and the ten day forecast has things warming up even more and little rain in the next stretch.  Tony and I are planning to do some management work in our training cover this week.  We have access to a tiller that will run off the PTO on my tractor.  What we plan to do is turn over the soil along some of our larger interior trails which should make it easier for the woodcock to probe for worms.  These trails were created a number of years ago with a bulldozer as firebreaks when the state was doing some management work on the area.  The plan had been to burn the area but that never happened.  When the ground was first plowed up we often found borings in the trails.  Hopefully, I'll have pictures later in the week.