Scolopax rusticola
The Eurasian woodcock is a medium-small wading bird found in temperate and subarctic Eurasia. It has cryptic camouflage to suit its woodland habitat, with reddish-brown upperparts and buff-coloured underparts. Its eyes are set far back on its head to give it 360-degree vision and it probes in the ground for food with its long, sensitive bill, making it vulnerable to cold weather when the ground remains frozen.

Ronald Slabke · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- Eurasian woodcockPBDB
- Sits inside
- ScolopaxPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 24.5 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
24 occurrences of Scolopax rusticola on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
24 occurrences- Pleistocene83%
- Holocene17%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Scolopax rusticola and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Scolopax rusticola and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
306 taxa- Turdus14 sites
- Columba palumbus12 sites
- Corvus monedula11 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus10 sites
- Tyto alba10 sites
- Athene cretensis9 sites
- Corvus9 sites
- Columba8 sites
- Columba oenas8 sites
- Falco tinnunculus8 sites
- Garrulus glandarius8 sites
- Accipiter gentilis7 sites
- Accipiter nisus7 sites
- Buteo buteo7 sites
- Columba livia7 sites
- Falco eleonorae7 sites
- Fringilla7 sites
- Anatidae6 sites
- Emberiza6 sites
- Erithacus rubecula6 sites
- Sturnus6 sites
- Turdus iliacus6 sites
- Coturnix coturnix5 sites
- Otus scops5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Scolopax rusticola, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
13 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece10
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)2
- Birds in Finnish prehistory2
- Birds around the Minatogawa Man: the Late Pleistocene avian fossil assemblage of the Minatogawa Fissure, southern part of Okinawa Island, Central Ryukyu Islands, Japan1
- A new Middle Pleistocene bird assemblage from Cava di Breccia di Casal Selce (Ponte Galeria, Rome, Italy)1
- The Cova des Pas de Vallgornera (Llucmajor, Mallorca): a singular deposit bearing an exceptional well preserved Early Pleistocene vertebrate fauna1
- Early Pleistocene birds from Pirro Nord (Puglia, southern Italy)1
- The fossil bird associations from the early Middle Pleistocene of the Ragusa province (SE Sicily, Italy)1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)1
- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
Each of the 24 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 1 further reference is not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Scolopax rusticola
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ronald Slabke
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itScolopax through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758