A group of woodcocks is called a covey, the standard term for a small, settled group resting or feeding together on the ground. “Covey” descends from the Old French covee, meaning a hatched brood, and it’s shared with several other ground-dwelling game birds like grouse and pheasant.
Woodcocks rely heavily on camouflage rather than open vigilance for safety, so a covey tends to stay tightly clustered in dense woodland cover, trusting stillness and mottled brown plumage to stay hidden rather than spreading out across open ground. Their eyes sit unusually high and far back on the head, giving them near-360-degree vision even while probing the soil head-down for earthworms.
Example: “A small covey of woodcock flushed one at a time from the bracken, barely visible until they moved.”
Other Collective Nouns for Woodcocks
A group of woodcocks goes by more than one name, depending on what the birds are doing. You might also hear:
Related: Collective Nouns for Birds · What Is a Group of Woodcocks Called?