"Woodcock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... specimens comprising many genera, would hear with surprise and almost incredulity that they all belonged to one family, so great is the diversity exhibited in their structure. In size they vary from species smaller than the golden-crested wren to others larger than the woodcock; but the differences in size are as nothing compared with those shown in the form of the beak. Between the minute, straight, conical, tit-like beaks of the Laptasthenura—a tit in appearance and habits—and the extravagantly long, sword-shaped bill of Nasica, or the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. It was he, you ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt by day in the oak-scrub near the "set," and had fed at night in the swampy thickets by the rill, heard the voice of a curlew descending from the heights of the sky, and rose, on quick, glad pinions, far beyond the soaring of the lark, to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... live on the ground, every one admits that they are coloured so as to imitate the surrounding surface. How difficult it is to see a partridge, snipe, woodcock, certain plovers, larks, and night-jars when crouched on ground. Animals inhabiting deserts offer the most striking cases, for the bare surface affords no concealment, and nearly all the smaller quadrupeds, reptiles, and birds depend for safety on their colours. Mr. Tristram has ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... over the garden, eventually descending into the garden with wings slanted, and then the seagulls had to leave off fighting or go without food altogether. A great strange bird rose out of the bushes, and flew away in slow, heavy flight. Monsignor thought it was a woodcock; and there were birds whose names no one knew, migrating birds come from thousands of miles, from regions where the snow lies for months upon the ground; and Evelyn and the prelate and the nuns watched them all until the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... to kill a partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur that can kill woodcock in close cover, or well-grown snipe on a windy day; but there are few, who can do these things, who can kill with both barrels in their first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the wary and cautious manner of their approach, the nice modulations necessary to "call" ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Grimmy, if you tell us next term that you bagged two woodcock with one barrel, we'll boot you all ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects. In this extent the doctrine was held by the Pythagoreans and Platonists, and in fact by a majority of its believers. Shakspeare's wit is not without historical warrant when he makes the clown say to Malvolio, "Thou shalt fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam." Many the Manichaans, for instance taught that human souls transmigrated not only through the lowest animal bodies but even through all forms of vegetable life. Souls inhabit ears of corn, figs, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to me the most blessed of birds, would often sail as before in the middle distance, or night-hawks would cut their strange curves in the evening sky. Far out beyond, sea-gulls, mere specks of white, would wheel and plunge into the bay, and at our backs the woodcock, shy enough in any other presence, would whir fantastically through the woods. All nature was the same, but I was no longer its solitary admirer, for I held in my arms a gentle framework of delight such as no other man ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... and three teaspoonfuls of anchovy paste. Put this into the chafing-dish over hot water with three-fourths a cup of milk and stir until thick. Spread sippets of toast with butter and then with anchovy paste, and turn the woodcock upon them. ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... remarkable birds are the eagle, the turkey-buzzard, the hawk, pelican, heron, gull, cormorant, crane, swan, and a great variety of wild ducks and geese. The pigeon, woodcock, and pheasant, are found in the forests as ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... Shadwell's Epsom Wells and Rawlins' Tunbridge-Wells). Baker decorates his scene with such "humours" as Maiden, "a Nice Fellow that values himself upon all Effeminacies;" Squib, a bogus captain; Mrs. Goodfellow, "a Lady that loves her Bottle;" her niece Penelope, "an Heroic Trapes;" and Woodcock, the Yeoman, a rich, sharp, forthright, crusty old fellow with a pretty daughter, Belinda, whom he is determined never to marry but to a substantial farmer of her own class: her suitor, a clever ne'er-do-well named Reynard, of course ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... county of equal size; the large flocks of hen chaffinches that haunt the farmyards in winter being quite a notable feature. The goldfinch, it is to be feared, is rapidly becoming scarcer; as are also the jay, the woodcock and other birds much more numerous a few years back. Fieldfares and redwings visit the county in great numbers from the N. during the winter; one morning in the winter of 1886 the writer saw many thousands of fieldfares pass over St. Albans from the direction of Luton. The redwing, ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... moment was for ever poisoned by the thought that it was passing, passing; and that the spirit, whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and to keep it moist by wrapping it in greased leather, and oiled rags, or by burying it in gravel. The Elizabethan pipes were so small that now when they are dug up in Ireland the poor call them 'fairy pipes' from their tininess. These pipes became known by the nickname of 'the woodcock's heads.' The apothecaries, who sold the best tobacco, became masters of the art, and received pupils, whom they taught to exhale the smoke in little globes, rings, or the 'Euripus.' 'The slights' these ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... silver plate on his door. Ollapod, in speaking of this kind of people, makes mention of one Sabin, who was so overjoyed the first time he saw his name in the list of letters, advertised by the post-office, that he called his friends together and put them through on woodcock. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... it may have been a couple of young farmers taking a day off, hunting woodcock along the river. This is the time of year for the first brood to be big enough for shooting. The law opens for a short spell, and then it's on again till fall," Owen remarked, with his knowledge of such ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... account of a civic banquet, where I ate turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oyster patties, and I know not what else, I have been to the News-room and found the Exchange pavement densely thronged with people of all ages and of all manner of dirt and rags. They were waiting for soup-tickets, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the American Woodcock, but is larger and is barred beneath. Their habits are the same as those of ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... quiet at Pynsent, in Somersetshire, and his former subalterns do nothing, so that nothing is done. Whatever places or preferments are disposed of, come evidently from Lord———-, who affects to be invisible; and who, like a woodcock, thinks that if his head is but hid, he is not seen ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... twisted, and came out on the top of Pound's Hill Wood. Sir Richard pointed to the swells of beautiful, dappled Dallington, that showed like a woodcock's breast up the valley. 'Ye ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... heart, for that day his bride of a year had presented him with two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, both white as May-blossom. In his joy the happy father asked his wife her heart's desire, and she, pining for that which idle fancy urged upon her, begged him to bring her a dish of woodcock from the lake in the dale, or of venison from the greenwood. The Seigneur of Nann seized his lance and, vaulting on his jet-black steed, sought the borders of the forest, where he halted to survey the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... autumn the woodcock were very plentiful, and as my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as the forest. I had already killed four or five of the long-billed birds, when I knocked over one, which fell ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... game season, I know," he said, as the others looked their surprise, "and about the only thing we ought to shoot right now would be woodcock. I saw a marsh where I reckon I'll find some of the long-billed mud diggers. You know they get their food by sticking their bills deep down in the mud. That's why you always look for woodcock in a wet spot or marsh. Ready, Steve? All right, ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... reckon on from ten to fifteen brace, and I could name two guns that have not unfrequently bagged from thirty to fifty brace on the Eastern Shore; but I believe they shot with unusually "straight powder." There is a good show of woodcock at certain seasons; but it sounds strange to English ears when they speak of the season opening in June; the bird is much smaller than ours, weighing, I believe, about seven or eight ounces, and it is found much oftener in comparatively open ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... swampy island-slant, Where, busy in their grassy homes, Woodcock and snipe the hollows haunt, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... half-an-hour's trouble, the flames got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I went round to the further side of the pan to wait for the lions, standing well out in the open, as we stood at the copse to-day where you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do, but I used to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much as mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds parting before the onward rush of some animal. 'Now for it,' said I. On it came. I could see that it ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... of Saratoga. There is a row of carriages at the sheds—a select party is dining upon those choice trout, black bass and young woodcock. The game dinners are good, the prices are high, and the fried potatoes are noted all over the world. They have never been successfully imitated. Are done up in papers and sold like confectionery. The gayly dressed ladies indulge in beatific expressives ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... of the crew was a long, lazy-looking Yankee, whom the Skipper called Rento, and the others plain "Rent," his full name of Laurentus Woodcock being more than they could away with. But it was not to see the crew, neither the schooner (though she was a pretty schooner enough, as anybody who knew about such matters could see), that the village had come out; it was ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... was approaching a perspiring and vociferous close when the Antiquary whispered an invitation to the Painter, the Patron, and the Critic. A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs heavily, even against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore down an avenue toward "Dick's" smoky ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... have the misfortune to be a woman, you know from yourself what is the nature of woman. Tell me truthfully, have you ever seen a woman who was sincere, faithful, and constant? You haven't! Only freaks and old women are faithful and constant! You'll meet a cat with a horn or a white woodcock sooner than ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... ingenuous pride in making it known that Lawrence was prospering. This gave Foster a hint that he acted on later. They, however, shot a brace of partridges in a turnip field, a widgeon that rose from a reedy tarn, and a woodcock that sprang out of a holly thicket in a bog. It was a day of gleams of sunlight, passing showers, and mist that rolled about the hills and swept away, leaving the long slopes in transient brightness, checkered with the green of mosses and the red of withered fern. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... haste, repent at leisure. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Necessity is the mother of invention. Old birds are not to be caught with chaff. Old friends and old wine are best. One swallow makes not a spring, nor one woodcock a winter. People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. Possession is nine points of the law. Procrastination is the thief of time. Short reckonings make long friends. Safe bind, safe find. Strike while the iron is hot. Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... philosophy, and he liked to hear it. The reader will remember that the occasion and philosophy to which we allude were, respectively, the dinner at Mr. Karl Benson's, and a conversation in which Mr. Harry Benson expressed it as his decided opinion that living in a country where one could eat woodcock and drink claret without having to pay very high taxes or do any hard work, was much better than some other things which he then and there suggested. But in the silence which often falls over a small dinner circle, and over a circle where there ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... came in my way. I often also had a gallop over the mountains and plains; or I went shooting, either on foot or on horseback. The game was very wild round Damascus, but I got a shot at redlegged partridges, wild duck, quail, snipe, and woodcock, and I seldom came home with an empty bag. The only time I ever felt lonely was during the long winter nights when Richard was away. In the summer I did not feel lonely, because I could always go and smoke a narghileh with the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole, peeled it; saw, farther on, where this unknown man had probed in moss and mud—peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of holes as though a giant woodcock had been ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... spoiled this act of politeness by exclaiming in a rude tone, "Pass, madame, pass on!" And turning towards the King of Naples, added, loud enough to be heard, this disgraceful exclamation, "The old woodcock!" ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... whether there is any such thing in the world or not, and such as do not find it in themselves will hardly believe 'tis anywhere. But it will easily be granted, that most people make haste to be miserable; that they put on their fetters as inconsiderately as a woodcock runs into a noose, and are carried by the weakest considerations imaginable to do a thing of the greatest consequence of anything that concerns this world. I was told by one (who pretends to know him very well) that nothing tempted my cousin Osborne to marry his lady ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... looked like one, and so they gave it that name, Lester calls a quail Pious Imperialis. Now that's an imperial woodpecker—that big black fellow with a red topknot that we sometimes see when we are hunting. He used to be called cock-of-the-woods, but the name was twisted around until it became woodcock, and some people believe that he is the gamey little bird we so much delight to shoot and eat. But they belong to different orders, one being a climber and the other a wader. Lester speaks of a rabbit, not knowing that there is no such thing as a wild rabbit in our ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... to announce his intention, he would drop like a plummet for a thousand feet, catch himself in mid-air, and zigzag down to the nest in the spruce top, whirling, diving, tumbling, and crying aloud the while in wild, ecstatic exclamations,—just as a woodcock comes whirling, plunging, twittering down from a height to his brown mate in the alders below. Then Ismaques would mount up again and repeat his dizzy plunge, while his larger mate stood quiet in the spruce ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... with reason, to be, on that very account, less nutritious. It is only when they have attained the adult age that it appears in them; it is abundant in beef, mutton, kid, hare, pigeon, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, quail, duck, goose, and generally, in all animals having dark coloured flesh. Mushrooms and oysters also contain some, but in a very ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... home because the old gentleman wanted him to marry Rosetta, whom he had never seen. He called himself Thomas, and entered the service of Justice Woodcock as gardener. Here he fell in love with the supposed chamber-maid, who proved to be Rosetta, and their marriage fulfilled the desire of all the parties interested.—I. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... at slip. That is very near the wicket, you know. Woodcock was bowling, and he had the name of being the fastest bowler of England at that time. It was just the beginning of the match and the ball was quite red. Suddenly I saw something like a red flash and there was the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the fifth son of the alderman, was in the East India Company's Civil Service, as collector at Saharapore. He married Harriet Dawson, and his daughter Harriet married William Woodcock, Esq. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... upon by evil-minded persons. At any rate, he regarded the message as a decoy, and for half an hour refused to credit its sincerity. But at length he was induced to think a little better of it. The gentleman giving the invitation was one Squire Woodcock, of Brentford, whose loyalty to the king had been under suspicion; so at least the farmer averred. This latter information ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... you a song, It's not very long: The woodcock and the sparrow, The little dog has burnt his tail, And he ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... dangerous consequences to your person and contribute to exasperate the nation." He closed with the significant sentence: "I heartily wish you a prosperous voyage and long health." The significant words remind one of the woodcock's feather with which Wildrake warned the disguised monarch that no time was to be lost in fleeing from Woodstock. But if the hint was curt, it was no less wise. There was no doubt that it was full ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... me seven and sixpence a day; for which sum I undertake to be shot at on certain occasions and by proper persons, and I hope when the time comes I shall take it as well as another. But that doesn't include turning out to be potted at like a woodcock on your confounded Berkshire wilds by a turnip-headed yeoman. It isn't to be done ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... rushing Of a river underground, Not the rising of the wind In the trees before the rain, Not the woodcock's watery call, Not the note the white-throat utters, Not the feet of children pushing Yellow leaves along the gutters In the blue and bitter fall, Shall content my musing mind For the beauty of that sound That in no new way at all Ever will be ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... prevision of the aeroplane. The picture shows the airman seated in a winged car, guiding with reins thirteen harnessed herons as the motive power, and mounting upwards, apparently very near the moon. If he can see the modern interpretation of his dream he must be pleasantly surprised. Bewick's woodcock is one of the most beautiful portraits in the book: the accurate detail of the feather markings of the wings and back and the softer tone of the breast are as nearly perfection as possible. A woodcock visited Aldington in one of the very severe winters but managed to elude ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Adam Woodcock, the falconer of Avenel, was an Englishman by birth, but so long in the service of Glendinning, that he had lost much of his notional attachment in that which he had formed to his master. He was a favourite in his department, jealous and conceited ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... killed the day before; he weighed with his hand a quarter, to make the cellarer admire its weight; near the buck lay two kids, a good number of hares and partridges; while another porter opened hampers filled with every species of marsh fowl and birds of passage, such as wild duck, woodcock, teal, plovers, etc. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney Is not to be despair'd of for our money; And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there; and godwit if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe'er my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we'll speak our minds, amidst our meat; And I'll profess no verses to repeat; To this if aught appear, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as dock-boys stick straws into molasses hogsheads—and once in a great while, the sawyer, if he's wide awake, will see, in the Spring or Fall, the wild goose leaving his migrating ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... thank him; he hath bid me to a calf's head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife's naught.—Shall I not find a woodcock too? ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... chill October shakes the latest down, They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it—'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue,— Except when squabbling turns them black ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... purse was light, and when he came to scan the bill of fare, and note the large sums affixed to each item, his heart sank within him, and he waited in silent agony to hear his fair companion make her selection. After due consideration, she ordered a woodcock. Now woodcocks are expensive luxuries at Delmonico's, and the cost of one such bird represented more than the total contents of the lover's purse. He was in despair, but a lucky thought occurred to him. Turning to the lady, he asked with an air ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... with divided skirts—might freely sit with one foot on either bank of this menacing but not yet very formidable stream. So that on the whole this nook of shelter under the coronet of rock was a favourite place for a sage cock-pheasant, or even a woodcock in wintry weather. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... woodcock to my own springe.] I have run into a springe like a woodcock, and into such a noose or trap as a fool only would have fallen into; one of my ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... do you see now once again The glen And fern, the highland, and the thistle? And do you still remember when We heard the bright-eyed woodcock whistle Down ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... flight is very remarkable in the Owl, as may be observed, if a tame one be allowed to fly about a room, when we can perceive his motions only by our sight. It is a fact worthy of our attention, that this peculiar structure of the wing-feathers does not exist in the Woodcock. Nature makes no useless provisions for her creatures; and hence this nocturnal bird, which obtains his food by digging into the soil, and gets no part of it while on the wing, has no need of this contrivance. Neither stillness nor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... not," said the Stork gravely. "Yet the Woodcock is a very foolish bird. One never knows what he will do next. If he ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought promising—certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill whistle of woodcock. At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the farm ledges and saw the huddle of the home buildings below us, and quite dark when we reached ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Em, for your words of cheer. And now is the woodcock near the gin. Good-bye. Now, Harding, we'd ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... game or minerals, one frequently comes upon evidence of the former occupation of the country. Speaking of game, the partridges are not preserved, and they are scarce; of course I was too early, but in autumn the woodcock-shooting, I understand, is first-rate. Quails and snipes are also ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... said Lilias to her brother, 'has given me one great advantage over him. For knowing that my uncle would shoot him with as little remorse as a woodcock, if he but guessed at his brazen-faced assurance towards me, he dares not since that time assume, so far as I am concerned, the air of insolent domination which the possession of my uncle's secrets, and the knowledge of his most secret plans, have led him ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... suddenly frightened when the world grew big and strange,—in all this he is simply recalling a multitude of our own vague, happy memories of childhood. He goes out into the woods at night to tend his woodcock snares; he runs across another boy's snares, follows them, finds a woodcock caught, takes it, hurries away through the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Miss Elliott—in a dozen places they set the grass afire. If that wet east wind had not come up, nothing on earth could have saved a thousand acres of white pine—and I'm afraid to say how many deer and partridges and woodcock.... It was a savage bit of business, was it ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... pheasants, fifty-six rabbits, eleven hares, three pigeons, and a woodcock. We should have got a hundred and eighty pheasants if they hadn't dodged us in the big wood. I can't make out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... the latter that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;" to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately: such participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... all in our nice soft beds; such as found three blankets too little added a dressing-gown of flannel, or print lined with wadding or fleecy hosiery, and so made shift. In particular all those who had the care of Josephs took care to lie warm and soft. Hawes, Jones, Hodges, Fry, Justices Shallow and Woodcock, all took the care of their own carcasses they did not take of Josephs' ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Argyll, in his "Reign of Law," has pointed out the admirable adaptation of the colours of the woodcock to its protection. The various browns and yellows and pale ash-colour that occur in fallen leaves are all reproduced in its plumage, so that when according to its habit it rests upon the ground under trees, it is almost impossible to detect ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to what he says of the woodcock:" and with trembling hand she turned over the leaves, till he found the place. "Here it is," said he, "page 88, chap. xvi. Just be so good as read that, Lady Emily, and say whether it is not infamous that Monsieur ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... blue-winged teal, as they follow the river's winds northward in the spring-time, will stop the ploughs furrowing its fertile bottoms as far as its echoes roll around mountain-juts, and cause the hands that held the lines to grasp old-fashioned rifles for a chance at the winged passers. When, later, woodcock seek its margins, gray snipe, kill-deer, mud-hens, and plovers its narrow fens, the scythe will rest in the half-mown field while its wielder "takes a crack at 'em." And when autumn brings thousands of gray squirrels, flocks of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... removed to a Garden-house in Petty-France, next door to lord Scudamore's, where he remained from the year 1652 till within a few weeks of the Restoration. In this house, his first wife dying in child-bed, 1652, he married a second, Catherine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney, who died of a consumption in three months after she had been brought to bed of a daughter. This second marriage was about two or three years after he had been wholly deprived of his sight; for by reason ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... thither, gazing all about, and was quick to note who delighted to look upon her,) soon became aware of Rinieri and said, laughing, in herself, 'I have not come hither in vain to-day; for, an I mistake not, I have caught a woodcock by the bill.' Accordingly, she fell to ogling him from time to time with the tail of her eye and studied, inasmuch as she might, to let him see that she took note of him, thinking that the more men she allured and ensnared with her charms, so much the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Capo di Monte or Caserta. Those Neapolitan shooting parties are a thing of the past. I have heard my brother-in-law, King Leopold, tell how once, when he had been invited by the King to a shoot of large and small game at Mondragone, at which, in the course of a few days, three thousand woodcock had been killed, besides other game, he stayed on for a day longer than the other sportsmen, and in one morning he brought down sixty woodcock put up by his dog, on the very ground that ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Mowbray, thundering at the door, "come forth! You are now fairly trapped at last—caught like the woodcock in your own springe. We have you. Open the door, I say, and save us the trouble of forcing it. You cannot escape us. We will burn the building down ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... thank him; he hath bid me to a calf's-head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife's naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too? ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Range, and the intervening plains. Perhaps considering that the city has not extended much in the direction of East Terrace, it may be a little too far for public convenience, but this is a question that admits of doubt. It is a neat and unostentatious brick building, at which the Rev. Mr. Woodcock performs service, whose exertions amongst the natives in the West Indies have stamped him both as a christian and a philanthropist. The two churches are calculated to hold about 1000 sittings, and the average attendance is ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... coincidences. But to the story. The day I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... night, and yet one that came near costing Kirkendall his life. Among the men left with the train was William Woodcock, Lieutenant Jacobs' servant. He was armed with a double-barreled shotgun and ordered to take ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in perfection when the labour which would have made an ode has been concentrated upon a couple of lines. There is a celebrated recipe for dressing a lark, if we remember rightly, in which the lark is placed inside a snipe, and the snipe in a woodcock, and so on till you come to a turkey, or, if procurable, to an ostrich; then, the mass having been properly stewed, the superincumbent envelopes are all thrown away, and the essences of the whole are supposed to be embodied ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... St. James's Square), writes Mrs. Yorke, 'and Mr. Woodcock followed in the chariot with the Great Seal. The King had given it in his closet, and at the same time Mr. Yorke kissed his Majesty's hand on being made Baron of Morden in the county of Cambridge. Not once did Mr. Yorke close his eyes, though at my entreaty ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... feathered game in his neighborhood was, of course, purely wild. He used to say, after he had been in England, that shooting in 'preserves' seemed to him very much like going out and murdering the barn-door fowl. His shooting was of the woodcock, the wild-duck, and the various marsh-birds that frequent the coast of New England.... Nor would he unmoor his dory with his 'bob and line and sinker,' for a haul of cod or hake or haddock, without having Ovid, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... well at the hotels here. Japan abounds in fish and game in great variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the kitchen, where the black-capped little padrone and the gigantic white-capped chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of inspecting the larder—fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables, several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We select our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... you a song Of the days that are long, Of the woodcock and the sparrow, Of the little dog that burnt his tail, And he shall ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... not quite certain even now whether I'm expressing myself clearly. While I've been lying here, I've kept fancying red dogs were running round me, while you were making them point at me, as if I were a woodcock. Just as if I were drunk. Do you ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... bifurcated tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity of the boar-fish and the pig-fish, the dark smoothness of the sting-ray, floating like a fringe, the long snout of the woodcock-fish, the slenderness of the haddock, agile and swift as a torpedo, the red gurnard all thorns, the angel of the sea with its fleshy wings, the gudgeon, bristling with swimming angularities, the notary, red and white, with black bands similar to the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... feet for a snap-shot at the old gobbler which flew over me, making a clear miss. Bang! bang! went two more guns; a woodcock whistled up from the bog and two swamp-rabbits dashed into the brier. The dogs came out, shaking the water from their coats, and the spattered drivers rode through the creek. There was not a feather to show, and of course everybody was "down" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... squirrels at their harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on some leafless ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... woodcock-shooting in November—I must take you back once more to my favourite Downs. With the first full moon during that month, especially if the wind be easterly or the weather calm, arrive flights of woodcocks, which drop in the covers, and are dispersed among the bushy ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... birds familiar to European sportsmen, partridges and quails are to be had at all times; the woodcock has occasionally been shot in the hills, and the ubiquitous snipe, which arrives in September from Southern India, is identified not alone by the eccentricity of its flight, but by retaining in high perfection the qualities which have endeared it to the gastronome ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... failed to give us a thrill of pleasure. At last it became too utterly miserable to be borne. The sight of the deck-steward bringing round cups of half-cold beef-tea with grease spots floating on the top proved the last straw, so, with a graceful, wavering flight like a woodcock, we zigzagged to our bunks, where we have remained ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... was somewhat like a woodcock caught in his own springe. He turned his face alternately from the one spokesman to the other, and began, from the gravity with which Mannering plied his adversary, and the learning which he displayed in the controversy, to give him ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the beaters advance alone, hares are only killed as they run out of the ring. Hares are very plentiful in North Germany, and "Kettle-drives" usually resulted in a bag of from thirty to forty of them. To my surprise, in the patches of oak-scrub on the moor-lands, there were usually some woodcock, a bird which I had hitherto associated only with Ireland. Young Vieweg was an excellent shot; in common with all his father's other guests, he was arrayed in high boots, and in one of those grey-green ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... parishioners, being aware of this peculiarity, put it down, very naturally, to eccentricity for which he was rather to be pitied than condemned, and his popularity was in no way abated by it. Mr. Fetherston was unmarried, in age about sixty; tall, stout, red-faced, of good family, a noted woodcock shot and salmon fisher, a carpenter, and an incessant pipe-smoker. These being his leading gifts, it will probably, and with accuracy, be surmised by persons conversant with the Irish Church, that he was a survival of its earliest days, when it was still ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never before noticed the sheath of his bill going over the front of the lower mandible that he may dig comfortably! But the others! the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and light, and black and tan and gold, and golden sand, and dark tresses, and purple shadows ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... met with very fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a pheasant or ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... do? why, they both persever'd, While the hope of succeeding their bosoms still cheer'd. On the WOODCOCK they call'd; on the PARTRIDGE and PHEASANT; And, killing time thus, thought exceedingly pleasant: Till grown somewhat weary, in order to rest, A sandwich they took at the GUINEA-FOWL'S nest. But how shall we count all the visits they pay, To the ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... game was already harried; the report of a gun set every living creature skulking. Here the crack of my little rifle was no more heeded than the plunge of a fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheeding in that bit of alder tangle yonder, the ground bored like a colander after their night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside the partridges said, quit, quit! when I appeared, and jumped to ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... direction, with a few small water-courses running amongst them to the eastward. We then encountered a rather thick scrub, and occasionally crossed a few low quartz rises coming from the McDouall ranges. At fourteen miles ascended the highest of them, which I have named Mount Woodcock, after the Venerable the Archdeacon of Adelaide. To the north-west and north is another range, about ten miles distant, which seems to continue a long way. I will change my course to 315 degrees, which will take ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... grand procession. In mercy to their toes, let us hope that the march may not be long. The Dyspeptics, too, are people of good standing in the world. For them the earliest salmon is caught in our eastern rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry leaves with his blood in his remotest haunts, and the turtle comes from the far Pacific Islands to be gobbled up in soup. They can afford to flavor all their dishes with indolence, which, in spite of the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had been to the fish fuyck,[183] which they had lying there upon the shore and out of which they had taken at noon some fine fish, but at present the water was too high. Another of his sons had been out shooting, but had not shot anything; though the day before he had shot a woodcock and a partridge before the door of the house, which we must taste this evening with still some other things. Also because we were there the fuyck must be lifted again, from which they took out two fine bass, of a kind we had not yet seen. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... turned on his heel, ran up stairs, and meeting on the landing-place the boy whom he called Spitfire, hurried him into the small apartment which he occupied as his own. Wildrake had been shooting that morning, and game lay on the table. He pulled a feather from a woodcock's wing, and saying hastily, "For thy life, Spitfire, mind my orders—I will put thee safe out at the window into the court—the yard wall is not high—and there will be no sentry there—Fly to the Lodge, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... took a little of everything; a few oysters first, and then dried salmon, and then ham and eggs, done in small curled rashers, and then a few collops of venison toasted, and next to that a little cold roast-pig, and a woodcock on toast to finish with, before the Scheidam and hot water. And having changed his wet things first, he seemed to be in fair appetite, and praised Annie's cooking mightily, with a kind of noise like a smack of his lips, and a rubbing of his hands ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... The Woodcock is very rare, because it is only to be met with in inhabited countries. It is like that of France; its flesh is white, but rather plumper and more delicate than that of ours, which is owing to the plenty and ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... here. He threw himself into it with just as much vigour. That beats me. He was a big man, of course, and I am not. I suppose that's the explanation. Anyway, the School Board was not for me. I put in my winters for some years at Corfu shooting woodcock. And in the summer I met a man or two back on leave at my club. But on the whole it was pretty dull. Yes," and he nodded his head, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice. "Yes, on the whole ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in broad sheets weighing hundreds of tons. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... June 1657, or Through the First Session of Oliver's Second Parliament.—Another Letter from Milton to Mr. Richard Jones: Departure of Lady Ranelagh for Ireland: Letter from Milton to Peter Heimbach: Milton's Second Marriage: His Second Wife, Katharine Woodcock: Letter to Emeric Bigot: Milton's Library and the Byzantine Historians: M. Stoupe: Ten more State-Letters by Milton for the Protector (Nos. XCI.-C.): Morland, Meadows, Durie, Lockhart, and other Diplomatists of the Protector, back in London: More ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... order the racing droshky to be got out, and set off to the forest to shoot woodcock. It is pleasant making your way along the narrow path between two high walls of rye. The ears softly strike you in the face; the cornflowers cling round your legs; the quails call around; the horse moves along at a lazy trot. And here is the forest, all shade and silence. Graceful aspens rustle ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... known in those days ministered to his feast; oysters from Baiae; pheasants—a rarity but lately introduced, since Pompey's conquests in the east—had been brought all the way from Phasis upon the southern shores of the Black Sea; and woodcock from the valleys of Ionia, and the watery plains of Troas, to load the tables of the luxurious masters of the world. Livers of geese, forced to an unnatural size by cramming the unhappy bird with figs; and turbot fricasseed in cream, and peacocks stuffed with truffles, were on the board of Catiline ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... foreign service as anything rather than unpleasant—now the thought was insupportable. Then there would have been some charm to me in the very novelty of the locale, and the indulgence of that vagrant spirit I have ever possessed; for, like Justice Woodcock, "I certainly should have been a vagabond if Providence had not made me a justice of the peace"—now, I could not even contemplate the thing as possible; and would have actually refused the command of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... objects. Or, if you are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold—three brace of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock pheasant, poor fellow,—a man and his wife of the aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock, vainly presenting ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... was at Salt Hill, he dined at the Castle Inn, and when Partridge, the host, produced his bill, which was rather exorbitant, the comedian asked him his name. "Partridge, sir," said he. "Partridge! It should have been Woodcock, by the length of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... gasped the other, who took off his cap as he turned to Grace. "Very sorry, Miss Osborn; didn't see you. Wanted to get the woodcock. Hope you're not ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... Palmer's Sermon, p. 48.] Calamy in his sermon, Oct. 22, followed, and told the Parliament, "All the guilty blood that God requires you in justice to shed, and you spare, God will require the blood at your hands." [Footnote: Calamy's Sermon, p. 27.] Mr. Francis Woodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which was on Rev. xvi. 15, is a very untastefully-worded discourse on the propriety of always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise without one's garments; and, among the rather ludicrous images which his literal treatment of the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the dishes were carried in, to Morano's great delight: with wide blue eyes he watched the produce of that mighty estate coming in through the doorway cooked. Boars' heads, woodcock, herons, plates full of fishes, all manner of small eggs, a roe-deer and some rabbits, were carried in by procession. And the men set to with their ivory-handled knives, each handle being the whole tusk of a boar. And with their eating came merriment and tales of past huntings ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... same ingredients into a number of small cases or patty tins. Ten minutes should be long enough to bake. Another very good filling for these or the previous puff pie is the mixture given in recipe for Scotch woodcock, while a novel ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... place could I look forward without a shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects—I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz—'Cursed be he who stirs these bones.' Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry in this ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... along the street, I carried my hat in my hand, And to every one that I did meet I bravely bent my band. Some did laugh, some did scoff, And some did mock at me, And some did say I was a woodcock, And a ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... the lake a bit seeing some of that bunch at Larry Woodcock's place. Larry's gang and the Redmans lot are pretty much ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... foxes loyally, and was quite as keen about the fishing of a little river that he owned, and which ran down from his demesne into Lough Corrib. He was particular also about his snipe, and would boast that in a little spinney at Ballytowngal were to be met the earliest woodcock found in the West of Ireland. He was a thorough sportsman;—but a Roman Catholic—and as a Roman Catholic he was hardly equal in standing to some of his Protestant neighbours. He voted for Major Stackpoole, when Major Stackpoole ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... those playful English names for dishes, like Pink Poodle, Scotch Woodcock (given below), Bubble and Squeak (Bubblum Squeakum), and ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... summer duck's nest within a quarter of a mile of our house, but such a trouvaille would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure. And yet the mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few rods of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. There was no growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet these ordinarily shy birds were almost as indifferent to ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... care to go prowling and hunting in the woods with a gun. An exception proves a great deal, but all the same most men, whether they have a chance or not, love to hunt. Hunters, therefore, there are of many degrees. Hunters of the lowly cotton-tail and the woodland squirrel; hunters of quail, woodcock, and grouse; hunters of wild ducks and geese; hunters of foxes—the red-coated English and the homespun clad American; hunters—which is a kinder name for trappers—of beaver, marten, otter, mink, all the furred animals; ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... dinner right well, a dinner unplagued by hospitable cares; when a woodcock was her own to dwell on, and pretty little teeth might pick a pretty little bone ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... are suspended. They are simply pieces of fine thread netting, edged with cords adapted to the extent of the lint. The glade net so formed is suspended between two trees, directly in the track of the woodcock's flight. Both the upper and lower corners have each a rope attached to them which, as regards the upper part of the net, is rove through sheaves, iron rings, or thimbles fastened to the trees on either side at ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Woodcock are to be plucked, but not drawn. Suspend the bird in a bright, clear heat, hang a ribbon of fat pork between the legs and roast until well done; do ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... what it was all about, and then you felt ashamed of them. At times, I think, Kilian felt somewhat ashamed too, and tried to talk a little to the others; but most of the time he seemed to like it very well, and did not ask anything better than the excellent woodcock on his plate, and the pretty ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... ever seen. Our young readers will see whether Charley was not right, by looking at the cut of it. It is called by several different names, such as the Murex, Tenuispina, or Thin Spined Murex; The Thorny Woodcock; and Venus's Comb. It lives in the Indian Ocean, which, you know, is many thousand miles ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... doterell, brant, lark, plover (of both sorts), lapwing, teal, widgeon, mallard, sheldrake, shoveller, peewitt, seamew, barnacle, quail (who, only with man, are subject to the falling sickness), the knot, the oliet or olive, the dunbird, woodcock, partridge, and pheasant, besides divers others, whose names to me are utterly unknown, and much more the taste of their flesh, wherewith I was never acquainted. But as these serve not at all seasons, so in their several turns there is no plenty of them wanting ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... put the jorum about, And let us be merry and clever; Our hearts and our liquors are stout; Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever. 20 Let some cry up woodcock or hare, Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons; But of all the birds in the air, Here's a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. Toroddle, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... made beside a stream which crossed the Bay road, on the site of the Hatch tavern, opposite Barden's building in North Attleboro; and because this stream marked a journey of ten miles from Seekonk, the early travellers named it Ten-Mile River. Here the famous John Woodcock took up his abode in 1663 or 1664, and established a garrison which afterwards formed one of a chain of strongholds extending from Boston to Rhode Island. An avowed foe of the red race who surrounded him, he found them hostile and treacherous, and had ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little dog,—it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... "Scotch woodcock be blowed," says the Captain, who, it must be confessed, does not include an appreciation of delicate humour amongst his numerous merits; "Scotch, real Scotch, a noggin of it, my boy, with soda in a long glass; glug, glug, down it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... himself of the false nose which mystified his physiognomy, and the supplementary belly which made up his disguise, stood before his master in his real character, of Adam Woodcock, the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the shells and monkey skeletons were taken away from the mid-gallery, and instead, three gradated series of birds put down the length of it (or half the length—or a quarter would do it—with judgment), showing the transition, in length of beak, from bunting to woodcock—in length of leg, from swift to stilted plover—and in length of wing, from auk to frigate-bird; the wings, all opened, in one specimen of each bird to their full sweep, and in another, shown at the limit of the down back stroke. For what on earth—or in air—is the use to me of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... disease. He should get only just so much as is good for him. I have seen a physician examining a patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring teeth. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... chirps of the guinea-fowls calling for their young, with the harsh cry of the toucan, the cooing of the pigeon, and the "to-whit, to-whoo" of the owl. From the long grass in its vicinity also issue the grating and loud cry of the florican, woodcock, and grouse. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... which plays us strange tricks, still but a year ago, having gone to set a springe for a woodcock, I chanced to pass by yonder big oak upon a November eve, and I could have sworn that I saw it all again. I saw myself a lad, my wounded arm still bound with Lily's kerchief, climbing slowly down the hill-side, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... woodcock rose from a dripping rock, covered with a tropical Andropogon in dense patches. Adiantum, Rubus, Erythrea, Labiatae ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our population is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or poison. Not, indeed, that a lawyer in full practice can be usually supposed as faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove or a woodcock; but it is not, in former divinities, thought the will of Providence that he should be dropped by a shot from a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in the morning by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... rapidly, as well as the fox. The avifauna, of course, becomes poorer; nevertheless the woods of the Steppe, and still more the forests of the Ante-Steppe, give refuge to many birds, even to the hazel-hen, the woodcock and the black-grouse. The fauna of the thickets at the bottom of the river-valleys is decidedly, rich and includes aquatic birds. The destruction of the forests and the advance of wheat into the prairies are rapidly impoverishing ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... there's a breath of heat, Summer and winter at Candlemas meet. In April the year grows moist and warm the air, The old folks' lives without their doors bids fair; The woodcock then comes flying from the sea, Brings back ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the yellow-throated vireo, the bay-winged bunting, the swamp sparrow, the field sparrow, the purple finch, the red-poll linnet, the savanna sparrow, the tree sparrow, the night-hawk (whose celebrated tumbling trick may often be witnessed by evening strollers in the Garden), the woodcock (I found the body of one which had evidently met its death against the electric wire), and among the best of all, the chickadees, who sometimes make the whole autumn cheerful with their presence, but about whom I say nothing here because I have said ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... foolish boy!" she retorted. "Go and try something that you do know about. You can snare a partridge, or shoot a woodcock, perhaps!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... company of English, merchants for discouery of new trades, vnto Richard Gibs, William Biggat, Iohn Backhouse, William Freeman, Iohn Haly, and Iames Woodcock, &c. masters of the 9. ships and one barke that we had freighted for a voiage with them to be made (by the grace of God) from hence to S. Nicholas in Russia, and backe againe: which ships being now in the riuer of Thames are presently ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the skin, like reptiles imbedded in rock. Elizabeth Woodcock lived eight days beneath a snow-drift, in 1799, without eating a morsel; and a Swiss family were buried beneath an avalanche, in a manger, for five months, in 1755, with no food but a trifling store of chestnuts and a small daily supply of milk from a goat which was buried ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... scarcely a day that the old gentleman's servant did not knock at their door, bearing a present of game. The second time he came with some fine larks; next was a superb grouse; then woodcock again. Curiosity strove with astonishment and gratitude ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell |
