"Woodpecker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparently accidental rather than deliberate, so far as parasitical intent is concerned. The lapse is especially noticeable among such birds as build in hollow trees and boxes, as the woodpeckers and wagtails. Thus the English starling will occasionally impose upon and dispossess the green woodpecker. In the process of nature in such cases the stronger of the two birds would retain the nest, and thus assume the duties of foster-parent. Starting from this reasonable premise concerning the prehistoric cuckoo, it is not ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... the boys sat on the piazza in front of the house, talking over the events of the morning, their attention was attracted by a combat that was going on between one of Frank's pet kingbirds and a red-headed woodpecker. The latter was flying zigzag through the air, and the kingbird was pecking him most unmercifully. At length the woodpecker took refuge in a tree that stood on the bank of the creek, and then seemed perfectly ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... feel the life strong in me once more. The dull cloud of depression seemed to drop away, and instead of seeing always that sad, set face of my poor father's, I could look up and around, and whistle to the squirrels, and note the woodpecker running round the tree near me. It has remained a mystery to me all my life, Melody, that this bird's brains are not constantly addled in his head, from the violence of his rapping. When I was a little boy, I tried, I remember, to nod my head as fast as his went nodding: with the effect ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... nursery fable of the parsley-bed, in which little strangers are discovered, is perhaps, "A remnant of a fuller tradition, like that of the woodpecker among the Romans, and that of the stork among our Continental kinsmen."[21] Both these birds having had a mystic celebrity, the former as the fire-singing bird and guardian genius of children, the latter as the baby-bringer.[22] In Saterland ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... steadily ascending as we proceeded. Birds, such as we had not before seen on the island, and which reminded me of some of my old acquaintances of the New England woods, perched upon the trees, or flew familiarly around us. One or two, of the woodpecker tribe, looked wonderfully natural and home-like, as they sat industriously drumming upon hollow logs. Another, a small, brown bird, with modest plumage, surprised and delighted me, by a clear, full whistle, that sounded not unlike that ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... it. On account of the rise of the Penobscot, the water ran up this stream quite to the pond of the same name, one or two miles. The Spencer Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were now in plain sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us, the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what possibly was never spelt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... woods, we find them resounding with the loud proclamation of the Golden-Crowned Thrush,—scheat, scheat, scheat, scheat,—rising and growing louder in a vigorous way that rather suggests some great Woodpecker than such a tiny thing. And penetrating to some yet lonelier place, we find it consecrated to that life-long sorrow, whatever it may be, which is made immortal in the plaintive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... find in the grand sunny woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill that the shanty stood on, and down to the meadow, searching the trees and grass tufts and bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird's and a woodpecker's nest, and began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... pecking at his door—as of an unseasonable woodpecker, finally asserted itself to his consciousness. "Come in," he said, with his eye ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... something it should be to suit the place, Heroic, for a hero lies beneath, Grave, solemn!' Walter warped his mouth at this To something so mock-solemn, that I laughed And Lilia woke with sudden-thrilling mirth An echo like a ghostly woodpecker, Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt (A little sense of wrong had touched her face With colour) turned to me with 'As you will; Heroic if you will, or what you will, Or be yourself you ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... scattered senses, and just as I was awakening to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire to know what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once or twice, undulated lightly up and down, like a woodpecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first, rolled over several times, then steadied again, and, coming at last to rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quivering along all its ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... solitudes No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his 65 In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; The good old time, close-hidden here, Persists, a loyal cavalier, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 70 Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast Insults thy statues, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... hope—" began the other, stopping suddenly, with half-opened mouth, to listen, for just then there came to their ears a half-muffled sound that might be the scream of a red-headed woodpecker up on some rotten treetop, or anything ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... body of this bird is in colour a mixture of grey and brown, but its tail and wings are most beautifully marked with dark zig-zag bars, which make it very handsome. In size it is between the blackbird and the lark. Like the woodpecker, it has a very long tongue, which is covered with a glutinous matter, and which it inserts into the grass roots or tree bark, in search ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... We have here introduced two drawings from the Nuttall Codex (Pl. 27, figs. 5, 6) which seem to represent the Imperial ivory-billed woodpecker, a large species that occurs in the forests of certain parts of Mexico. The figures show a long-billed bird with acutely pointed tail feathers, a red crest, and otherwise black and white plumage. The red crest of the ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... use of the words adaptability and adjustability, our discussion assumes a somewhat different aspect. Instead of contemplating further the mechanical selection of individuals on the basis of characters that, like the structure of "the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees," can not be attributed to the influence of the external conditions that render them useful, we are invited to consider immediate and plastic adjustments of the organism to the very conditions ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the magpie, the turtle-dove, the swallow, the horned owl, the buzzard, the pigeon, the falcon, the ring-dove, the cuckoo, the red-foot, the red-cap, the purple-cap, the kestrel, the diver, the ousel, the osprey, the woodpecker. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... part,' said the Woodpecker, who was a born philosopher, 'I don't care an atomic theory for explanations. If a thing is so, it is so, and at present it ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... left the little town, and struck out up a winding lane to the hills. The copses were full of anemones and primroses; birds sang sharply in the bushes which were gemmed with fresh green; now and then I heard the woodpecker laugh as if at some secret jest among the thickets. Presently the little town was at my feet, looking small and tranquil in the golden noon; and soon I came to the top. It was grassy, open down-land up here, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... across the branches converted the earth, carpeted with ferns and tender mosses, into a delicate golden embroidery. There were the cheerful voices of spring around us, the cuckoo's call and the woodpecker's knock-knock at the trees. When we joined the others I asked Clara to translate into music the voices of spring. She said there was already a Fruehlingslied singing within her, and she would try to give ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... The little screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree, and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the softened heart-wood of upright limbs and pays for his lodging by devouring all grubs and borers that otherwise might make his house fall too soon. The bluebird finds his dwelling ready made, lower down, often in a ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... a succession of long bounding flights from one tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... organized the Agassiz Association with a monthly report in the magazine. We had a chapter, Hartford B., that met for years out of doors on Saturday mornings through the spring, early summer and autumn, and even through one winter when some specimens of the redheaded woodpecker were on the edge of the city. Usually our winter meetings were in the library, and we often had readings from Burroughs, Thoreau, Frank Buckland and others of the earlier nature-lovers. The children came from families of more than usual intelligence, and some ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... that the arm of fate had reached me at last. You cannot think what a dreadful time I had all alone here last evening. I cried and prayed that vengeance might not fall on you and him—the innocent—but on me alone—if all I have suffered up to now is not enough. And then a woodpecker came and sat outside under the window, with its eerie tapping. And a little after came a magpie croaking on the roof, like a chuckling fiend. It made me shudder all over. I dare say you will laugh at my weakness. But it ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... Toad hopped down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better to do!" ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... miro. Wonder, a mirindajxo. Wonderful mirinda—ega. Wonted kutima. Woo amindumi. Wood (material) ligno. Wood arbareto. Woodcock skolopo. Woodcutter arbohakisto. Wood flooring (parquetry) pargeto. Woodhouse lignejo. Woodpecker pego. Wooer amisto, amindumisto. Woof teksajxo. Wool lano. Woollen stuff lanajxo, drapo. Woolly laneca. Word (spoken) parolo. Word (written) vorto. Wordiness babilajxo. Word for word lauxvorte. Work labori. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... rifle and resting it carelessly on the toe of his shoe. Dominick hesitated, but the black man, Scipio, who had drawn near to witness the shooting, trudged away to the foot of the tree, where he found a dead woodpecker lying on the ground. He picked up the bird, still warm and bleeding, and brought it to Blennerhassett, who expressed enthusiastic admiration for the marksman's skill. Plutarch received the praise without showing the pleased vanity ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... with the blood, thus symbolically trying to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal. We may recognise it too in the association of particular animals with divinities, such as the sacred wolf and woodpecker of Mars, but on the whole we may doubt whether the worship of animals ever played so prominent a part in Roman religion as the cult ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... for his answer. There were sounds in the air: a metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the first ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... KIENG, the woodpecker (LEPOCESTES PORPHYROMELAS), has two notes, one of which is of good, the other of had omen. If they have secured good omens from the birds already mentioned, they will then try to avoid hearing KIENG, lest he should utter the note of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the chimney and away to the wood. Rap! rap! rap! you can hear her tapping her beak on the tree-trunks as she hunts for food. But always and everywhere, she wears a black coat and a little red cap. Watch for the woodpecker and see if it is ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... Sparrow, Cedar Bird, Hermit Thrush, Cow-bird, Robin Redbreast, Martin, Song Sparrow, Veery, Scarlet Tanager, Vireo, Summer Redbird, Oriole, Blue Heron, Blackbird, Humming Bird, Fifebird, Yellow-bird, Wren, Whip-poor-will, Linnet, Water Wagtail, Pewee, Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pigeon Woodpecker, Yoke Bird, Indigo Bird, Lark, Yellow Throat, Sandpiper, Wilson's Thrush, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... wish?" he said. "Twice have his warriors broke into this valley, and twice have the tomahawks of his young men been redder than the head of the woodpecker. The fire was not good fire; the tomahawk will kill surer. Had not the voice of my brother said to his young men, 'let the scalps of the prisoners alone,' he could not now say 'yet ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... up quickly I saw my early visitor. There he was, as neighbourly as you please, and not in the least awed by my intrusion; there he was, far out on the limb of a dead tree, stepping energetically up and down, like a sailor reefing a sail, and rapping and tapping as he worked—a downy woodpecker. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... over him, and a snail also. A woodpecker hammered at him with its strong beak. A boy went by under the wall and threw stones at him, and called him names. The rain poured down again heavily. He thought of the happy painting room, where it had seemed always summer and always ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... escapes by the exertion of these powers, but always, as much as possible, in accordance with Indian maxims and means. He is provided with a magic canoe, which goes where it is bid; yet, in his fight with the great wampum prince, he is counselled by a woodpecker to know where the vulnerable point of his antagonist lies. He rids the earth of monsters and giants, and clears away windfalls, and obstructions to the navigation of streams. But he does not do these feats by miracles; he employs strong men to help ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... of visiting this copse, following the hedgerows to it from the Chace, and they always had one or more nests in it. A green woodpecker took it in his route, though he did not stay long, there not being many trees. These birds seem to have their regular rounds; there are some copses where they are scarcely ever heard. They prefer old trees; where there is much large and decaying ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... her shawl and bonnet, smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable condition, and listened. No knock. Nearly a minute passed, and still there was no knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her ears. She composed herself and flung ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. And ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the wood to Thor was that once within its shadows he could, to some degree, stop thinking of the life outside. He could give his first attention to the sounds and phenomena about him. As he stood now, listening to the resonant tapping of a hairy woodpecker on a dead tree-trunk he could forget that the world held a Lois, a Rosie, and a Claude, each a storm-center of emotions. It was a respite from emotions—in a measure, a respite from himself. He stepped ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... must have been fledged yesterday! Didn't you ever hear a woodpecker pecking at the trunk ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... year belonged to the god. Arrived at the age of manhood, they left the country and journeyed abroad. These exiles formed several groups, each taking for guide one of the sacred animals of Italy, a woodpecker, a wolf, or a bull, and followed it as a messenger of the god. Where the animal halted the band settled itself. Many peoples of Italy, it was said, had originated in these colonies of emigrants and still preserved the name of the animal which had led their ancestors. Such ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... wheresoever they went. Thus they wandered, close entwined, but ever the wood grew darker until they came at last to a mighty tree whose sombre, far-flung branches shut out the kindly sun. And lo! within this gloom the woodpecker was before them—a most persistent bird, this, tap-tapping louder than ever, whereat Hermione, seized of sudden terror, struggled in his embrace and, pointing upward, cried aloud, and was gone from him. Then, looking where she had pointed, he beheld no ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... long, low wooden house, which may still be seen with its roof of red shingles, at the head of Woodpecker street, on the south side, in the city of Williamsburg, the residence of Judge Waller, and still owned by his grandson Dr. Robert Page Waller, and in a small room up stairs, at the north-east corner, looking on the street, in which ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... up she went through the chimney. Never speaking a word; And out of the top flew a woodpecker, For she ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... all. The steady tapping was a woodpecker at work upon an old tree. The faint musical note was another little gray bird singing the delight of his soul as he perched himself upon a twig; the light shuffling noise was the tread of a bear hunting succulent nuts; a caw-caw so distant that it was ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... imaginable device of paint; but by far the most elaborate thing was their pipes of red stone, curiously carved, and having flat wooden handles of some four feet in length, ornamented with the scalps of the red-headed woodpecker and male duck, and tail feathers of birds artificially attached by strings and quill work, so as to hang in the figure of a quadrant. But the most elaborately wrought part of the devices consisted of dyed porcupines' quills, arranged as ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... A woodpecker tapping on the dead top of a tree now stopped amidst a breathless stillness. Bees were droning in the air, and softly over the land came the song of a happy field hand. It was all very peaceful and very quiet; too peaceful, too ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... drenched skin when the Jaguar approached the fringe of tall, waving canes. Broad runways opened into the maze of stalks where the capybaras had gnawed their way through the dense growth and then hastily had turned back to start a new one—just as a woodpecker chiseling a hole through a wall and dismayed at seeing daylight ahead, leaves the laboriously excavated tunnel ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... this artist have been hung on the line at the Royal Academy exhibitions a dozen times at least. From Munich she has received an official letter thanking her for sending her works to exhibitions in that city. Fellow of the Royal Painter-Etchers' Society; president of the Woodpecker Art Club, Norwich; Member of Norwich Art Circle and of a Miniature Painters' Society and the Green Park Club, London. Born in Norwich. Self-taught. Has worked in the open at Barbizon, in Normandy, in Cornwall, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the deer, the moose and the caribou, all of which I had killed, and of our fishing on the long river of the north with a lure made of the feathers of a woodpecker, and of covering the bottom of our canoe with beautiful speckled fish. All this warmed the heart of Sir Benjamin who questioned me as to every detail in my experience on trail and river. He was a born sportsman and my stories had put a smile on his face so that I felt ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the savage. A luxuriant vegetation bore witness to the incomparable fruitfulness of the soil. The deep silence, which is common to the wilds of North America, was only broken by the hoarse cooing of the wood-pigeon and the tapping of the woodpecker upon the bark of trees. I was far from supposing that this spot had ever been inhabited, so completely did nature seem to be left to her own caprices; but when I reached the centre of the isle I thought that ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... 6. Yaffil the Woodpecker (Picus Viridus).] The name Yaffil is provincial, but is so very expressive of the noise it continually makes, that I have preferred it on that account. It is a beautiful bird, and is sometimes called the English parrot; the colour of its plumage, green, yellow, and scarlet, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... strolled forward, stopping now and then to look at the squirrel or rabbit or the yellow-hued warbler, the noisy and swift-flying finch, the russet-coated thrush, or dark brown and mottled woodpecker, as his head rattled against the bark of the tree trunks, into which he bored ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... that your secret has grown old with you. If you had told it forty years ago truly you would not long have been lacking the spring-root. Even though you will never climb the mountain now, I will tell you, for a joke, how it is to be found. The easiest way to get it is by the help of a black woodpecker. Look, in the spring, where she builds her nest in a hole in a tree, and when the time comes for her brood to fly off block up the entrance to the nest with a hard sod, and lurk in ambush behind the tree till ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... top rail of the fence, he looked cautiously along the edge of the thicket. It did not look so dismal in there, after all. A woodpecker's cheerful tapping sounded somewhere within. Butterflies flitted fearlessly down into its shady ravines. A squirrel ran out on a limb, and sat chattering at him saucily. Then a big gray rabbit rustled through the leaves, and went loping away into ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... even a book-worm inside of it), and their loud rapping often makes me think I have a caller indeed. I place fragments of hickory-nuts in the interstices of the bark, and thus attract the nuthatches; a bone upon my window-sill attracts both nuthatches and the downy woodpecker. They peep in curiously through the window upon me, pecking away at my bone, too often a very poor one. A bone nailed to a tree a few feet in front of the window attracts crows as well as lesser birds. Even the ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... sounds for January. All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound,—his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly three months ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... these cacti die, the succulent portion is dried, and nothing is left but the woody fiber. They are hollow in places, and easily penetrated. A species of woodpecker, Melanerpes formicivorus, is found to have adopted the use of these dry stalks for storing the winter's stock of provisions. There are several round apertures seen on the stems in the pictures, which were pecked by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... "A woodpecker," he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs! "And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... don't like to have any visits from Solomon Owl when Solomon has a fine appetite. To be sure, Farmer Green isn't happy when Solomon steals some of his fine chickens, and neither are the chickens for that matter. But Solomon doesn't have all the fun on some one else. Oh no! Reddy Woodpecker knows how to tease him by tapping with his bill on Solomon's wooden house in the daytime, when every owl likes to sleep and dream of all the nice frogs and fat chickens they are going to feast on the next night, and then, out comes Solomon ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... attacked severely by the fever, but was fortunate enough to recover after much suffering. Next I was wounded painfully in the foot by treading on a hard stump, while pursuing a red woodpecker in the depths of the forest. The wound healed in about three weeks, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... letter-press," he said—"and the grey stones, and that white oak in the meadow. And is not that woodpecker a pretty illustration?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... toward the top of the tree and calling.] Mr. Woodpecker! [To CHANTECLER.] We will ask the learned gentleman in the green coat. [To the WOODPECKER the upper half of whose figure appears at a round hole high up in the tree trunk; his coat is green, his waistcoat ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the Bay Eagle. The road trailed along the high ridge beside the tall shell-bark hickories, now the granary of the grey squirrel, and the sumach bushes where the catbirds quarrelled, and the dry old poplars away in the blue sky, where the woodpecker and the great Indian hen ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... sit like a statue so still When the rain made her mansion a pound, Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill, And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill, From the tiles of the roof ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... sapsucker was at work. The upturned faces of the children did not disturb him at all, although he was only a little above their heads. He drilled away as if his work in the world was the work which must be done. A downy woodpecker with a slightly wounded wing was brought into one of our schoolrooms, where he lived contentedly for several days, pecking a dead treetop, which the boys brought in for him after a good deal of thought and several excursions. The only food he seemed to like was sweetened water, although ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the tap-tap of the woodpecker and the ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... Just as a woodpecker begins at the bottom of a tree and taps his way upward, so a bee begins at the lower and older flowers on a spike and works up to the younger ones; a fact on which this little orchid, like many another plant that arranges its blossoms in long racemes, depends. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Parrot will fail to recognize any member of that Family by a general form which is equally common to the diminutive Nonpareil, the gorgeous Ara, and the high-crested Cockatoo. Neither will any one, who has ever observed the small head, the straight bill, the flat back, and stiff tail of the Woodpecker, hesitate to identify the family form in any of the numerous Genera into which this group is now divided. The family characters are even more invariable than the generic ones; for there are Woodpeckers which, instead of the four toes, two turning forward and two backward, which form an essential ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call, The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... had sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree to take a short breathing spell. It was a warm afternoon, and the air was calm; not a breath stirred the leaves on the old trees around us; the forest sounds were hushed, save the tap of the woodpecker on his hollow tree, or an occasional drumming of a partridge on his log. It was drawing towards one of those calm, still, autumnal evenings of which poets sing, but which are to be met with in all their glory only among the beautiful lakes ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... heated scent of the Southern pines hung heavy in the forest; in the long, dry swale-grass of the clearing, yellow butterflies were flying lazily; on a dead branch above her a huge woodpecker, with pointed, silky cap, uttered a querulous cry ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... The woodpecker welcomes the girl baby. He sings of the wood worms he will find when the girl goes with her mother for wood. For the women of the wigwam break the dry branches for the fire, and the wood worms fall ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... to the woodpecker twists its neck strangely when alarmed. It may have symbolized the coquettishness of fair maidens. As love goddesses were "Fates", however, the wryneck may have been connected with the belief that the perpetrator of a murder, or a death ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... woodpecking business. In the character of Dr. Woodpecker he tapped at the hollow oak chest, sounded the Baron's heart of oak, pronounced him true to the core, whacked him, smacked him, insisted upon his calling out "Ninety-nine," in various tones, so that it sounded like a duet to the old words, without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... try it and see," and the amiable Father Bhaer went singing and tapping about the house like a mammoth woodpecker. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... redwings are birds of the North, and never nest in Great Britain. Besides these, there are a certain number of birds which have no claim to be termed British, and which are found in Norway all the year round—the nut-cracker, several kinds of woodpecker, the ryper (the game-bird of the country), and others. And, on the other hand, some of our common resident birds migrate ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... Wilkins, who had 'a remarkable head voice,' but having failed to get into the cathedral choir at Canterbury, he had to take to singing in public-houses instead of in sacred edifices. His great song appears to have been 'The Woodpecker Tapping.' When the family emigrated Mr. M. expressed the hope that 'the melody of my son will be acceptable at the galley fire' on board ship. The final glimpse we get of him is at Port Middlebay, where he delights a large assembly by his rendering of 'Non Nobis' ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... dense forests, and coming into the vicinity of the lakes and pasture of the low country, that birds become visible in great quantities. In the close jungle one occasionally hears the call of the copper-smith[1], or the strokes of the great orange-coloured woodpecker[2] as it beats the decaying trees in search of insects, whilst clinging to the bark with its finely-pointed claws, and leaning for support upon the short stiff feathers of its tail. And on the lofty branches of the higher trees, the hornbill[3] (the toucan of the East), ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... why a man has to start young to be a riverman," Welton told Bob, as they bent their steps toward camp. "Poor little John Harvey out on that jam when she broke would have stood about as much chance as a beetle at a woodpecker prayer meeting." ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Christmas," twittered Snow Bunting. "And you're going to give a Christmas party," chirped the Robin. "And you want us all to come!" said Downy Woodpecker. "Hurrah! ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Dock; the blue Cornflower; and that vulgar Herb the Dandelion rearing its yellow crest on the Banks of the Water-courses." The Nightingale was not yet heard, for the Rose was not yet blown: but an almost identical Blackbird and Woodpecker helped to make up something ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... broken tale, the forest around was vocal, the chipmunks scampered from tree to tree, the woodpecker's tap-tap, tap-tap, went on over their heads, the leaves rustled and gave forth their divine sweetness, as though man and nature were at peace, and there were no storms in sky above or soul beneath, or in the waters of life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... waving pines on the hills, and the yet darker shade of the spruce and balsams on the borders of the creeks, for so our Canadian forest rills are universally termed. The bright glancing wings of the summer red-bird, the crimson-headed woodpecker, the gay blue-bird, and noisy but splendid plumed jay might be seen among the branches; the air was filled with beauteous ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... and when he landed, his finances consisted only of a few shillings; yet, with a cheerful heart, he walked to Philadelphia, a distance of thirty-three miles, with only his fowling-piece on his shoulder. He shot a red-headed woodpecker by the way,—an omen of his future pursuits, for hitherto he had devoted no attention ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... in the north and east, they come in troops to the open fields and the sheltered slope of the hills of our district. But it is scarcely worth while to stop to tell of the skill and perseverance of these destroyer of larvae. We may mention, the woodpecker, however, as a skillful searcher for insects that lie hidden in places where the sun has melted the snow. The carnivorous Coleoptera and the Forficulae are likewise generally in motion during mild winters. Doubtless these last-named do not make very large inroads in the ranks of larvae ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... that reason, "partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name (which was dubious), was Stakes." Wearing a diamond ring "(or quite as good to look at)" on his forefinger, having the run of his teeth, "and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all dwarfs are," receiving a good salary, and gathering besides as his perquisites the ha'pence collected by him in a Chaney sarser at the end of every entertainment, the Dwarf never has any money somehow. Nevertheless, having what his admiring ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of systematized noise. Let us suppose that we are carpenters today and pound the wooden objects on the floor in exact time with a building song; let us play we are drummer boys and tap with our drumsticks for the soldiers to march; or shall we make believe that the sphere is a woodpecker and let it tap on the trees while we recite some simple ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... modification may be slowly increased by the accumulative action of natural selection to any profitable extent. The variety thus formed will either coexist with, or, more commonly, will exterminate its parent form. An organic being, like the woodpecker or misseltoe, may thus come to be adapted to a score of contingences—natural selection accumulating those slight variations in all parts of its structure, which are in any way useful to it during ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... England. Once, spotted over these hills and through these forests, there were forges that roared from morning till night, chimneys that sent up their smoke and their poisonous vapour from one year's end to another; cannon were cast ... where now there is no harsher voice than the tap of the woodpecker.... One cannot fancy the forests of St. Leonards and Ashdown, the Wolverhampton of their age. But so it was; and not the least remarkable thing ... is the absence of traditions about the life and customs of the manufacturers ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... woodpecker hammering with his chisel-like bill, making a home in some dead tree. You can hear his strokes a long way through the woods. The chips fly from beneath his ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... the woodpecker, "you have the use of your wits, haven't you?" He ran round the trunk of the tree again and devoured a lean grub. The young cuckoo struggled at the ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... widout his trials en tribberlations. One day a woodpecker come erlong en 'mence' ter peck at de tree; en de nex' time Sandy wuz turnt back he had a little roun' hole in his arm, des lack a sharp stick be'n stuck in it. Atter dat Tenie sot a sparrer-hawk fer ter watch ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... a little movement of hers diverted the general current. She had taken off her hat and was leaning back against the oak under which she sat, watching with parted lips and a gaze of the purest delight and wonder the movements of a nut-hatch overhead, a creature of the woodpecker kind, with delicate purple gray plumage, who was tapping the branch above her for insects with his large disproportionate bill, and then skimming along to a sand-bank a little distance off, where he disappeared with his prey ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might be modified to almost any extent. The females, of course, would not notice each slight successive alteration in shape, but only the sounds thus produced. It is a curious fact that in the same class of animals, sounds so different as the drumming of the snipe's tail, the tapping of the woodpecker's beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry of certain water-fowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song of the nightingale, should all be pleasing to the females of the several species. But we must not judge of the tastes of distinct ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the solemn hieratic fashion adopted by his great predecessors and contemporaries. The luxuriant landscape is in the main Giorgionesque, save that here and there a naked branch among the leafage—and on one of them the woodpecker—strongly recalls Giovanni Bellini. The same robust, round-limbed young Venetian, with the inexpressive face, does duty here as St. John the Baptist, who in the Three Ages, presently to be discussed, appears much more appropriately as the amorous shepherd. ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... in her thoughts, and a freshening of sensation, like the brightness which came over the underbrush after a shower. A persistent affirmation—or denial—was going on in her, like the tapping of the woodpecker in the one tall pine tree across the chasm. Musical phrases drove each other rapidly through her mind, and the song of the cicada was now too long and too sharp. Everything seemed suddenly to take the form ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... day in the woods. We'll forget Brother Brooks and the fanatic who saved his life; we'll float on the lake; well pick up nuts; we'll listen to the controversy of the blue jays, and the flicker, flicker of the yellowhammers; we'll study Mr. Woodpecker, whose judgment tells him to go south, but who is held back by the promising sunshine. The train leaves at eight. I'll be on hand, ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... organization of the sloth has been shown, by the increase of our knowledge, to have been uncalled for and absurd, so other supposed instances of non-adaptation will, no doubt, similarly disappear. Mr. Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," 5th edition, p. 220, speaks of a woodpecker (Colaptes campestris) as having an organization quite at variance with its habits, and as never climbing a tree, though possessed of the special arboreal structure of other woodpeckers. It now appears, however, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... but the few apples which it still bears attest the fact that its cambium layer, at least over a part of its surface, is still youthful and doing its work. It is this layer that the yellow-bellied woodpecker, known as the sapsucker, drills into and devours, thus drawing directly upon the vitality of the tree. But his ravages are rarely serious. Only in two instances have I seen dead branches on an apple-tree that appeared to be the result of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... first the blazing fire and boiling cauldron look strange, amid the solemn loneliness of the forest, along whose stately aisles of cathedral-like grandeur the eye may gaze for days, and see no living thing—the ear hear no sound, save it may be the tapping of the woodpecker, or the whispering of the wind as it sighs through the boughs, seeming to mourn with them for the time when the white man knew them not. But these thoughts pass away when the proprietor, with his pale intelligent face, shaded by a flapping sun hat from the glaring ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... gang Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I know that no one lives here," said the bird. "But you see I am a woodpecker, and I am pecking holes in the tree to get some of the sweet juice, or sap. The sap is running in the trees now, for it is Spring. Later on I will tap holes in the bark to get at bugs and worms, when there is no more sap ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... which cannot be impregnated without agency of insect; or hooked seeds depending on animal's existence: woolly animals cannot have any direct effect on seeds of plant. This point which all theories about climate adapting woodpecker{50} to crawl up trees, miseltoe, <sentence incomplete>. But if every part of a plant or animal was to vary , and if a being infinitely more sagacious than man (not an omniscient creator) during thousands and thousands of years were to select all the variations which tended towards certain ends ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... pleasure. The game she hunted was the squirrel tossing his grey body through the branches of pine and cedar, the quail calling from the hillsides, the cottontail scampering through the underbrush, the yellowhammer, the woodpecker, the wide winged butterflies sailing through the orchard and across the meadow lands. The weapon with which she hunted was a camera which she carried in its black case slung over her shoulder or hanging from the horn of ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... Hermit-thrush, Cedarbird, Vesper-sparrow, Cowbird, Robin redbreast, Martin, Song-sparrow, Veery, Scarlet tanager, Vireo, Summer redbird, Oriole, Blue heron, Blackbird, Hummingbird, Fifebird, Yellowbird, Wren, Whippoorwill, Linnet, Water-wagtail, Peewee, Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pigeon-woodpecker, Yokebird, Indigo-bird, Lark, Yellowthroat, Sandpiper, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 39, August 5, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a man named Umslopogaas, Macumazahn, the chief of a tribe that is called The People of the Axe, whose titles of praise are Bulalio or the Slaughterer, and Woodpecker, the latter from the way he handles his ancient axe? He is a savage fellow, but one of high blood and higher courage, a great captain in his way, though he will never come to anything, save a glorious death—in your company, I think, Macumazahn." ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... thrush. The melody, no doubt, went to his heart, and that was enough. Though he sauntered through orchards and rested under apple trees, he never observed that the rings of small holes in the bark were usually made by the yellow-bellied woodpecker, instead of by Downy, and that the bird was not searching for grubs or insects, but was feeding upon the milky cambium ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... drumming on a log near by some uxorious communication to his brooding mate, distended his round eyes in amazement at the strange irruption of men and horses, and then whirred away in a transport of fear. A crimson crested woodpecker ceased his ominous tapping, and flew boldly to a neighboring branch, where he could inspect the new arrival to good advantage ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... haunted me. But it was equally evident that neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the organisms (especially in the case of plants), could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life; for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavor to prove by indirect evidence ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... California, on being stripped of their bark, are found to be perforated all over with holes about the size of a musket-ball. These are pierced by the woodpecker with such precision and regularity that one might believe they had been cut out by a ship-carpenter. The summer is spent by this busy little bird in making these holes and in filling them with acorns. One acorn goes to one hole, and the bird will not ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things, more disposed to be sentimental, perhaps, than if I had been ten years older, and thinking of the contrast ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... the woodpecker began a tap-tapping soft and insistent somewhere out of sight, a small noise yet disturbing, that followed them wheresoever they went. Thus they wandered, close entwined, but ever the wood grew darker until they came at last to a mighty tree whose sombre, far-flung branches shut out ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... to add the bird-house or bird shelter to every gateway you make; it is more important than the gate itself. In my other books I have described and told how to make various forms of bird-houses, including my invention of the woodpecker's house now being manufactured by many firms, including one in Germany, but the reader should make his own bird-houses. I am glad the manufacturers have taken up these ideas for the good they will do the birds, but ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... a hole in a tree," said Old Mother Nature. "He is very fond of an old home of a Woodpecker. He makes a comfortable nest of bark lining, grass, and moss, or any other soft material he can find. Occasionally he builds an outside nest high up in a fork in the branches of a tree. He likes to get ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... was to meet there in the form of a new Mamita. Trees and shrubs were beautiful with young, glossy foliage. Pines and firs offered their aromatic incense to the sun. Birds were singing, and bees gathering honey from the wild-flowers. A red-headed woodpecker was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with undulating swiftness. To Flora's ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... armed with trepans, bores through rock on the feeble Fly's behalf. Urged by a presentiment that to us remains an unfathomable mystery, the Cerambyx-grub leaves the inside of the oak, its peaceful retreat, its unassailable stronghold, to wriggle towards the outside, where lives the foe, the Woodpecker, who may gobble up the succulent little sausage. At the risk of its life, it stubbornly digs and gnaws to the very bark, of which it leaves no more intact than the thinnest film, a slender screen. Sometimes, even, the rash ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... of science," replied the woodpecker, "I am quite unable to do so. Some naturalists affirm that I hide acorns in these pits; others maintain that I get worms out of them. I endeavoured for some time to reconcile the two theories; but the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... about. Sometimes a herd of brown deer with shy dark eyes would pass, holding their graceful heads high in the air; sometimes a flock of pheasants with brilliant plumage rose from the bushes. Again there was no sound except the tapping of a bright-crested woodpecker, and no motion but the fluttering of leaves and the trembling of violets half buried in ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... had in the little museum, and said he would go with the boys to Beechy Wood, to see if they could get a few more specimens; for he particularly wanted two or three eggs rather difficult to obtain, such as the great spotted woodpecker's, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... Lucien cast their eyes where Francois pointed—up to the trunk of a tree that rose over the spot where the chameleon was crawling. About twenty feet from the ground was a dark, round hole, evidently the former nest of the red-bellied woodpecker (Picus Carolinus). The birds, however, who made that nest had deserted it; for it was now occupied by a creature of a far different kind—a scorpion-lizard—whose red head and brown shoulders at the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... breakfast this morning, half asleep—and saw what I thought was a red breasted woodpecker as big as a pigeon! Presently it came down on the lawn and I made up my mind it was only a robin about the size of a ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... on," called the magician. "You are the man who wished to fight. Come on." Then a woodpecker in a tree above the brave warrior said softly, "Aim your arrow at his head, O warrior! Do not shoot at his heart, but at the crest of feathers on his head. He can be wounded there, but not in ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... of birds is his greatest delight. I have to imitate the notes of birds, and he does it after me, showing memory in it. He knows at once stork, woodpecker, pigeon, duck, pelican, siskin, and swallow. The little verses I sing at the same time amuse him, e. g., "Zeislein, Zeislein, wo ist dein Haeuslein?" (Little siskin, where is your little house?); and he retains them when he hears them often. Russian ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... good work. Compared with it the bravest work of civilized backwoodsmen is feeble and bungling. The completeness of form, finish, and proportion of these timbers suggested skill of a wild and positive kind, like that which guides the woodpecker in drilling round holes, and the bee in ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... summer. He found the nest where the quail had reared their brood, empty now, and covered thick with the scattered dust of passing teams. Forgetful that he was weary he climbed well up the bole of a shaggy old friend, to peep in at the opening of a deserted woodpecker's home. He came to the big tree at whose roots, on that other night he remembered so well, he had thrown himself hopelessly. With a stolid sort of curiosity he looked down at the spot. Yes, there was the place. A few fallen leaves ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Daddy Longlegs The Tale of Kiddie Katydid The Tale of Buster Bumblebee The Tale of Freddy Firefly The Tale of Betsy Butterfly The Tale of Bobby Bobolink The Tale or Chirpy Cricket The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug The Tale of Reddy Woodpecker The Tale ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... out one day, bound for Long Iram to buy salt and other goods, taking a small quantity of rattan. The following day, late in the afternoon, the party returned, having passed the night a short distance away. As they had approached Long Blu an omen bird, evidently a small woodpecker, had flown across their path in front of the first prahu, whereupon the whole flotilla at once retraced their course—a tedious day's trip against the current. It makes no difference whether this bird flies from left to right, or ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... very hot and very quiet; she could hear the warping and creaking of the shingles under the relaxing of the nearly level sunbeams. The office clock struck seven. In the breathless silence that followed, a woodpecker took up his interrupted work on the roof, and seemed to beat out monotonously on her ear the last words of the stranger: Stanton Green—a thief! Stanton Green, one of the "boys" John had helped out of the falling tunnel! Stanton Green, whose old ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... woodpecker!" said Ewen from the outside, in a disgusted tone. "That's the way with Hayes. He thinks he's the whole works, and that he never ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... underneath, and each of these walks is a shaded grove, losing itself in the distance. The deep silence of the place is only broken by the cooing of the wood-pigeon, and the occasional piercing note of the green woodpecker. It is said that the nightingales appear here about the 13th of April and continue singing until June, and that the best time for seeing this neighbourhood is during the blossoming ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... his Journey from Constantinople, describes a species of woodpecker, about the size of a thrush, of a light, blue colour, with black marks beside the bill. "It entered my room," says he, "with all the familiarity of an old friend, hopped on the table, and picked up ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... so much that the woodpecker in the tree above them stopped drumming, to listen, and when he found out how matters stood, he turned the whole story into telegraphic code and sent it up and down the valley; and a brown squirrel looked at them through a tangle of cranberry leaves, and when he got the drift of their ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... office a red head was thrust suddenly out like a surprised woodpecker's. Barbee hurried to the entrance and looked up the street. He saw a good many people. He looked down the street and noticed ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... said Ben. "It's a woodpecker. Say, let's pull down and see it." Under Mop's direction the old scow gradually made its way toward ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodpecker's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this time used to call the men to dinner by blowing into a woodpecker hole in an old hollow stub that stood near the door. In this stub there was a nest of owls that had one short wing and flew in circles. When Mr. Shepard made a sketch of Paul, Mrs. Bunyan, with wifely solicitude for his appearance, parted Paul's ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... about the feller that cal'lated his chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out—twelve of the chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me plumb nervous to ketch ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... and humblebee Come to the pleasant woods with me; Quickly before me runs the quail, Her chickens skulk behind the rail; High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. Sweet woodland music sinks and swells, The brooklet rings its tinkling bells, The swarming insects drone and hum, The partridge beats its throbbing drum. The squirrel leaps among the boughs, And chatters in his leafy house. The oriole flashes by; and, look! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... day was blithe, with no blotch in the sky. The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been a low-hanging ambition to be thrilled with the prospect of teaching school, or was it buoyant health that made me happy? I eased down my trunk, and boyishly threw stones away off into an echoing hollow. A rabbit ran out into the road and ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... wither : velki, sensukigxi. withstand : kontrauxstari. witness : atest'i; -anto. witty : sprita. woe : malgxojo; veo wolf : lupo. wonder : mir'i, -o; ("a —") mirindajxo. woo : amindumi, sin svati. wood : ligno; arbaro. woodcock : skolopo. woodpecker : pego. word : vorto. work : labor'i, -o; (mental) verk'i, -o; funkcii. worm : vermo. wormwood : absinto. worn (out) : eluzita. worry : maltrankvil'igi, -igxi; cxagrenadi, gxenadi. worship : adori; Diservo; kulto. worth : ind'o, -eco, valoro. wound : vundi. wrap : faldi, envolvi. wreath : girlando. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... many apples per hundred do you find injured by the codling moth? Collect some cocoons from a pear or an apple tree in winter, place in a breeding-cage, and watch for the moths that come out. Do you ever see the woodpecker hunting for these same cocoons? Can you find cocoons that have been emptied by this bird? Estimate how many he considers a day's ration. How many apples does he ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... you do as I command, divine youth, you shall be an eagle among the clouds; if not, you shall be neither turtle-dove, nor eagle, nor woodpecker." ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... pass to a very cognate philosophic problem, the QUESTION of DESIGN IN NATURE. God's existence has from time immemorial been held to be proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly designed in view of one another. Thus the woodpecker's bill, tongue, feet, tail, etc., fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid in their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light to perfection, leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such mutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself in the sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure where the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge I kept picking off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and breaking them ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... always so clever with your wonderings," said Peter and Paul again, "as if you'd never heard a woodpecker hacking and pecking at ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... door, looked and listened—only the distant rattle of a woodpecker's beak on a dead tree in the woods. The snow began to fall in little fitful dabs. It was two miles to the nearest cabin, and her soul rose in fierce rebellion at her loneliness. It was easy for a man ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... "I have fed them all winter. They came to the dining-room window every morning, and waited for their breakfast; and a funny little woodpecker, blind of one eye, ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... there was a sharp crack and a loud cry. The crack was neither the snapping of a branch, nor the tapping of a woodpecker; the cry was neither the scream of the parrot, nor the howl ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... certain stone on the trail near him! WHY he did this he did not know, but he clung to his sublime purpose with the courage and tenacity of a youthful Casabianca. He was cramped, tickled by dust and fir sprays; he was supremely uncomfortable—but he stayed! A woodpecker was monotonously tapping in an adjacent pine, with measured intervals of silence, which he always firmly believed was a certain telegraphy of the bird's own making; a green-and-gold lizard flashed by his foot to stiffen itself suddenly with a rigidity equal to his own. Still HE stirred ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... morning Johnny Chuck sat on his door-step watching Drummer the Woodpecker building a new home in the old apple-tree. Drummer's red head flew back and forth, back and forth, and his sharp bill cut out tiny bits of wood. It was slow work; it was hard work. But Drummer seemed happy, very happy indeed. It was watching ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... compelled to reform its microcosmic reflections, even down there, where it has to be driven by force. It is extraordinary how superficial even the great writers are; how lacking in the Mole's claws, in the Woodpecker's beak! They seem labouring beneath some pathetic vow, exacted by the Demons of our Fate, under terrible threats, only to reveal what will serve their purpose! This applies as much to the Realists, with their traditional animal chemistry, as to the Idealists, with their ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... group of young, stalwart maple trees, each of a different dye—gold, bronze, or red. It was here that they lingered, and Alec gathered boughs for the children till their hands were full. The noise of the golden-winged woodpecker was in the air, and the call ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... found at 7,000 feet. Berberis asiatica scarcely occurs below 6,000 feet, Hedera. The birds seen were the jay, barbet, red-and-black-headed, variegated short-wing, large ditto of Khegumpa, orange-breasted Trochilus, brown Fringilla, green woodpecker, black pheasant, and small squirrel of Assam ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the spider a land-pirate, Neddy was wrong. He was no more a pirate—that is, one who robs and murders—than is the woodpecker or swallow, for they feed on worms and insects. The spider was just as blameless in his work of catching and eating flies as was Neddy's white bantam when she went off into the fields ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Their enormous beaks are peculiarly adapted for searching in quest of eggs about the crevices of trees. The varieties here, include the Janeiro toucan, and the yellow-breasted toucan. The three next cases contain the many varieties of the Woodpecker. Woodpeckers are represented by naturalists as crows with a structure adapted to "an insect-eating life amidst growing timber." They are to be found in all quarters of the globe, searching out, with their long beaks, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the sharp towee, towee, towee of the tailor-bird, the soft melodious cheeping calls of the flocks of little white-eyes, the chit, chit, chitter of the sparrow, the screaming cries of the golden-backed woodpecker, the screams and the trills of the white-breasted kingfisher, the curious harsh clamour of the cuckoo-shrike, and, last but by no means least, the sweet and cheerful whistling refrain of the fan-tail flycatcher, which at frequent intervals ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... Blue-throated Warblers, included in Professor Ansted's list and marked as Jersey (these Mr. Gallienne himself told me he believed to be Continental and not genuine Channel Island specimens), the Great Sedge Warbler, the Meadow Bunting, the Green Woodpecker, and perhaps a ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... killed that first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's stint—victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed Alpine jackdaw, that lanius ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas |
