"Woodcock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Tom Faggus—he stopped to sup that night with us, and 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 ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... it will be to these southern seas that the millionaire brings his yacht for a winter cruise; it will be in these forests that he hunts for wild boar and deer, or shoots woodcock, duck, snipe, pigeons, and pheasants; in these waters that he fishes for the iridescent silver beauties that here abound. It will be on these sunlit shores invalids seeking health will find it, and here that huge sanitariums should be built, for despite ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... flying, though it must be acknowledged not so commonly as the house-swallow; and the feat is done in so quick a manner as not to be perceptible to indifferent observers. He also advances some (I was going to say) improbable facts; as when he says of the woodcock that, 'pullos rostra portat fugiens ab hoste.' But candour forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false, because I have never been witness to such a fact. I have only to remark that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... had been her husband's oldest and best friend. He and the Marchesa had first met in Sardinia, where they had both of them gone in pursuit of woodcock, and since the Marchesa had been a widow, she and Sir John had met either in Rome or in London every year. The dinner so tragically manque had been arranged to assemble a number of Anglo-Italian friends; and, as Sir John was as perfect as a host as Narcisse was as ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... following 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 into a ditch full of branches, and I was obliged to get into it, in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... come—girls. Privately I made up my mind that the dance was a thing I would miss, and Tony must have read disapproval on my face, for he said no more about the festivities, and a little later proposed the shooting. There were woodcock left in the marshes; he had seen them—by accident, I guessed. He would send to the city for the guns, and we would put in a good day together. That sounded ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... politics, for here are neither politics nor ministers; Lord Chatham is 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 ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Flash-the-muzzle's gun. Hares and rabbits, not then the pest of the country, swelled our bag. We had a moderate number of black game, and the fox-hunters were somewhat astonished to find that we of the gentry set much store by woodcock, which bulked so little in the day's sport. The fox-hunter brothers had the run of the servants' hall at Crathes, and they were said to have consumed fabulous numbers of kitchen pokers, which required to be heated red-hot to give the jugs of ale of their evening draught the right temperature ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... in considerable amazement I found that, the night being warm, he had laid a small table on the lawn and that the soup was already served. It was delicious, as were also the samli, the woodcock, the lamb cutlets and the ice-cream. Things having taken so happy a turn, I uncorked a bottle of champagne and we had a banquet ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... briered rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green holly copse where lurked the woodcock, and arcades of zigzag oak, Frida kept her bridal robe from spot, or rent, or blemish. Passing all these little pleadings of the life she had always loved, at last she turned the craggy corner into the ledge ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... swineherds, sportsmen, birdcatchers, might spoil the solemn peace of these moors, but in spring and summer no human soul was seen upon them. The boar and the buffalo, the flamingo and the roebuck, the great plover and the woodcock, reigned alone. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... look." Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... was 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 ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... green-wooded valley between the hills where he had shot his first woodcock; there was the great stone on which he had broken his best knife in a fit of geological research; there was the pool where he used to skate; there the sudden break in the lulls that gave the first view of the sea. He could ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... 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 Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... members began to sit in St. Stephen's Chapel they attended Divine service in St. Margaret's, while the Lords went to the Abbey. Edmund Waller, the poet, was married in St. Margaret's to Anne Banks on July 5, 1631, and John Milton to Katherine Woodcock in November, 1656. A son of Sir Walter Raleigh's is buried in the church, and also Colonel Blood. Children of Judge Jeffreys: Bishop Burnet, Titus Oates and Jeremy Bentham were christened here. Besides Latimer ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Cornwallis (178) seems to have put le comble a nos disgraces. What has been said about it, either at White's or parmi les Grenouilles at Brooks's, I know not.(179) I have not been out but for an hour before dinner to Mr. Woodcock. I received the first news of this yesterday from Williams, who dined with me, but you may be sure it was a subject he did not like to dwell upon, and I chose to talk with him rather of old than of modern times, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... mutton taste like venison, provide for it the following gravy. Pick a very stale woodcock or snipe, and cut it to pieces, after having removed the bag from the entrails. Simmer it in some meat gravy, without seasoning; then strain it, and serve ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... some years ago a prolonged freezing {91} wave swept over our South Atlantic States, and played havoc with the Woodcock in South Carolina. This is what happened: the swamps in the upper reaches of the Pee Dee, the Black, and Waccamaw rivers were frozen solid, and the Woodcock, that in winter abound in this region, were thus driven to the softer grounds farther downstream. The cold continued and the frozen area ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... the 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 ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... gout— They, in return, may haply study you: Some wish a pinion, some prefer a leg, Some for a merry-thought, or sidesbone beg, The wings of fowls, then slices of the round The trail of woodcock, of codfish the sound. Let strict impartiality preside, Nor freak, nor favour, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... in the situation of a woodcock caught in his own springe, turned short round and coughed, to excuse a slight blush as he mustered his answer"as to the Apostle of the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 top, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... gentlemen having preceded them in pursuit of their different avocations. Francis had his regular visits of spiritual consolation; John had gone to the hall for his pointers and fowling-piece, the season for woodcock having arrived; and Denbigh had proceeded no one knew whither. On gaining the high-road, Mrs. Wilson desired her companions to lead the way to the cottage where the family of the mendicant gardener had been lodged, and thither they soon arrived. On knocking at the door, they were immediately ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... spreads his rich domains, Round Euston's water'd vale, and sloping plains, Where woods and groves in solemn grandeur rise, Where the kite brooding unmolested flies; The woodcock and the painted pheasant race, And sculking foxes, destin'd for the chace; There Giles, untaught and unrepining, stray'd Thro' every copse, and grove, and winding glade; There his first thoughts to Nature's charms inclin'd, That stamps devotion on th' inquiring mind. A little farm his generous ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... admired gout of game and venison. It is not found in the flesh of young animals, which is said, 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 ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... your voice,—never the 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 ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... be woodcock in that wet ground, Griffin," he said, as he reluctantly yielded a little in his intention; "and Winchester would fancy a bird exceedingly in a day or two. I never was hit in my life that I did not feel a desire for game after the fever was gone. Snipe, too, must live on the banks ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... questions, I made inquiries as to woodcock, the cover being just suited to them, and after a great deal of difficulty in explaining the bird to him, he declared that he knew the kind of creature perfectly, and that there were plenty of them. By way of convincing us, however, of his sporting knowledge, he ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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 ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... 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
... are not the only good fathers that carry their young (like woodcock) in their own mouths. A freshwater species of the Sea of Galilee, Chromis Andreae by name (dedicated by science to the memory of that fisherman apostle, St. Andrew, who must often have netted them), has the same habit of hatching out its ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... was fancy 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, while behind me, groaning beneath their burden, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 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 ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... 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 a regiment, if the condition of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... our own shams are liable to misinterpretation. In centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or "Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed to have made suckling pigs out of dough, partridges of veal, chicken of tunny fish, and vice versa. What indeed ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole, peeled it; saw, further 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 ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... after all 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 things, gleaned from ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the great red-headed woodpecker, or woodcock, as he is called by the country people, looking like a miniature man with a crimson turban and sable spear, attacking the bark of yon old oak. He is making a sounding-board of the seamed mail of the venerable monarch, to detect by the startled writhing within ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... unhappy man enough, in whose sorrowful soul the delight of the beautiful 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, trusting to the ease and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... pays 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 ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... meadow, with steady sweeps. And yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns speak for us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and thus left the woods to ring again with their echoes; and it may be many russet-clad children, lurking in those broad meadows, with the bittern and the woodcock and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and hardhack and meadow-sweet, heard ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... birds are not the only ones which can take care of themselves at an early age. This is true of the running birds, such as the ostrich; and the same is the case with many of the wading birds, such as the woodcock; and among the swimming birds, there are several kinds that take full care of themselves soon ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... at his house, with a mixed company, in a desert of dining room at a vast table loaded with masses of gold plate. The peaches are from South Africa; the strawberries from the Riviera. His chef ransacks the markets for pheasants, snipe, woodcock, Egyptian quail and canvasbacks. And at enormous distances from each other—so that the table may be decently full—sit, with their wives, his family doctor, his clergyman, his broker, his secretary, his lawyer, and a few of the more presentable ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... sew—and she could not settle down. It was Saturday evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar had gone to Knarborough. She would be back at nine o'clock. Alvina set about to make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other, with cheese and an egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and as if amused, mocking, her face quivered a little with irony that was ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... 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
... pups stood trembling with anxiety, having his eyes fixed and all his muscles strained AT THE PARTRIDGES WHICH THEIR PARENTS HAD BEEN TRAINED TO POINT. A spaniel belonging to a breed which had been trained to woodcock-shooting, knew perfectly well from the first how to act like an old dog, avoiding places where the ground was frozen, and where it was, therefore, useless to seek the game, as there was no scent. Finally, a young polecat terrier was thrown into a state of great excitement ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... the eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; might spear the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fisherman, I am more or less superstitious, and having always had good luck at my favorite place (the edge of a fine piece of wood, which, by the way, contain a few woodcock), I do not care to seek further, and, perhaps, ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... distressed Portuguese, in which time we might treat with them for such conditions as might be at the same time beneficial for the Persians and ourselves. At length, a Persian officer and I were deputed to go into the castle to treat with the Portuguese, and they also desired our vice-admiral, Mr Woodcock, might accompany us. We all three went to the castle gate, but could not be allowed to enter; yet were met by Luis de Brito, the Portuguese almirante, and five or six other cavalieros, but did not see the captain, as the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... light work. Marry in 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 ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... 1877-1878 the times were full of trouble, and I recall several episodes which show the temper of the people at that day. Some four miles from Limerick is a place called "Woodcock Hill," where the rifle ranges, for the instruction in musketry of the troops quartered there, were situated. Close to the range was a small Catholic chapel, standing practically by itself. An infantry regiment was quartered in Limerick at the time. It was an English ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Ellangowan 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 • Sir Walter Scott
... azure of the northern sky, very, very far away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light—flight-woodcock coming through hill-cleft and valley to the land where ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... chase, consisting of a brace of large birds, one being black in colour, the other white, and both quite dead. At once I was struck by the resemblance of these birds to ordinary barnyard fowls, but Master Pope explained that they were woodcock. His uncle, Mr. H. K. Pope, our local poultry dealer, frequently carried such woodcock in stock, he said; ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... ve. Woful cxagrenega, malgxoja. Wolf lupo. Woman virino. Womb utero. Wonder miri. Wonder mirego, 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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" on Jack, but with an air of deep ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... with love. And below both of these lies the possibility of fear. In combat the animal is defeated who is first afraid. Competitive exhibition of prowess will inspire the less able birds with a deterring fear. Young grouse and woodcock do not enter the lists with the older birds, and sing very quietly. It is the same with the very oldest birds. Audubon says that the old maids and bachelors of the Canada goose move off by themselves ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 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 ground for track of roe or slot of the red deer. Of a sudden a white doe rose in front of him, and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... spared. They are sending to the prairie for prairie oysters; to Egypt for Pot-au-feu (soupe a la mauvaise femme); to Jerusalem for artichokes, to Bath for chaps, and Brussels for sprouts. Bordeaux will be ransacked for pigeons, Scotland for Scotch woodcock, Wales for rabbits, Sardinia for sardines, and Turkey for rhubarb. Special messengers are travelling through Germany in search of sausages; others are in Ireland seeking supplies of the stew of that country. Bombay is being ransacked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... Ralph Mohun, as he sat down again, and went in steadily at a woodcock. "Don't hurry yourselves, gentlemen. We have three quarters of an hour yet; they will take that time to ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... there at least, perhaps a pair of them hiding somewhere around that desolate place. Why, Norton's Point is, I guess, about the meanest and loneliest place of all the Disston Swamp lumber company. Nobody hardly ever goes there except to shoot snipe and woodcock in the fall, and yet we happen to know there's one person hiding out there, and that he knows Todd Pemberton, for they've been exchanging signals through ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... passed the butter-nut, when, even as Torn had said, up flapped a woodcock scarcely ten yards before me, in the open path, and rising heavily to clear the branches of a tall thorn bush, showed me his full black eye, and tawny breast, as fair a shot ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... 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 ...
— 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
... 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
... 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 and talk of the ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... altogether so, sir; but, as it were fatal to their follies that think to grace themselves with taking tobacco, when they want better entertainment, you see your pipe bears the true form of a woodcock's head. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... bishops of Exeter, for Bishop Osbert built a palace here about 1080. In the third year of Richard II's reign the palace was fortified under a licence to Bishop Brantyngham, but now only a very few fragments of it are still to be seen. The manor of Chudleigh was bound to provide twelve woodcock for the bishop's table on the day of his election, but should they be unobtainable, twelve pence was considered a just equivalent! In 1547 Bishop Vesey alienated 'the manor, town, palace, and limekiln,' and rather more than a hundred years later it came into the possession of Lord ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Milton lived in peace and obscurity in Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street. During the commonwealth his first wife, the mother of his three children, had died; on which he sought solace and companionship in a union with Catherine Woodcock, who survived her marriage but twelve months; and being left free once more, he, in the year of grace 1661, entered into the bonds of holy matrimony for a third time, with Elizabeth Minshul, a lady of excellent family and shrewish temper, who rendered his daughters miserable in their father's ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... evening, rejoicing in their liberty and security; for I have, as much as possible, prohibited the grounds from invasion, and sometimes almost wished for game-laws, when my orders have not been sufficiently regarded. The partridge, the woodcock, and the pigeon are too great temptations to the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... 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 ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... earth sometimes adheres to them: in one case I removed sixty-one grains, and in another case twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from the foot of a partridge, and in the earth there was a pebble as large as the seed of a vetch. Here is a better case: the leg of a woodcock was sent to me by a friend, with a little cake of dry earth attached to the shank, weighing only nine grains; and this contained a seed of the toad-rush (Juncus bufonius) which germinated and flowered. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... 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 ready to depart vpon the said voyage, with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... grew, and melted in its turn into a more impersonal yearning, a deeper absorption into the beauty and the wonder of the world. And even the records of his boyish amusements come to us each on a background of Nature's majesty and calm. Setting springs for woodcock on the grassy moors at night, at nine years old, he feels himself "a trouble to the peace" that dwells among the moon and stars overhead; and when he has appropriated a woodcock caught by somebody else, "sounds of undistinguishable ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... 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 country, ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and discovered that people there ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... find some other excuse for sitting here," he said. "I will tell you all about the high pheasants your husband killed, and about the woodcock he brought down after ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mean man for his time, and the guests of the high table must lack no wine: the lusty bloods must look about them like men, and piping and dancing puts away much melancholy: stolen venison is sweet, and a fat coney is worth money: pit-falls are now set for small birds, and a woodcock hangs himself in a gin: a good fire heats all the house, and a full alms-basket makes the beggar's prayers:—the maskers and the mummers make the merry sport, but if they lose their money their drum goes dead: ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... sing 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
... the Stork gravely. "Yet the Woodcock is a very foolish bird. One never knows what he will do next. If he should try ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... imposed 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 was not ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... what is now the gayest and most crowded part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and, was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. [117] On the north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls of a few great houses which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which, long ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eggs 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 ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... must hamper the high road of the king with your bodies? Now, by St. Ursula of Alpuxerra, there be those who might think that birds who fly o' nights were after higher game than the moorhen or the woodcock!' ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have patience, If you will dispense a little with your justiceship, And sit with the waiting woman, you'll have dumpling, Woodcock, and butter'd ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... 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 ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... it is surely only right and reasonable that lovers of lark's flesh should be prevented from gratifying their taste at the cost of the destruction of so loved a bird, that they should be made to content themselves with woodcock, and snipe on toast, and golden plover, and grouse and blackcock, and any other bird of delicate flavor which does not, living, appeal so strongly to the aesthetic feelings in us and is ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... 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" them successfully, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the sky, thus offering wonderful sport. I have seen one of these partridges soar up almost out of sight when followed by the hawk. Still better sport is offered by a variety of solitary snipe as big as a small woodcock, which is plentiful in this country, and which is flown at with a very small, agile, and highly-trained hawk with an almost red tail. The zigzagging of the great snipe and the lightning rapidity of the flight and movements of ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... democracies and Liberal governments have kept themselves too much isolated, trusting prematurely and too simply to international law and treaties and Hague conventions. These things have never been respected, except as springs to catch woodcock, where the Divine Right held sway. The outgrowing or the overthrow of the Divine Right is a condition precedent to the effectiveness ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... 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
... and deeply 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 flourishes on signatures, the modest esmarrido, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... indeed," said Mrs. Montgomery; "this is just the season for woodcock, and these are ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Em, for your words of cheer. And now is the woodcock near the gin. Good-bye. Now, Harding, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... fields are full of all kinds of game, wild cattle, does, deer, stags, bears, turkeys, partridges, parrots, quails, woodcock, wild pigeons, and ringdoves. There are also beaver, otters, and martens. The cattle of this country surpass ours in size. Their head is monstrous, and their look is frightful, on account of the long, black hair with which it is surrounded, and which hangs below the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the foregoing 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 their nestes is gone, I can't see no woodcock, nor snipe; My dog he looks dogged and dull, My ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... nye of pheasants, even as it is a gaggle of geese or a badling of ducks, a fall of woodcock or a wisp of snipe. But a covey of pheasants! What sort of talk is that? I made him sit even where you are sitting, Nigel, and I saw the bottom of two pots of Rhenish ere I let him up. Even then I fear that he had no great profit from his lesson, for he was casting his ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... are still met with in the forests. The hare is increasing 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 ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... 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 ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various |
