"Woodpecker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Saint said this when the little old woman went straight up the chimney, and came out at the top changed into a red-headed woodpecker ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the last word before she was turned into a great black woodpecker, or Gertrude's bird, and flew from her kneading- trough right up the chimney; and till this very day you may see her flying about, with her red mutch on her head, and her body all black, because of the soot in the chimney; and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... 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 it is said "infants are fetched ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... much to have some birds' eggs from the North. I send a list of eggs which have all been found in the Georgia woods: jaybird, cat-bird, sap-sucker, thrush (two kinds), redbird, bluebird, wren (different kinds), mocking-bird, woodpecker, partridge, bee-martin, and several kinds of sparrows. Any of these I would like to exchange for ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in their translucent beauty. There, also, he would wade into the swamps around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep and ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... withdraw : eligxi. 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 ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... 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
... hay, and the army teamsters were giving us a rest. I listened with delight to the plaintive, mournful tones of a turtle-dove in the woods close by, while on the dead limb of a tall tree right in the camp a woodpecker was sounding his "long roll" just as I had heard it beaten by his Northern brothers a thousand times on the trees in the Otter ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... went over the same ideas; but there was a livelier movement 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 of a ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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 ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... beginning to prick in little points here and there, I began to 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 that ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... 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 words ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... woodpecker will, Jim thought 'twas a knock on the door of the still, He grabbed up his gun, and he went for to see, The woodpecker laughed as he said: ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... children born in this 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 ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... one's two fists, into which were introduced shotlike seeds, such as those of the canna. In character it was a rattle, a noise-instrument pure and simple, but of a tone by no means disagreeable to the ear, even as the note produced by a woodpecker drumming on a log is not without its pleasurable effect ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... vapors of the springs and fountains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the atmosphere. Still that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low voices of the men, the occasional and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant waterfall. These feeble and broken sounds were, however, too familiar to the foresters to draw their attention from the more interesting matter of their dialogue. While one of these loiterers ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... Tit the Chickadee was so weak that he could hardly fly, and he shook with chills. He made straight for the apple-tree where Farmer Brown's boy always keeps a piece of suet tied to a branch for Tommy and his friends. Drummer the Woodpecker was there before him. Now it is one of the laws of politeness among the feathered folk that when one is eating from a piece of suet a ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... are 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 difficult to see how natural selection, working ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... 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 ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... her uncle's house to come to California for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an orphan too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which, from a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid and a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which the schoolmistress ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... of 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
... that a busy woodpecker hammered loudly on the dead top of a chestnut tree close by, looking for a breakfast of grubs. In this fashion, then, they reached the front of the shack that seemed to have been deserted so long that vegetation was trying to claim, or cover it ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... genus of small creeping-birds, called also Tree-Runners (q.v.). Sittella is the Latin diminutive of sitta, which is from the Greek sittae, a woodpecker, whose habits the Tree-runners or Sittellae have. Gould's enumeration of the species is given ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... tribes, the mortal jealousies of French and English. Every inch of ground about her was historical. These forests had resounded for years with the ugly sounds of battle, and more than once with the shrieks of women and children. To-day the woodpecker tapped, the bluejay cried in those depths unaffrighted; the singing of a mountain stream, the roar of a distant waterfall alone lifted a louder voice to the eternal whisper of the pines. The forest looked calmly down upon this flower of a civilization which no man ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... what results in America, Africa, and Australia from the totemistic organisation. {265c} In Italy the ancient custom by which animals were the leaders of the Ver sacrum or armed migration is well known. The Piceni had for their familiar animal or totem (if we may call it so) a woodpecker; the Hirpini were like the 'descendants of the wolf' in Ossory, and practised a wolf-dance in which they imitated the actions of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... elm-arched solitudes No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... this was doubtless a disaster, but to me it was a treasure-trove, for it told her well-kept secret. The hint was taken, the home soon found in the heart of an oak, with entrance twenty feet from the ground, and close watching from a distance revealed the owner, a golden-winged woodpecker. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... for 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 proprietor considers "a fine mind, a poetic ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... sound of musketry grew faint and the cannon boomed in the distance. The sun, suddenly apparent, blazed among the trees. The insects were making rhythmical noises. They seemed to be grinding their teeth in unison. A woodpecker stuck his impudent head around the side of a tree. A ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... round the King's little eyes, made sure that he was sent for—as had often been the case—to turn into Latin some jest the King had made. His gown fell about his kneeling shins, his cap was at his side, his lean, brown, and sly face, with the long nose and crafty eyes, was like a woodpecker's. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... 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
... the channel 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 ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... laughter. Anna Hansen shook the reins and they drove on, while I zigzagged back to my inlet and 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... scraping out the decayed leaves and the black earth, have never been tasted before, except by the wild denizens of these woods. We cross the trails of lurking animals,—paths that heighten our sense of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the drumming of the solitary partridge,—all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesomeness of nature. The roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of pebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it were, a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wander on through the wood, all the labyrinths of summer are buried beneath one white inviting pathway, and the pledge of perfect loneliness is given by the unbroken surface of the all-revealing snow. There appears nothing living except a downy woodpecker, whirling round and round upon a young beech-stem, and a few sparrows, plump with grass-seed and hurrying with jerking flight down the sunny glade. But the trees furnish society enough. What a congress of ermined kings is this circle of hemlocks, which stand, white in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... "Rat-a-tat Quir-r-k, tat-tat" of the great crimson-crested woodpecker hammering just for noisy fun on the wide cornice of the "mansion," with the summer sun shining in through the window, and the five o'clock bell pealing sharply from Strieby Hall, the seven sleepers would have to be awake and doing ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... rock-splitting talisman is always found in the possession of a bird. The same feature in the myth reappears on Aryan soil. The springwort, whose marvellous powers we have noticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, according to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker keeps its young. The bird flies away, and presently returns with the springwort, which it applies to the plug, causing it to shoot out with a loud explosion. The same account is given in German folk-lore. Elsewhere, as in ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... white clover; the 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 of a ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... 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 great disappointment, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... other. Every zooelogical and botanical province retains some link which binds it to all the rest, and makes it part of the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant cries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... fell into a heavy sleep; for the big stub began to burn more freely as the wind changed, and they need not stir every half hour to feed their little fire and keep from freezing. It was broad daylight, the storm had ceased, and a woodpecker was hammering loudly on a hollow shell over their heads when they started up, wondering vaguely where they were. Then while Noel broke out of the commoosie, which was fairly buried under the snow, to find out where he was, Mooka rebuilt the fire and plucked a ptarmigan and set it to ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... 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 beak on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hung chestnut trees decked with gold; at my feet lay a mass of chestnut leaves which resembled the amputated palms of human hands; on the opposite bank, where there waved, tanglewise, the stripped branches of a hornbeam, an orange-tinted woodpecker was darting to and fro, as though caught in the mesh of foliage, and, in company with a troupe of nimble titmice and blue tree-creepers (visitors from the far-distant North), tapping the bark of the stem with a black beak, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... than 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
... 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 ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... Chimaphila, which last was 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 ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Familiaris; the smallest of our birds after the wren. It belongs to a class nearly related to the woodpecker. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... 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 a parasol ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... the Indian advised 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 before, but I pronounced after him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... quite satisfied that the mere preference for a better inmate furnishes the only reasons why the lady wants Mr. Woodpecker's room rather than his company. Perhaps he is in arrear; but no, he pays his bill: so it is not on that score that he is so ruthlessly sent away. You are, however, not kept long on the tiptoe of conjecture, but soon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... warning," said Molly; "he is a mischief-maker, a marplot, and a thief all the time, but nothing escapes him. He wouldn't mind harming us, but he cannot, thanks to the briers, and his enemies are ours, so it is well to heed him. If the woodpecker cries a warning you can trust him, he is honest; but he is a fool beside the bluejay, and though the bluejay often tells lies for mischief you are safe to believe him when ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... 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 endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that species have been ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... King Fisher (ispida, the alcedo ispida of Linnaeus), a very beautiful bird, frequenting waters, and feeding on fish. It builds in deep holes in the banks of rivers, and lays five, or, according to some, nine eggs. It much approaches to the Picus, or Woodpecker, in many points; but wants its great character, which is, the having two toes behind. The legs of this bird are very short, and are black before and red behind; its colours, particularly its green and blue, which are its general ones, are extremely bright ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... 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. Let us not note ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... impediments. Thus in an anecdote gravely related to Aubrey, we find this virtue mentioned: 'Sir Bennet Hoskins told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton, in Herefordshire, did for experiment's sake drive an iron naile thwart the hole of a woodpecker's nest, there being a tradition that the dam will bring some leafe to open it. He layed at the bottom of the tree a cleane sheet, and before many houres passed, the naile came out, and he found a leafe lying by it on the sheete. They say the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... oaks and chestnuts. A patriarchal pheasant, 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 ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... go forth, as I did, to look for birds that are a sight for sore eyes, must meet with many a disappointment. In all those fruit and shade trees that covered the village with a cloud of verdure, and in the neighbouring woods, not once did I catch a glimpse of the green woodpecker, a beautiful conspicuous bird, supposed to be increasing in many places in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed strange. Another species, also said to be increasing in the country—the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods its low, montonous crooning ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and our kingbird has been charged with the like crime, but the latter devours only the drones. The workers are either too small and quick for it or else it dreads ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... railroad running between solitary stretches of moorland, and in gloomy defiles of the mountains. Ellen followed the road, a white, glaring, dusty line, all day. Nothing broke the dreary silence but the whirr of some unseen bird through the forests, or the hollow thud, thud of a woodpecker on a far-off tree. Once or twice, too, a locomotive with a train of cars rushed past her with a fierce yell. She slept that night by the roadside with a fallen tree for a pillow, and the next morning began ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... just as it needed it. I never saw a place so soaked with charm from end to end, its very wildness giving it a grace which trimness would have utterly destroyed. I stood for a while beside the pool, with a woodpecker laughing in the holt, to watch the long roofs and huddled chimneys rise above the white-flowered orchard. Perhaps in a stormy, rugged day of November it would be sad and mournful enough in its solitary pastures; but on this spring day, with the sun lying warm on the brickwork, it seemed ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 from Norway ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... lookers-on—the hunting of birds. Of that he never tired on the longest or the hottest day. Blackbirds gave the finest sport of all, as they generally flew only three feet above the ground. He knew their note at once; but probably the laugh of the green woodpecker vexed him more than most, while he certainly regarded the mocking notes of cuckoos as insults to himself. Of birds of various kinds he caught many, young and old, but was never known ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone, things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel scampering and a woodpecker at work—or so I guessed, though it sounded more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too far removed from each other for ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... doors), and snapped her up in a minute, so he bore the hawk a grudge, and set about to seek for vengeance. And as he could not fly or get at the hawk he thought he would manage it through the other birds. So one morning when the green woodpecker came down to pick up the ants with his tongue, the mole looked out and promised to show him where there was a capital feast, and to turn up the ground for him, if in return he would fly all round the forest and the fields, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... 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 crumbs and flies. It had belonged ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... and woodpecker, red-cap and jay, Shriek that a doom shall fall One day, one day, on my pitiless way From the sky that is over us all; But the great blue hawk of the heavens above Fashioned the world for his prey,— King and queen and hawk ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... species (length 8 inches) is marked very similarly to the preceding, but the plumage is brown instead of gray. They normally nest in hollow trees, generally in deserted Woodpecker holes, in extensively wooded sections, and usually in mountainous country, especially in the United States. They have also been known to nest in bird boxes near farm houses and in old Crow's nests. During April or May, they lay from ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... that species are not immutable productions. But I cannot see how the two supposed "impulses" account in a scientific sense for the numerous and beautiful coadaptations which we see throughout nature; I cannot see that we thus gain any insight how, for instance, a woodpecker has become adapted to its peculiar habits of life. The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying in the early editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of scientific caution, immediately ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... 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 moment protruded ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... or teat of any creature ruma, and there is a tutelar goddess of the rearing of children whom they still call Rumilia, in sacrificing to whom they use no wine, but make libations of milk. While the infants lay here, history tells us, a she- wolf nursed them, and a woodpecker constantly fed and watched them; these creatures are esteemed holy to the god Mars, the woodpecker the Latins still especially worship and honor. Which things, as much as any, gave credit to what the mother of the children ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a woodpecker in the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Crow, the Woodpecker, The Wren and the Eagle, The Blackbird and Swallow, The Jackdaw and Starling, And the wonderful Peacock; The Lapwing and Peewit, The bold Yellowhammer, The bad Willy-wagtail, The Raven so awful, And the Cock with his Hens; Stone-checker, Hedge-sparrow, And Lint-white and Lark, ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... suckers, and cat-fish. Unattractive as are the names of the two last, the fish themselves are excellent. Among the birds, Professor Hind mentions prairie-hens, plovers, various ducks, loons, and other aquatic birds, besides the partridge, quail, whip-poor-will, hairy woodpecker, Canadian jay, blue jay, Indian hen, and woodcock. In the mountain region are bighorns and mountain goats; the grizzly bear often descends from his rugged heights into the plains, and affords sport to the daring hunter. The musk-rat and beaver inhabit ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... possible, more solitary than the night. The noise of the wild turkey, the croaking of the raven, or the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree, did not much enliven the dreary scene. The various tribes of singing birds are not inhabitants of the desert. They are not carnivorous and therefore must be fed from the labors of man. At any rate they did not exist ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... rolled in a pill, put down the throat of a cow to promote the restoration of her cud, which she was supposed to have lost. Gowk, cuckoo. Fuzz-Buzz, traveller's joy. Palmer, caterpillar. Dish-washer, water-wagtail. Chink, chaffinch. Long-tailed caper, long-tailed tit. Yaffil, green woodpecker. "The yaffil laughed loud."—See Peacock at Home. Smellfox, anemone. Dead men's fingers, orchis. Granny's night-cap, water avens. Jacob's ladder, Solomon's seal. Lady's slipper, Prunella vulgaris. Poppy, foxglove. To routle, to rummage (like a pig in straw). To terrify, to worry ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... heard the beating of her heart, the rustle of leaves, the tapping of a woodpecker, and faint, remote sounds that ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... and often in August and in October, in consecutive clucking notes, and in this way make exactly the same kind of noise that they are always heard making in early spring just before the pairing season. The young male green woodpecker (Picus viridicanus) sings in September as beautifully as in April, as I have myself heard more than once; the young great spotted woodpecker (Picus major) may even be heard at times in autumn, just as in spring, making his characteristic tapping sound as he explores hard branches ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... them by our forefathers, because they resembled the European quail. There is no pheasant in America either; but our grouse looked like one, and so they gave it that name, Lester calls a quail Pious Imperialis. Now that's an imperial woodpecker—that big black fellow with a red topknot that we sometimes see when we are hunting. He used to be called cock-of-the-woods, but the name was twisted around until it became woodcock, and some people believe that he is the gamey little bird we so much delight to shoot and eat. But ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... breath of balmy air, and then the long cold frost again—ah! they knew it well and lost no time. Sand martins were driving their ancient tunnels into the soft clay banks, and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands. Overhead the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the partridge boom-boomed ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Christ said, 'For your selfishness, you shall become a bird, and seek your food 'twixt bark and bole.' Gertrude at once became a bird, and flew up into a tree with a screech. And to this day the great woodpecker of Scandinavia is called 'Gertrude's Bird,' and has ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... tattered, And three useless arrows only, Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree, From whose branches trailed the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow. Suddenly from the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be wounded!" Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, Just as Megissogwon, stooping, Raised a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... mouthful he rattled or rather drolled on, now infant-like, now sage-like. He cast out the rays of his liberal humour, careless where they fell,—on the child, on the dog, on the fishes that played beneath the wave, on the cricket that chirped amidst the grass; the woodpecker tapped the tree, and the cripple's merry voice answered it in bird-like mimicry. To this riot of genial babble there was a listener, of whom neither grandfather nor grandchild was aware. Concealed by thick ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Conanchet 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 do ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... we were already beginning to get rich, and wondering how many more nests we should 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 in the creeks ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... gray Spanish moss, twisted around the boughs, and hanging from them like gigantic cobwebs. Now and then, the sombre scene was lighted up with a bit of brilliant color, when a scarlet grosbeak flitted from branch to branch, or a red-headed woodpecker hammered at the trunk of some old tree, to find where the insects had intrenched themselves. But nothing pleased the eye of the traveller so much as the holly-trees, with their glossy evergreen foliage, red berries, and tufts of verdant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... 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 he inwardly felt, and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... The river Anio carried the cradle, like a boat, into the Tiber, and the latter conveyed it to the foot of the Palatine, the water having overflowed the country, and the cradle was upset at the root of a fig-tree. A she-wolf carried the babies away and suckled them; Mars sent a woodpecker which provided the children with food, and the bird parra which protected them from insects. These statements are gathered from various quarters; for the historians got rid of the marvellous as much ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... a few wood-ducks, sheldrakes, and black ducks, but they were not so numerous there at that season as on our river at home. We scared the same family of wood-ducks before us, going and returning. We also heard the note of one fish-hawk, somewhat like that of a pigeon-woodpecker, and soon after saw him perched near the top of a dead white-pine against the island where we had first camped, while a company of peetweets were twittering and teetering about over the carcass of a moose on a low sandy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... art the woodpecker. Here is my back, clatterbill. Why should I not crawl the ground to be walked over? I have been ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Toad hopped down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... pine needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky gleamed bright azure through the openings of the great trees, a dry west breeze murmured through the forest. I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left no room for imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my shirt, and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... night,—a soft, warm rain,—and the air was full of the smell of the apple-bloom and pear from the little orchard behind the house. The bees were already humming about the straw-bound hives along the garden wall, and a misguided green woodpecker clung upside down to the eaves, and thumped at the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... 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, ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... 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, Devon, London, and all around the east ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... milkweed, purple phlox, creamy pawpaw, azure bluebells, spotted foxgloves, rose-tinted daisies, brown-eyed coreopsias and unknown flowers of palest blue. Butterflies flit noiselessly among them, and mocking-birds sing loud in the leafy screens above. A red-headed woodpecker taps upon a resounding tree and screams in exultation as he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... woodpeckers and into the pocket-like nest of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth the birds in its talons. In one case which I heard of, a screech-owl had thrust its claw into a cavity in a tree, and grasped the head of a red-headed woodpecker; being apparently unable to draw its prey forth, it had thrust its own round head into the hole, and in some way became fixed there, and had thus died with the woodpecker ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... to build in, which must be prickly and uncomfortable, but are thick. Here there is a woodpecker family. The woodpecker is a fairly big bird, and he has a beautiful crimson streak on his head; with his strong bill he carves out a deep hole in a tree, right into the trunk—it is wonderful that the bird should have the strength and patience to cut into the ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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 might be one of those ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... from beneath 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 ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with human functions—the jay laughs, and we find, indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker laughs also; but to mark the distinction between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the configuration of the place; and having waited until night was come and indeed far spent, he returned thither, and though the ascent was such that 'twould scarce have afforded lodgment to a woodpecker, won his way up and entered the garden, where, finding a pole, he set it against the window which the damsel had pointed out as hers, and thereby swarmed up ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... thought of his supper; and the two continued their journey till they reached another tree with a woodpecker tapping on it. ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... ago while strolling through the woods with my field glass, I saw a pretty sight. On one tree I saw a Redheaded Woodpecker, a Flicker, an Indigo Bunting, and a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. I thought then, if we could only have the Evening Grosbeak our group ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... tree, to which it clings in a vertical position, and, remaining silent and motionless, escapes observation by means of its dark protective colour. The Drymornis, a large bird, with feet and tail like a woodpecker, climbs on tree-trunks to seek its food; but also possesses the widely-different habit of resorting to the open plain, especially after a shower, to feed on larvae and earthworms, extracting them from a depth of three or four inches beneath ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... him through the tunnel, the lines in his face a tangle of emotions, the colonel was standing on the mat, in his favorite attitude—back to the fire, coat thrown open, thumbs in his armholes, his outstretched fingers beating woodpecker tattoos on ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... of the sacrificed goats and smeared their faces 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 of ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... upon the mountain tops every moment stronger. The dewy scents of the May morning were filling the air with their nameless and numberless tokens of rich nature's bounty. The voice of a cataract, close at hand, made merry down the rocks along with the song of the blackbird, woodpecker and titmouse. And still, as Eleanor stood there and looked and listened, the rush and the stir of sweet life grew more and more; the spring breeze wakened up and floated past her face bringing the breath of the flowers fresher and nearer; and the hill ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... events that followed from one night when this facial decoration of his rival was even more fantastic than usual. Like a fish was one side of the young Cherokee's profile; the other in glaring daubs of white and black and red craftily represented the head of a woodpecker. The effect in front was the face of a nondescript monster, that only a gleeful laughing eye, and now and then a flash of narrow white teeth, identified as the jovial Amoyah, the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the previous day and they were going to have a stew. The boys' task was soon through and it was not long until the smell of the partridge stew and the fresh trout on the fire fairly made the boys' mouths water. They soon set the table and then went off to try and get a look at a woodpecker they heard hammering away in the woods. They had just gotten under the big old tree on which the woodpecker was busy and were watching his diligent operations when they heard a welcome call and they broke for the camp. They arrived with Pud ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter^; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c v.; blatant, latrant^, remugient^, mugient^; deep-mouthed, full-mouthed; rebellowing^, reboant^. Adv. in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to keep well to the bed of the stream, working from boulder to boulder and stopping to make a cast wherever a riffle looked promising. Finally, to avoid an unusually deep pool, I detoured around through the trees. It was very still in there; not even the cry of a jay or the drum of a woodpecker to break the silence, until suddenly I heard voices. Then, in a tangle of young alder, I picked up a trail and came soon on a group of squaws picking wild blackberries. They made a great picture with their beautifully ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... 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, and in an instant the wide view of a rich wooded and watered plain spread ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... laughed with his piccolo. 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 ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... that I recollect, except birds of prey. And not only do birds of the same kind associate, but certain species are almost always found together. Thus, the chickadee, the golden-crested wren, the white-breasted nuthatch, and, less constantly, the brown creeper and the downy woodpecker, form a little winter clique, of which you do not often see one of the members without one or more of the others. No sound in nature more cheery and refreshing than the alternating calls of a little troop of this kind echoing through the glades of the woods on a still, sunny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... must tell you the rest of the story of the bluebirds; and I am sorry to say, they met with sad trials. The first encroacher, as they supposed him to be, was a woodpecker; he seemed, as I thought, to mean them no harm; but as soon as they heard his tap, tap, tap, they flew at him very angrily and drove him away. A more dangerous enemy was at hand, one that from ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove. On either side, as the path mounted, the long sweep of country broadened and expanded, sloping down on the one side through yellow forest and brown moor to the distant smoke of Lymington and the blue misty channel ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... the trunk of one of these trees will often dislodge numbers of the nuts. The writer has many a time gone "nutting" in this way in the middle of winter with good success. The nests of squirrels are generally built in trees, either in a crotch between the branches or in some deserted woodpecker's hole. Some species live in burrows in the ground, and those individuals who are lucky enough to be in the neighborhood of a barn often make their abode therein, taking their regular three meals a day from the granary. In many localities these animals thus become ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... thorns extend its entire length which are resinous and, if ignited, burn with a bright flame. They are sometimes set on fire and have been used by the Apaches for making signals. The cactus tree, like the eastern forest tree, is often found bored full of round, holes that are made by the Gila woodpecker. When the tree dies its pulp dries up and blows away and there remains standing only a spectral figure composed of white slats and fiber that ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... light far among the overhanging branches. Now there may be discerned a hollow near the summit of the trunk, and as dead branches are heaped upon the fire, sharp eyes may detect a triangular head peering out of what was once, perhaps, the front door of a woodpecker's home, and the glints of green are reported to be the glare ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... was not the only bird that liked beechnuts. Reddy Woodpecker was fond of them, too. And when he saw that the beechnut crop was going to be a big one he decided that he would stay in ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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
... remained silent for many minutes, so silent that the faint wash of the river against the bank sounded plainly, and a woodpecker could be heard making his last tap-tap on a tree ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... thrush from that of the wood 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 layer of the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... a green woodpecker cries in the copse, and immediately afterwards flies across the mead, and away to another plantation. Occasionally the spotted woodpecker may be seen here, a little bird which, in the height of summer, is lost among the foliage, but in spring and winter ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... into the sun. Away from its direct rays, cooled by her bath in the stream and clad in an Indian maiden's light garb, she was rejoicing in the summer heat. She enjoyed the sleepy feeling that dulled the woodland sights and sounds: the tapping of a woodpecker on a distant tree, the occasional call of a catbird, the soft scurrying of a rabbit or a squirrel, the buzzing of a laden bee—all mingled into one melody of summer of which she did not consciously distinguish ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... thrusting forth as he looked at the two beings whom he instinctively hated much and feared more. The leaves swarmed with birds, robins and wrens and catbirds and all the feathered tribe keeping up an incessant quivering and trilling, while a distant woodpecker drummed portentously on the trunk of an old oak. They too saw the passing youths, but since no hand was raised to hurt them they sang, in their way, as ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... their old and in their new territory they named their place of public assembly—which in the one case was situated near Agnone, in the other near Bojano—from the ox which led them Bovianum. A second band was led by the woodpecker of Mars; these were the Picentes, "the woodpecker-people," who took possession of what is now the March of Ancona. A third band was led by the wolf (-hirpus-) into the region of Beneventum; these were the Hirpini. In a similar manner ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... between the round-headed cactus, with its cruel fishhook thorns, and the warning, blood-red blossoms that dripped from the ocatilla. Little frisk-tailed things ran up and down the spiney shrubs, and a woodpecker, who had made his nest in its pithy stalk, peered at them from ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... 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 snow, presses us hospitably ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... were a pair of small woodpeckers, which closely resembled the well-known downies of our eastern longitudes. I suppose them to have been their western representatives, which are known, according to Mr. Aiken and Professor Cooke, as Batchelder's woodpecker. Near the same place I saw a second pair of mountain bluebirds, flitting about somewhat nervously, and uttering a gentle sigh at intervals; but as evening was now rapidly approaching, I felt ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... it's anything you don't want the birds to hear, I guess we'd better go up to the house. If you don't mind that woodpecker up yander an' them two sparrers out there in the road, I guess this is about as private a place as you'll find ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... a rock. Continuation of AEneas' voyage. Dido. Cercopians changed to apes. Descent of AEneas to hell. The Cumaean Sybil. Adventures of Achaemenides with Polyphemus: and of Macareus amongst the Lestrigonians. Enchantments of Circe. Story of the transformation of Picus to a woodpecker; and of the nymph Canens to air. The Latian wars. Misfortunes of Diomede. Agmon and others changed to herons. Appulus to a wild olive. The Trojan ships changed to sea-nymphs. The city Ardea to a bird. Deification of AEneas. Latin kings. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... affection of these birds is strong; they always perch side by side, and when they fall asleep one of them, usually the male, covers the other with its wing. The couples of the golden woodpeckers and doves live in perfect unison. Brehm records the case of a male woodpecker who, after the death of his mate, tapped day and night with his beak to recall the absent one, and when at last discouraged, he became silent and never recovered his gaiety.[58] According to some estimates monogamy prevails among ninety per cent of birds.[59] This is explained by ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... next time Rucker sidled into the tavern, and began beslavering me about the way the money left by my mother was being eaten up by expenses and debts, I blurted out: "Well, what will you give me to clear out and let you and your red-headed woodpecker alone?" ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... slowly sinking back and merging into the level of the forest mould. Beyond, in a slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle swung in green riot from gnarled old oak trees. A gray Douglas squirrel crept out on a branch and watched him. From somewhere came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... said that while the infants were lying in this place, the she-wolf suckled them, and that a woodpecker came and helped to feed and watch over them. Now these animals are sacred to the god Mars; and the Latins have a peculiar reverence and worship for the woodpecker. These circumstances, therefore, did not a little to confirm the tale of the mother of the children, that their father was ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... of a saguaro up here where Carter's trail branches off the main trail to Casita? Well, I climbed it an' left my hat on top for a woodpecker's nest." ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the undergrowth all about them was alive with Drilgoes. The three dodged and doubled like hunted hares. High overhead something began to clack with a sound like that made by a woodpecker drilling ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... brain rested, Tayoga nevertheless knew all that was going on near him. That eardrum of infinite delicacy told him that a woodpecker was tapping on a tree, well toward the north; that a little gray bird almost as far to the south was singing with great vigor and sweetness; that a rabbit was hopping about in the undergrowth, curious and yet fearful; ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to excite attention to this subject, to mention, that the birds which lay an egg perfectly white (the most attractive of colours) make their nests in holes of the earth, and cavities of trees, such as the kingfisher and the woodpecker, or construct them with a very narrow opening, as the domestic swallow; that the same coloured egg is found amongst the birds which scarcely quit their nests in the day, as hawks and owls; and that such birds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • 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 castle ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... what Chops done with his money. He had a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came round, besides having the run of his teeth—and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all Dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him in so many halfpence that he'd carry 'em for a week together, tied up in a pocket- handkercher. And yet he never had money. And it couldn't be ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... is 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Vesper 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, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... it is not from any poverty of ideas that Mrs. Preston sometimes dwells too long upon a subject: her poetry is not diluted with a mere harmonious jingle of words, as destitute of any meaning as the silver chime of sleigh-bells. "The Legend of the Woodpecker" is remarkable for its simplicity and terseness: it is one of the best of all the poems; only we wish that in the last verse but one she had not thought it necessary to use the word "chode" for "chided." So in the fine ballad called "The Reapers of Landisfarne" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... they swoop to and fro busied with their nesting under the caves; thrush and blackbird vie in friendly rivalry like the Meister- singer of old; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a peacock strayed from the great house, or the laugh of the woodpecker; and at night the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... the trunk of a tree, just as if it wanted some one to open the door! Soon he saw it draw out of the bark of the tree, a little worm, which hung upon the end of its tongue as if it had been a hook! His mother told him this little bird, was called a woodpecker, and this was the way it took ...
— Happy Little Edward - And His Pleasant Ride and Rambles in the Country. • Unknown
... take Miss Butterfly a minute to fly to the tree near by where Mr. Woodpecker was at work and ask his help, for she knew he did not bother butterflies. His work was to find ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... the eagerness of a man whose life was depending on the acuteness of his hearing, a noise reached him, which he knew was not made by a human being. It was the distant and sonorous tapping of a woodpecker upon the trunk of a dead tree—a sound often heard in the depths of an American forest. The sound fell upon his ear like the voice of a friend. It seemed to say that, in the direction whence it proceeded, no human creature would be found ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... always so clever with your wonderings," said Peter and Paul again; "as if you'd never heard a woodpecker hacking and pecking ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... 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 ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the special objects of my search during a certain June among the hills of northern New York was a nest of the golden-winged woodpecker; not that it is rare or hard to find, but because I had never seen one and had read attractive stories of the bird's domestic relations, the large number of young in the nest, and his devotion and pride. Moreover, I had become ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Ballard, of Pittsfield, 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
... 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 from right to left, or whether it crosses in front ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... 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
... are inhabited by few birds: occasionally the plaintive note of a white-tufted tyrant-flycatcher (Myiobius albiceps) may be heard, concealed near the summit of the most lofty trees; and more rarely the loud strange cry of a black woodpecker, with a fine scarlet crest on its head. A little, dusky-coloured wren (Scytalopus Magellanicus) hops in a skulking manner among the entangled mass of the fallen and decaying trunks. But the creeper (Oxyurus tupinieri) is the commonest bird in ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... other superstitious people they are great believers in omens. A single crow bathing in a stream is a sign of death. A cock which crows in the night should be instantly killed and thrown into the darkness, a custom which some would be glad to see introduced into much more civilised centres. The woodpecker and owl are birds of bad omen. The Baigas do not appear to have any idea of a fresh birth, and one of their marriage songs says, "O girl, take your pleasure in going round the marriage-post once and for ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... the Mindoro," he assured his son-in-law. "Early in life I adopted the woodpecker as my patron saint. Ever since, whenever I want anything I keep pecking away, and pretty soon ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... spruce swayed toward me encouragingly, as though offering to help me down. But its top was many feet from the wall. There was an abandoned bird's nest in it; a little below that was a dead limb with a woodpecker's incision at its base. By leaning out I could see, a hundred feet or more below the bottom of the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... bar one's path. The murmur of streams and cascades fell sometimes upon our ears as we wandered in the deep shade, and mingled with the cooing of wild doves and the mysterious, haunting sound of a native woodpecker at work. Our Chinaman, who was with us on our first survey, busied himself with taking samples of the soil, and grew almost incoherent with the richness of what he called the 'dirty.' We, for our part, were no less enchanted with what we saw, and could realize, as we ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb |
