"Woodcock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing to what he says of the woodcock:" and with trembling hand she turned over the leaves, till he found the place. "Here it is," said he, "page 88, chap. xvi. Just be so good as read that, Lady Emily, and say whether it is not infamous that Monsieur Grillade has never even attempted ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... dresses in a high, short evening gown like other people. The Prince eats nothing at all except young partridges and salt-herring, and the result is that the cookery is feeble, though for game-eaters there is no hardship. The table groans with red-deer venison, ham, grouse, woodcock, and the inevitable partridges— roast, boiled, with white sauce, cold, pickled in vinegar. A French cook would hang himself. There is no sweet at dinner except fruit, stewed German fashion with the game. Trout, which the family ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... oppressing thoughts was interrupted by a man coming hastily from the opposite direction. The Bohemian, whose eyes nothing escaped, rushed toward the man, who with crossbow upon his shoulder and badger-skin pouch at his side, and with a feather of a black woodcock in his cap, was ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... out to the wood; and when he saw the young man he was going to shoot him. "Why would you do that?" said he. So the butler told him all the father ordered him; and the young man said, "Do not shoot me, but save me. And this is what you will do. Go into the wood until you meet with a woodcock, and shoot it, and take the heart out of it, for that is most like the heart of a man. Bring the woodcock's heart to my father's house," he said, "and throw it to the dogs ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Where, busy in their grassy homes, Woodcock and snipe the hollows haunt, And musk-rats build ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... formal red brick house with a narrow gateway and a dingy yard, to which it applies. At the theatre last night I saw Hamlet, and should have done better to 'sit at home and mope' like the idle workmen. In the last scene, Laertes on being asked how it was with him replied (verbatim) 'Why, like a woodcock—on account of my ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... much worth Sir: But if I knew when you come next a burding, I'le have a stronger noose to hold the Woodcock. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... hand, and good judgment, to kill a partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur that can kill woodcock in close cover, or well-grown snipe on a windy day; but there are few, who can do these things, who can kill with both barrels in their first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the wary and cautious manner of their approach, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... "And then 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 the bushy valleys, and even over the heathery ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 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 know ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 added that they were in the habit ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... blankets too little added a dressing-gown of flannel, or print lined with wadding or fleecy hosiery, and so made shift. In particular all those who had the care of Josephs took care to lie warm and soft. Hawes, Jones, Hodges, Fry, Justices Shallow and Woodcock, all took the care of their own carcasses they did not take of Josephs' ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... gladly laid hold of by the majority of the judges, who gave their opinion[a] that his guilt was not proved; and, for similar reasons, some days later acquitted two other conspirators, Sir Humphrey Bennet and Captain Woodcock. The fact is, they were weary of an office which exposed them to the censure of the public; for the court was viewed with hatred by the people. It abolished the trial by jury; it admitted no inquest or presentment by the oaths of ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... red and teal. " orange and mallard. " green and woodcock. " black spiders with red tips, commonly called "Zulus." " red spiders, hackle taken well down the hook. " March Browns, which, though supposed to come out in March, are really capital flies at any time. " yellow body with cinnamon wings and golden-pheasant tip. " dark harelug ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... a fair shot may reckon on from ten to fifteen brace, and I could name two guns that have not unfrequently bagged from thirty to fifty brace on the Eastern Shore; but I believe they shot with unusually "straight powder." There is a good show of woodcock at certain seasons; but it sounds strange to English ears when they speak of the season opening in June; the bird is much smaller than ours, weighing, I believe, about seven or eight ounces, and it is found ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Lilias to her brother, 'has given me one great advantage over him. For knowing that my uncle would shoot him with as little remorse as a woodcock, if he but guessed at his brazen-faced assurance towards me, he dares not since that time assume, so far as I am concerned, the air of insolent domination which the possession of my uncle's secrets, and the knowledge of his ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... thundering at the door, "come forth! You are now fairly trapped at last—caught like the woodcock in your own springe. We have you. Open the door, I say, and save us the trouble of forcing it. You cannot escape us. We will burn the building down but we ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a few select friends breakfast too on a hot morning, if it be especially ordered; and, certes, a woodcock and toast as served up by him on these occasions is a thing not to be forgotten. It was my fortune, under the auspices of my friend, Mr. M'L—d, an especial favourite of "mine host," to pay several visits to Cato's, and to come away at each with added ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Woodcock Wilson Snipe Upland Plover Black-bellied Plover Golden Plover Semi-palmated Plover Belted Piping Plover Wilson Plover Piping Plover Killdeer Willett Greater Yellow Legs Summer Yellow Legs Turnstone Red Phalarope Northern Phalarope Avocet Oyster ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... my brother-in-law to a meeting of the North Brixton Radical Club. Quite like an anarchist he was. Presently he quieted. After a long pull at his pipe he regarded me with an entire change of manner. Well I knew something was coming; coming swift as a rocketing woodcock. Word for word I put down ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track Reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little dog,—it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Constantine would not take precedence of her, but entirely spoiled this act of politeness by exclaiming in a rude tone, "Pass, madame, pass on!" And turning towards the King of Naples, added, loud enough to be heard, this disgraceful exclamation, "The old woodcock!" ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... quite etiquette to discharge his heavy-loaded piece any where in the immediate vicinity of the head, so long as the muzzle just clears the honoured individual. In a few minutes we were gliding down the beautiful stream. The absence of all wild animals is peculiarly observable in the mountains. A woodcock or red-legged partridge are occasionally seen; but few quadrupeds are met with, and the larger and fiercer kinds are rarely known to occur. This deficiency, however, in the general zoology, is amply compensated by the birds which frequent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They were very small and piercing eyes, and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the long 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 not help springing up at the sight—pale, leaden, and misty as it was; ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 very ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... or else his honest credulity had been 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 ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... skeletons were taken away from the mid-gallery, and instead, three gradated series of birds put down the length of it (or half the length—or a quarter would do it—with judgment), showing the transition, in length of beak, from bunting to woodcock—in length of leg, from swift to stilted plover—and in length of wing, from auk to frigate-bird; the wings, all opened, in one specimen of each bird to their full sweep, and in another, shown at the limit of the down back stroke. For what on earth—or in air—is ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... you are sure (and again, on thinking it well over, not quite so sure), that the adorable ROSE looked kindly upon you as she said good-night, and allowed her pretty little hand to linger in your own while you assured her that to-morrow you would get for her the pinion-feather of a woodcock, or die in the attempt. You are now arrayed in your smoking-coat (the black with the red silk-facings), and your velvet slippers with your initials worked in gold—a birthday present from your sister. All the rest are, each after his own fashion, similarly attired, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... again. "Springes to catch woodcock!" he said to himself, quoting Shakespeare, then went on to reflect in his own vernacular: "The chap is trying to bribe me, confound him! Well, here goes!" Thereupon he said aloud, for they were approaching the station: "If you really would like my company on the way ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... 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
... my brain, you know, will send in its resignation. I'm not quite certain even now whether I'm expressing myself clearly. While I've been lying here, I've kept fancying red dogs were running round me, while you were making them point at me, as if I were a woodcock. Just as if I were drunk. Do you ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... secret sight he knew Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. Many haps fall in the field Seldom seen by wishful eyes, But all her shows did Nature yield, To please and win this pilgrim wise. He saw the partridge drum in the woods; He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; He found the tawny thrushes' broods; And the shy hawk did wait for him; What others did at distance hear, And guessed within the thicket's gloom, Was shown to this philosopher, And at ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... birds which live on the ground, every one admits that they are coloured so as to imitate the surrounding surface. How difficult it is to see a partridge, snipe, woodcock, certain plovers, larks, and night-jars when crouched on ground. Animals inhabiting deserts offer the most striking cases, for the bare surface affords no concealment, and nearly all the smaller quadrupeds, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... partridge and woodcock shooting in New England? Or quail shooting in the West and South? Or duck shooting on the Southwest coast? Or prairie-chicken and grouse shooting in the far West and Rocky Mountains?" demanded Merriwell, who had arrived on the grounds of the gun club with Bart Hodge and was taking ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... sermon, Oct. 22, followed, and told the Parliament, "All the guilty blood that God requires you in justice to shed, and you spare, God will require the blood at your hands." [Footnote: Calamy's Sermon, p. 27.] Mr. Francis Woodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which was on Rev. xvi. 15, is a very untastefully-worded discourse on the propriety of always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise without one's garments; and, among ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... 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
... a bough. In a moment Red Head had silently scaled the tree. Two tail feathers alone remained to show an awed game-keeper that Red Head had passed that way. A woodcock floated silently on the bosom of the tiny lake. He did not note the ripple which showed that a powerful animal was swimming towards him. A scream, and the woodcock, trumpeting shrilly, is drawn ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... woodcock! looking at the springe, and then coolly putting his head therein. Throwing the hatchet after the helve! selling his soul and never getting the price of it! I foresaw it, foretold it, I believe to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... tribes of the woods you will find the owl, the woodcock, and the grouse. Of the smaller birds, the nuthatch, the wood and hermit thrush, whippoorwill, woodpeckers, wood-pewee, and others. Most of the birds prefer the edge of the woods, where they can dip into the sunshine and ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... keepers, the dogs, and everything else. The pleasant array of plates and glasses, and the savoury odours of the meats mitigated, but did not dispel the frowns. Then suddenly there dropped down amongst us, as it were from the sky, the Great Woodcock Saga. In a moment the events of the morning were forgotten, brows cleared, tempers were picked up, and an eager hilarity reigned over the company, while the adventures of the wonderful bird were pursued from tree to tree, from clump to clump, through all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... believe these things are called coincidences. But to the story. The day I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... hunters, shepherds, 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
... son to meet us. They had been to the fish fuyck,[183] which they had lying there upon the shore and out of which they had taken at noon some fine fish, but at present the water was too high. Another of his sons had been out shooting, but had not shot anything; though the day before he had shot a woodcock and a partridge before the door of the house, which we must taste this evening with still some other things. Also because we were there the fuyck must be lifted again, from which they took out two ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... the royal 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 ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the lake a bit seeing some of that bunch at Larry Woodcock's place. Larry's gang and the Redmans lot are pretty much of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... 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 ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... also felt, or thought I felt, a kind of prickly numbness in the hand I held it in, and did so for some weeks afterwards. In struggling for its liberty, it twisted itself round my arm, and discharged its excrements on my coat-sleeve, which seemed nothing more than milk, or like the chalkings of a woodcock. It made its escape from me several times by boring a hole through the gauze; I had lost it for some days at one time, when at length it was observed peeping out of a mouse-hole behind one of the cellar steps. Whether ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... surprise and almost incredulity that they all belonged to one family, so great is the diversity exhibited in their structure. In size they vary from species smaller than the golden-crested wren to others larger than the woodcock; but the differences in size are as nothing compared with those shown in the form of the beak. Between the minute, straight, conical, tit-like beaks of the Laptasthenura—a tit in appearance and habits—and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and 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 ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... over the fell by the Hanging Stone at break o' day—just above the young larch plantation where we had the record woodcock ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... came to his relief, And I was soon trepanned; And, bound up like a woodcock, Had ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... 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
... though I would hardly go as far as a friend of mine, who boasts of never fishing with anything else, I believe it will, from March to October, take more trout, and possibly more grayling, than any other fly. Its basis is the woodcock wing; red hackle legs, which should be long and pale; and a thin mohair body, of different shades of red-brown, from a dark claret to a pale sandy. It may thus, tied of different sizes, do duty for half-a-dozen of the commonest flies; for the early claret (red-brown of Ronalds; a Nemoura, according ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... of 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 ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... could I look forward without a shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects—I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz—'Cursed be he who stirs these bones.' Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... see now once again The glen And fern, the highland, and the thistle? And do you still remember when We heard the bright-eyed woodcock whistle Down by ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... and the intervening plains. Perhaps considering that the city has not extended much in the direction of East Terrace, it may be a little too far for public convenience, but this is a question that admits of doubt. It is a neat and unostentatious brick building, at which the Rev. Mr. Woodcock performs service, whose exertions amongst the natives in the West Indies have stamped him both as a christian and a philanthropist. The two churches are calculated to hold about 1000 sittings, and the average ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... if you tell us next term that you bagged two woodcock with one barrel, we'll boot you all ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... fire into them. At last, after half-an-hour's trouble, the flames got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I went round to the further side of the pan to wait for the lions, standing well out in the open, as we stood at the copse to-day where you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do, but I used to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much as mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds parting before ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... and forty-five pheasants, fifty-six rabbits, eleven hares, three pigeons, and a woodcock. We should have got a hundred and eighty pheasants if they hadn't dodged us in the big wood. I can't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... the woodcock or snipe is, that the bird is not drawn like other birds, but roasted as it is plucked, suspended by the head, with a toast beneath, on which the trail, as it is called, or internal part, is allowed to drop; and when the birds are roasted, which should be rapidly done ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... in which the will or desire of the many is or may be made the law of the land, 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 not ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... hampers them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw, swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, in cookery. So that grisettes, shopkeepers' wives and duchesses ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... beat fast as they neared the heronry. It was not a heron, however, which claimed the maiden flight of Mabonde. It was a woodcock flushed in the edge of a copse. Instantly Roger unhooded the cherished hunting-bird, Eleanor gave her a toss into the air, and both sat their horses, eagerly watching her flight. Aloft she soared, the little bells singing like fairy chimes—then dropped like a plummet. There was a ripple in the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... 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 ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... famous red snow of the Arctic regions is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the skin, like reptiles imbedded in rock. Elizabeth Woodcock lived eight days beneath a snow-drift, in 1799, without eating a morsel; and a Swiss family were buried beneath an avalanche, in a manger, for five months, in 1755, with no food but a trifling store of chestnuts and a small daily supply of milk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... remarkable birds are the eagle, the turkey-buzzard, the hawk, pelican, heron, gull, cormorant, crane, swan, and a great variety of wild ducks and geese. The pigeon, woodcock, and pheasant, are found in the forests as ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never before noticed the sheath of his bill going over the front of the lower mandible that he may dig comfortably! But the others! the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and light, and black and tan and gold, and golden sand, and dark tresses, and purple ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... the 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 order to pick it up, and I found ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... common (one). This surrender of Lord 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, because of them we may be ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... despair'd of for our money; And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there; and godwit if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe'er my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we'll speak our minds, amidst our meat; And I'll profess no verses to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... 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 lips, and a rubbing of his ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... gigantic white-capped chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of inspecting the larder—fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables, several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We select our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house; and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... their harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on some leafless ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... 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 Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... he said, with a wave of his arm, "you settle it among yourselves. Jacqueline, is it true that Le Bihan saw woodcock dropping ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... good for him. I have seen a physician examining a patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... too closely by their foes. They lacked not food; the forest was filled with grazing deer and antlered stags. There was also abundance of smaller game,—the hare, the coney, the roe; and of birds,—the partridge, pheasant, woodcock, mallard, and heron. Fuel could be had in profusion when fire was needed. For winter shelter there were many caverns, for Sherwood forest is remarkable for its number of such places of refuge, some made by nature, others ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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 are rapidly impoverishing ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... 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
... 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
... unpleasant—now the thought was insupportable. Then there would have been some charm to me in the very novelty of the locale, and the indulgence of that vagrant spirit I have ever possessed; for, like Justice Woodcock, "I certainly should have been a vagabond if Providence had not made me a justice of the peace"—now, I could not even contemplate the thing as possible; and would have actually refused the command of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... reception was approaching a perspiring and vociferous close when the Antiquary whispered an invitation to the Painter, the Patron, and the Critic. A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs heavily, even against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore down an avenue ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the Balkan and Rhodope forests, the wild pheasant in the Tunja valley, the bustard (Otis tarda) in the Eastern Rumelian plain. Among the migratory birds are the crane, which hibernates in the Maritza valley, woodcock, snipe and quail; the great spotted cuckoo (Coccystes glandarius) is an occasional visitant. The red starling (Pastor roseus) sometimes appears in large flights. The stork, which is never molested, adds a picturesque feature to the Bulgarian village. Of fresh-water fish, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... before this period he had married his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, to whom it is supposed that he was very tenderly attached. In 1657 she died in child-birth, together with her child, an event which he has recorded in a very beautiful sonnet. This loss, added to his blindness, must have made his home, for some years, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... shooting season there were weeks when he and his guests shot daily from the crack of dawn until dark, the game-keepers following with their carts that by night were loaded with hares, partridges, woodcock and quail—then such a good dinner, sparkling with repartee and good wine, and laughter and dancing after it, until the young hours in the morning. One was more solid in those days than now—tired as their dogs after the day's hunt, they dined and danced themselves ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... which are not potatoes or cabbages, partake of the nature of evil. As to eating vegetables apart from meat, it was once as hard to get English domestics to let you do that, as to get a Cretan cook to serve woodcock with the trail. "Kopros is not a thing to be eaten," says the Cretan, according to a traveller; and the natural heart of the English race regards vegetables, when eaten as a plat apart, with equal ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... nor did any appear afterward. It was after the mating season and I think the bird did it in just pure joy in his own dare-deviltry. He liked to see how near he could come to breaking his neck without actually doing it. In the same way a male woodcock will keep up his shadow-dancing antics long after the nesting season is over, and the partridge drums more or less the year around. The other bird may have much admiration for these actions if she sees them, but never half so much as the bird who performs. Nothing ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... reader will remember that the occasion and philosophy to which we allude were, respectively, the dinner at Mr. Karl Benson's, and a conversation in which Mr. Harry Benson expressed it as his decided opinion that living in a country where one could eat woodcock and drink claret without having to pay very high taxes or do any hard work, was much better than some other things which he then and there suggested. But in the silence which often falls over a small ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... with a roguish grin. Under his cloak Jeremy had on fringed leather breeches and tunic such as most of the northern colonists wore. The pirate, seeing the rough moccasins and deerskin trousers, burst into a roar. "Ho, ho, young woodcock, and how do ye like the company ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... of Lucinda, and "a very worthy young fellow," of good character and family. As Justice Woodcock was averse to the marriage, Jack introduced himself as a music-master, and Sir William Meadows, who recognized him, persuaded the justice to consent to the marriage of the young couple. This he was the more ready to do as his sister Deborah said positively he "should not do it."—Is. Bickerstaff, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that the memorial "might be attended with dangerous consequences to your person and contribute to exasperate the nation." He closed with the significant sentence: "I heartily wish you a prosperous voyage and long health." The significant words remind one of the woodcock's feather with which Wildrake warned the disguised monarch that no time was to be lost in fleeing from Woodstock. But if the hint was curt, it was no less wise. There was no doubt that it was full time for the sage to be exchanging his farewells, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... follow the river's winds northward in the spring-time, will stop the ploughs furrowing its fertile bottoms as far as its echoes roll around mountain-juts, and cause the hands that held the lines to grasp old-fashioned rifles for a chance at the winged passers. When, later, woodcock seek its margins, gray snipe, kill-deer, mud-hens, and plovers its narrow fens, the scythe will rest in the half-mown field while its wielder "takes a crack at 'em." And when autumn brings thousands of gray ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... bad—only look." Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... such "humours" as Maiden, "a Nice Fellow that values himself upon all Effeminacies;" Squib, a bogus captain; Mrs. Goodfellow, "a Lady that loves her Bottle;" her niece Penelope, "an Heroic Trapes;" and Woodcock, the Yeoman, a rich, sharp, forthright, crusty old fellow with a pretty daughter, Belinda, whom he is determined never to marry but to a substantial farmer of her own class: her suitor, a clever ne'er-do-well named Reynard, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... three 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
... ate the oysters obediently, and after the oysters, fish, and after the fish the breast of a woodcock. But from the autumn lamb, roasted whole, which followed, she ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... hope not," said 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
... 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 ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... between two interesting roads, one going straight over the hills of Boston, and the other to Walden Lake and Thoreau's hermitage, or where it was. Between them runs a lively, gurgling brook, which used to be frequented by woodcock, and the Virginia rail, and passes close ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... back, failed to give us a thrill of pleasure. At last it became too utterly miserable to be borne. The sight of the deck-steward bringing round cups of half-cold beef-tea with grease spots floating on the top proved the last straw, so, with a graceful, wavering flight like a woodcock, we zigzagged to our bunks, where we have remained ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... and was quick to note who delighted to look upon her,) soon became aware of Rinieri and said, laughing, in herself, 'I have not come hither in vain to-day; for, an I mistake not, I have caught a woodcock by the bill.' Accordingly, she fell to ogling him from time to time with the tail of her eye and studied, inasmuch as she might, to let him see that she took note of him, thinking that the more men she allured and ensnared with her charms, so much the more of price would her beauty be, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of heart, for that day his bride of a year had presented him with two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, both white as May-blossom. In his joy the happy father asked his wife her heart's desire, and she, pining for that which idle fancy urged upon her, begged him to bring her a dish of woodcock from the lake in the dale, or of venison from the greenwood. The Seigneur of Nann seized his lance and, vaulting on his jet-black steed, sought the borders of the forest, where he halted to survey the ground for ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 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 ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... signs there; here a woodcock had peppered the mud with little holes, probing for worms; there a raccoon had picked his way; yonder a lynx had left the great padded mark of its foot, doubtless watching for yonder mink nosing us from the bank of the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... be a woman, you know from yourself what is the nature of woman. Tell me truthfully, have you ever seen a woman who was sincere, faithful, and constant? You haven't! Only freaks and old women are faithful and constant! You'll meet a cat with a horn or a white woodcock sooner ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... aware of this peculiarity, put it down, very naturally, to eccentricity for which he was rather to be pitied than condemned, and his popularity was in no way abated by it. Mr. Fetherston was unmarried, in age about sixty; tall, stout, red-faced, of good family, a noted woodcock shot and salmon fisher, a carpenter, and an incessant pipe-smoker. These being his leading gifts, it will probably, and with accuracy, be surmised by persons conversant with the Irish Church, that he was a survival of its earliest days, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... St. John says, they are often irreclaimable, and do incredible mischief. There are instances, however, of their returning to their homes bringing game with them. One known to the above gentleman, used every winter evening to bring in a woodcock; another brought back rabbits and hares; the latter was constantly caught in traps, which accident did not cure him of his wanderings, and he never struggled, but sat quietly till some one ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... 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
... 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 ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... when I must work hard for my five brace of grouse. I see no amusement in dawdling over a lowland moor where the packs are as thick as chickens in a poultry-yard. I like better than most things a day with my own dogs in scattered covers, when I know not what may rise—a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard or a teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when the mistress of the house takes an interest in the bag. I detest battues and hot corners, and slaughter ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... month, in the season, we dine 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, ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the forest which surrounds the caravanserai on all sides, and shot two or three brace of red-legged partridges and a woodcock. I saw the traces of several wild boars; they were evidently quite recent; also a wretched ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... eleven eagles; the peregrine falcon, a little pigmy falcon, and five other falcons; a big brown wood-owl, 2 feet in length, a pigmy owlet measuring only 6 inches, and nine other owls; and six kites;—among the game-birds, besides pheasants, three quails, two hill-partridges, a jungle-fowl, woodcock, a snow-cock, and a snow-partridge;—among other classes of birds, nine or ten species of pigeons and doves; the European raven and a jungle crow; one jay and several magpies; two hornbills, one of which is 4 feet in length; the common and the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... or minerals, one frequently comes upon evidence of the former occupation of the country. Speaking of game, the partridges are not preserved, and they are scarce; of course I was too early, but in autumn the woodcock-shooting, I understand, is first-rate. Quails and snipes are also common ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse |
