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Grouse   Listen
verb
Grouse  v. i.  
1.
To seek or shoot grouse.
2.
To complain or grumble; as, employees grousing about their incompetent boss. (informal)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grouse" Quotes from Famous Books



... Brighton, Lady Halifax giving musical teas, Miss Halifax painting marine views in a little book. Miss Halifax called them "impressions," and always distributed them at the musical teas. The Cardiffs had gone to Scotland for golf, and later on for grouse. Janet was almost as expert on the links as her father, and was on very familiar terms with a certain Highland moor and one Donald Macleod. They had laid every compulsion upon Elfrida to go with them, in vain; the girl's sensitiveness ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... which, glistening coldly white with mantles of eternal snow, towered above the deep-sunk valley, when, one morning, Geoffrey Thurston limped painfully out of a redwood forest of British Columbia. The boom of a hidden river set the pine sprays quivering. A blue grouse was drumming deliriously on the top of a stately fir, and the morning sun drew clean, healing odors from balsam ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... one of those fancies you can take up and drop at any moment; it's like a grouse-moor or the opium-habit—once you start it you've got to ...
— Reginald • Saki

... right out. "That's Strutter the Stuffed Grouse!" he cried joyously. "I had forgotten all about him. I certainly must go over and pay him a call and find out where Mrs. Grouse is. My, how Strutter ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... The Grouse Disease Commission has found a recognised period in the fluctuations of the number of those game birds. During a cycle of sixty years there recur the good year, the very good year, the record year, the bad disease year, the recovery, the average, and the good ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... when, one afternoon, he stood, waiting for the grouse, behind a bank of turf on Malton moor. To begin with, he had played cards until the early morning with some of his guests and had been unlucky. Then he got up with a headache for which he held his wife accountable; Alice was getting horribly parsimonious, and had bothered him until he ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... man fairly revelled in the scene and the work; and what's more, that sleepy, straggling person Haigh did too. It wasn't in my line at all. I've not the smallest objection to getting cold and wet when there is a big elk or a good bag of grouse in question; that's different. But when one is perpetually half-drowned and frozen in a little tub of a sailing craft, I fail to see where the fun comes in. Still, in spite of the hard, rough time, I should have been sorry to have missed that hammering across the North Sea and the trip down ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... boards," he lightly said, when she commented upon the hardness of his couch. "I know the furniture isn't up to much, but it isn't a bad little shanty when you're used to it. My pater and mater spent their honeymoon here years ago, and I stayed here with two other fellows for three weeks' grouse-shooting a couple of years back. Rare sport we had, too. Do you mind passing over that saucepan? Thanks! I say, Nan, I hope you don't mind it being ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... from the West, and are much like the partridge of the Eastern States and Canada. The flesh is dark, but exceedingly tender. Grouse should be plump and heavy. The breast is all that is good to serve when roasted, and being so dry, it should always be larded. The season is from September to January, but it is ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... and from midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears A sable ruff around his mottled neck; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat His barred sides with his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... and unaffected, and full of that buoyant spirit which to the end of her life never flagged. She enjoyed with a glad heart every pleasure. She was happy at a ball, happy on her horse, happy on the grouse-moor, devoted to her father, a favourite with all her relatives, and very, very sweet to me. Gladness of heart, thankfulness for every pleasure, a happy disposition to make the best of what Providence has ordered, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... scurried swiftly, making preparations. Some were cooking rare pasties of grouse and ptarmigan, goslings and dough-birds; some were setting great tables in-doors and out; and some were piling fagots for the Dragon's funeral pyre. Popham, with magnificent solemnity and a pair of new calves, gave orders to Meeson ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister

... mass of them it is simply a means of locomotion, of getting from one point to another. A small minority put their wing-power to more ideal uses, as the lark when he claps his wings at heaven's gate, and the ruffed grouse when he drums; even the woodcock has some other use for his wings than to get from one point to another. Listen to his flight song in the April twilight ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... slops over the fiddles With the violins of the gale: Two bitts are on the quarterdeck, The seamen grouse and quail. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... be the shooting season, and then, if the weather permit, he will find occupation enough in the pursuit and destruction of the partridges and pheasants: we have no grouse, or he might have been similarly occupied at this moment, instead of lying under the acacia-tree pulling poor Dash's ears. But he says it is dull work shooting alone; he must have a friend ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... necessary; you know that. I've an operation to-morrow in Manhattan; I must get back to town. Wish I could stay and shoot grouse ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... the first time disturbed the stillness of the forest, the otter swam in the shadowy coves near the shore and the beaver built his huts near by. The red deer came down to dip his antlers and cool his flanks in the still shallows. The speckled grouse sat on her nest in the low pine boughs, while her mate perched on the mossy logs ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the rest of her satellites, who for the most part merely worshipped her because it was the right thing to do. Lord Strishfogel had promised to come to Heron's Nest, Lord Lodway's place in the Wolds, for the grouse-shooting; but instead of keeping his promise, this erratic young peer went off to the Golden Horn, to race his yacht against the vessel of a great Turkish official. This was Lady Jane Umleigh's first disappointment. She had liked Lord Strishfogel just ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... the extreme limit to which each can increase; but very frequently it is not the obtaining food, but the serving as prey to other animals, which determines the average numbers of a species. Thus there seems to be little doubt that the stock of partridges, grouse, and hares in any large estate depends chiefly on the destruction of vermin. If not one head of game were shot during the next twenty years in England, and at the same time if no vermin were destroyed, there would in all probability be less game than at ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... fancy goes to "critters" rather than crops it is much better to raise game birds. Wild turkeys raised under a hen or in an incubator and made pretty tame (if too tame they do not thrive so well in a small area), "wild" ducks, grouse, partridges, quails, even wood ducks which build their nests in trees are no ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... the wonders of Erie, and Miselle gladly took the cars for Buffalo, and on the road thither fell in with a good Samaritan, who solaced her weary faintness with delicate titbits of grouse, shot and roasted upon an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... killed driven grouse in Scotland," she answered with a smile. "But I suppose ammunition is valuable up here, and I'm going to ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... beginning endeavored to shield me from this humiliation; but when she found that I was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all the world, begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs, owls, blue and willow grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten the front cinch of my saddle, and that my spirit soared into enthusiasm at the mere sight of so ordinary an animal as a white-tailed deer, she let me rush about with my firearms and made no further ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... just honoured me with a call. About seven days ago he sent me a brace of grouse—the last of the season. Scoundrel! He is not altogether guiltless in this illness of mine; and that I had a great mind to tell him. But, alas! how could I offend a man who was charitable enough to sit at my bedside a good hour, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... have received such kindness within its venerable walls, that it can never be to me quite as other places are. I can see vast swelling stretches of purple heather, with the dainty little harebells all a-quiver in the strong breeze sweeping over the grouse-butts, as a brown mass of whirling wings rushes past at the pace of an express train, causing one probably to reflect how well-nigh impossible it is to "allow" too much for driven grouse flying down-wind. I can picture equally ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... used to help make hay; in this one I wore my fingers sore picking up stones for these stone walls; in this I planted corn and potatoes with my brothers. In these maple woods I helped make sugar in the spring; in these I killed my first ruffed grouse. In this field I did my first ploughing, with thoughts of an academy in a neighboring town at the end of every furrow. In this one I burned the dry and decayed stumps in the April days, with my younger brother, and a spark ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... me to the bridge. Then I saw the setter had caught her attention. He was coming back. His black body moved in strong relief against the ice-field, and I noticed he had something in his mouth. It seemed about the size and color of a grouse,—a ptarmigan, no doubt. Then it flashed over me the thing was a hat. At the same moment I felt her tremble, and I had just time to see that her face had gone white, when she sank against me, a dead weight. I carried her a few yards ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... arts and crafts and industries; they have fought and fished and hunted in uninterrupted succession since the days when wild in woods the noble savage ran, to the days when they pay extravagant rents for Scottish grouse moors. Their very titles are barbaric and military—knight and earl and marquis and duke, early crystallised names for leaders in war or protectors of the frontier. Their crests and coats of arms are but the totems of their savage predecessors, afterwards utilised by mediaeval blacksmiths as ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... And just order fresh stuffing put into the aparejos. I noticed three that had got lumpy." And the General shut the door and went to wipe out the immaculate barrels of his shot-gun; for besides Indians there were grouse among the hills where he expected ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Mr. Waistcott as he went to the gallows with a white cockade in his hat." Not to be wanting in the ordinary courtesies of the time, Selwyn's correspondent presently remarks, as one nowadays would do of a day's grouse-shooting: "I hope you have had good sport at the Place de Greve, to make up for losing the sight of so notorious a villain as Lady Harrington's porter. Mais laisons la ce discours triste, and let us talk of the living and lively world." Selwyn made his world brighter by his wit and ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... stooping as he spoke to gather up, not the fruit, but a dozen fresh partridge eggs from the inner shade of a thick tuft of grass and herbs that grew beside a fallen tree. Catharine's voice and sudden movements had startled the partridge [FN: The Canadian partridge is a species of grouse, larger than the English or French partridge. We refer our young readers to the finely arranged specimens in the British Museum, (open to the public,) where they may discover "Louis's partridge."] from her nest, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... Goldfinch, the Jock Scot, and the Yellow Lahobber; for May, June, and July, Purple Mixture, tinsel bodied Green Parrot, purple bodied Green Parrot, Silver and Blue Doctors, Purple Widgeon, Orange and Grouse, and Thunder and Lightning. Towards the end of the season here, as elsewhere, strange fancy patterns will frequently prove successful. The most suitable patterns of trout flies (the size of which depends entirely upon the ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... obstructions in the shape of uproots, spiky new growths, and old tree trunks. If he had a gun in his hands, he would furthermore be compelled, through all the vicissitudes of making his way, to hold it always at the balance ready for the snap shot. For a ruffed grouse is wary, and flies like a bullet for speed, and is up and gone almost before the roar of its wings has aroused the echoes. Through that veil of branches a man must shoot quickly, instinctively, from any one of the many positions in which the chance of ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... leisure for every man's work. Even the leisure classes are in a measure compelled to work, sometimes as a relief from ennui, but in most cases to gratify and instinct which they cannot resist. Some go fox-hunting in the English counties, others grouse shooting on the Scotch hills, while many wander away every summer to climb mountains in Switzerland. Hence the boating, running, cricketing, and athletic sports of the public schools in which our young men at the same time ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... Hotspur was at this time something under thirty years of age, and the Earl was four years his senior. The Earl was a married man, with a family, a wife who also liked poor George, an enormous income, and a place in Scotland at which George always spent the three first weeks of grouse-shooting. The Earl was a kindly, good-humoured, liberal, but yet hard man of the world. He knew George Hotspur well, and would on no account lend him a shilling. He would not have given his friend money to extricate him from any difficulty. But he forgave the sinner ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... courage till he stands before a gun. At mixed-up fighting, hand to hand, and clawing men about They reckon Fuzzy-wuzzy is the hottest fighter out. But Fuzzy gives himself away — his style is out of date, He charges like a driven grouse that rushes on its fate; You've nothing in the world to do but pump him full of lead: But when you're fighting Johnny Boer you have to use your head; He don't believe in front attacks or charging at the run, He fights you from a kopje ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the open places high up we could see a great green void of spruce, and beyond, boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon. We flushed a big blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at length another ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... the stream unless one is a very powerful swimmer. The current is very swift. Tortoises used to line the margin of the river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worth shooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. The hospital had a football ground and later on, towards ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... masked the splendour of the crimson-lake, her acute ears heard the murmur of talk going on, which indicated that bridge had not yet begun, while her acute nostrils detected the faint but certain smell of roast grouse, which showed what Susan had given Mr. Wyse for dinner, probably telling him that the birds were a present to her from the shooting-lodge where she had stayed in the summer. Then, after she had thrown herself a glance in the mirror, and put on her smile, Boon preceded her, slightly shrugging ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... barrel was empty. So our guests would bring a jar of baked beans, a pan of fresh rolls, potato salad or a dried-apple pie; and possibly a jack rabbit ready baked. Jack rabbit was the main kind of fresh meat, with grouse in season. We had not as yet been reduced to eating prairie dog ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... Pacific Coast than to the eastern shore of America: many of these birds being, for the first time, made known to ornithologists. We have selected two of the most singular in their conformation: one from the Owls, which are numerous and beautiful; and the other from the Grouse, of which ten fine species ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... ghost of a pair of shoes to his feet, our travellers set their faces homeward,—Caleb resolving to renew his acquaintance with the birds at some future period, his imagination having been quite inflamed by the accounts of plover and grouse to be found here in their season. The latter, however, are very strictly protected by law during most of the season, on account of the rapidity with which they were disappearing. They are identical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... others were sleeping I strayed away over the marshy tundra, plunging through the hundred yards of black mud and moss where the willow-grouse and the little stint were feeding. I came upon a nest or two of the latter, and paused to suck some of the eggs, one of the birds meanwhile coming quite close, putting its head quaintly to the side as though to watch where its property was going, with a view to future recovery. A little farther ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... 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 ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... is to the west of South Point. The marshes here are very wide. I ascended it in the afternoon to visit Dr. F. J. Purnell, whose attempts to introduce the pinnated grouse and California partridges on his plantation had attracted the attention of Mr. Charles Hallock, editor of "Forest and Stream"; and I had promised him, if possible, to investigate the matter. This South Point of Sinepuxent Neck is a place of historical ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... Dartmoor to see the porch of Cockchaffington Church. The session in London was over, and it was necessary for such a man as Colonel Osborne that he should do something with himself before he went down to the Scotch grouse. He had long desired to see something of the most picturesque county in England; and now, as he sat eating his breakfast in Mrs. Crocket's parlour, he almost looked upon his dear Emily as a subsidiary attraction. "Oh, that's the Clock House," he said ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... immigration are long at an end; and away up there, which was at that time far beyond the northernmost extreme of railways, hard upon the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had risen from the heather or an albatross come fishing in the bay of Wick. They were as strange to their surroundings as my lordly evangelist or ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... she had a share in the existence of the lad: if he did so well when a hobbledehoy, he might be something by the time he was a man! But one thing troubled her: he was no sportsman; he never went out to hunt the otter, or to shoot hares or rabbits or grouse or partridges! and that was unnatural! The fact was, ever since that talk with the master about Linty, he could not bear to kill anything, and was now and then haunted by the dying eyes of the pigeon he shot the first time he handled a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... supplying the starving population with food," he reminded her genially. "We sent about four hundred brace of grouse to market, not to speak of the salmon. We had some very fair golf, too, some ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... September, and the Scottish moors looked as they had not looked for years; the heather grew in rich profusion, the grouse were plentiful. The ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... cattle, elks and deer in abundance, foxes, beavers, otters, minks and such like. The birds which are natural to the country are turkeys like ours, swans, geese of three sorts, ducks, teals, cranes, herons, bitterns, two sorts of partridges, four sorts of heath fowls, grouse or pheasants. The river fish is like that of Europe, viz., carp, sturgeon, salmon, pike, perch, roach, eel, etc. In the salt waters are found codfish, haddock, herring and so forth, also abundance of oysters ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... dawned rosily, and faded into the grey; and there was the rich and copious correspondence dated from Vailima. His friends, no doubt, hearing of his good health, now and then, hoped to see his face again; the grouse on the hills of home were calling their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... manner usual during Irish disturbances—that is, four men and a sergeant of the constabulary were stationed at her house. In course of time, however, Mrs. Hunter felt comparatively safe, and the constables removed to a hut about two miles on the Newport road, opposite to some very good grouse-shooting. There the five men dwell in their little iron-clad house, pierced with loopholes in case of attack—a very improbable event. At the moment of writing, four constables are also stationed at Mr. Stoney's residence, ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... noting that in this context appears the original form of an English word quite common recently, but almost unknown a very short time ago—"grouse" in the sense of "complain," "grumble": "Ce dist Corsols et ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... considered the cleverest sportsman in the whole district. Every step of the ground for fifty miles round he had been over again and again. He seldom fired at a bird, for lack of powder and shot; but it was enough for him to decoy a moorhen or to detect the track of a grouse. Yegor had the character of being a straightforward fellow and 'no talker.' He did not care for talking and never exaggerated the number of birds he had taken—a trait rare in a sportsman. He was of medium height, thin, and had ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... be a great deal of trouble,—a great deal, indeed; but I shall take it. I mean you to be very intimate with Mr. Kennedy, and to shoot his grouse, and to stalk his deer, and to help to keep him in progress as a liberal member of Parliament. I am quite prepared to admit, as a friend, that he would go back without ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... a good thing, which I hope we shall live to finish,' said Heathcock, sitting down before the collation; and heartily did he eat of grouse pie, and of Irish ortolans, which, as Lady Dashfort observed, 'afforded him indemnity for the past, and security for ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... at 7 o'clock. Crossed a prairie five miles wide. Met with a new species of game called prairie hens. They are very much like the pheasant, and I am of the opinion they are the grouse. Plenty of deer and turkeys. Crossed a prairie twelve miles broad and arrived at the house of Rutherford, the second man on the cutthroat list. We had time enough to pass this house, but having a list of desperadoes, and being disappointed ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason

... duck, almost like that mentioned at Kerguelen's Land; another sort which none of us knew; and some of the black seapyes, with red bills, which we found at Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. Some of the people who went on shore, killed a grouse, a snipe, and some plover. But though, upon the whole, the water-fowls were pretty numerous, especially the ducks and geese, which frequent the shores, they were so shy, that it was scarcely possible ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... esteem of the world. His story found its way into one of the poultry papers, and was copied thence into a daily news-sheet as a matter of general interest. A lady wrote from the North of Scotland recounting a similar episode which she had witnessed as occurring between a stoat and a blind grouse. Somehow a lie seems so much less reprehensible when one can call it ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... autumn day there came A lovely youth of mystic name: He took a lodging in the house, And fell a-dodging snipe and grouse, For, oh! that mild scholastic one Let ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... small partridge-like gallinaceous birds, all the representatives of this family in Brazil, and especially in the Valley of the Amazons, belong to types which do not exist in other parts of the world. Here we find neither pheasants, nor cocks of the woods, nor grouse; but in their place abound the Mutun, the Jacu, the Jacami, and the Unicorn (Crax, Penelope, Psophia, and Palamedea), all of which are so remote from the gallinaceous types found farther north, that they remind one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... in the Yellowstone Park shows what may be expected when other mountain forests are properly protected by law and properly guarded. Some of these areas have been so denuded of surface vegetation by overgrazing that the ground breeding birds, including grouse and quail, and many mammals, including deer, have been exterminated or driven away. At the same time the water-storing capacity of the surface has been decreased or destroyed, thus promoting floods in times of rain and diminishing the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... precious little for me. The Boche is done in all right ... What you've got to do, my lad, is to sleep fourteen hours in the twenty-four and spend half the rest catching trout. We'll have a shot at the grouse-bird together this autumn and we'll get some of the old ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... drilled early and late; we were instructed in the art of guard mounting; we peeled potatoes in the cookhouse; we fetched coal from the quartermaster's stores; we fell in to get our rations from the cookhouse; and last, but not least, we began to grouse. That was our first advance to becoming real soldiers. At least, so the author was told by an old N.C.O. who had marched with Roberts to Kabul, and who was again in the Service, too aged to do more than to instruct, but not too ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward

... here to give the dinner party on. Then I got a Burke's peerage and told MacGregor who he was and had him study up on his family history and get acquainted with his sister, Lady Mary, and his younger brother, the Honorable Cecil Something-or-other—in particular he was not to forget to rave about the grouse shooting ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... and plumage in birds are very remarkable, and have attracted much attention; and, in the case of polygamous birds, have been well explained by Mr. Darwin's principle of sexual selection. We can, to a great extent, understand how male Pheasants and Grouse have acquired their more brilliant plumage and greater size, by the continual rivalry of the males both in strength and beauty; but this theory does not throw any light on the causes which have made the female Toucan, Bee-eater, Parroquet, Macaw ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines warm at times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines and seek out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as to drive away the grouse and little nut-hatches ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... Burnham, with Mrs. Burnham, was "passed on" by friends he had made in the army from country house to country house; he was made the guest of honor at city banquets, with the Duke of Rutland rode after the Belvoir hounds, and in Scotland made mild excursions after grouse. But after six months of convalescence he was off again, this time to the hinterland of Ashanti, on the west coast of Africa, where he went in the interests of a syndicate to investigate a concession for working ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... decline in size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy coverts. Last of all there was a fringe of elders; and beyond that the track came forth upon an open, rolling moorland, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the same breath that their tailors are the best in the world. For wines they claim to be unsurpassed, producing the finest; yet the wines on their tables are French or bear French labels. Game is served—a grouse or perhaps a hare, and then a vast roast, possibly venison, or beef, and there are vegetables, followed by a salad of some kind. Then comes the dessert—an iced cream, cakes, nuts, raisins, cheese, and coffee with brandy, and then cigars and vermuth or some cordial. After such a dinner of three ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... Brown-Smith, 'I shall see that Johnnie is up to time. He hopes to undersell the opposition soap' (Mr. Brown-Smith was absent in America, in the interests of that soap of his which is familiar to all), 'and he is in the best of humours. Then their grouse! We have disease on our moors in Perthshire; I was in despair. But the widow needs ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... become used to it in time.... By the by, I was in fun about old Nick. His objection to grouse coverts and deer-stalking—I can't ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... pause: "If it hadn't been for you I should never have taken the trouble to come and see it. I won't grouse at the dust ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... yet to avoid expressly maintaining that it is a cause of modification. This, indeed, he has not done in express terms, but he does it by implication when he writes, "Natural Selection might be most effective in giving the proper colour to each kind of grouse, and in keeping that colour when once acquired." Such language, says the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, "is misleading;" ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... interested by your letter;[59] but your view is not new to me. If you will look at p. 240 of the fourth edition of the "Origin," you will find it very briefly given with two extremes of the peacock and black grouse. A more general statement is given at p. 101, or at p. 89 of the first edition, for I have long entertained this view, though I have never had space to develop it. But I had not sufficient knowledge to generalise as far as you do about colouring and nesting. In your paper, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... being the cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience, another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks, the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater, taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... of the Mayflower. And just within the woods in any direction waited for them, had they had the will and the wisdom to seek them, all kinds of Christmas cheer. Deer were there, wild turkeys in great flocks and two varieties of grouse as tame as chickens on a farm, and more delicious than any Christmas goose which might have been served them in Holland or England. There were no savages about Plymouth at the time and they might have travelled the woods boldly, instead of taking prudent council of their fears. But they ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... as he stooped down the water gave a sudden fizzle, and splashed into the fox's eyes, blinding him. He started backwards with a cry of pain, and sat still for some minutes, rocking himself to and fro. When he was a little better he rose and walked down a road till he met a grouse, who stopped and asked what ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... oil. Late in the year the glossy bronze carpet of old leaves dotted over with vivid red "berries" invites much trampling by hungry birds and beasts, especially deer and bears, not to mention well-fed humans. Coveys of Bob Whites and packs of grouse will plunge beneath the snow for fare so delicious as this spicy, mealy fruit that hangs on the plant till spring, of course for the benefit of just such colonizing agents as they. Quite a different species, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... to "assist" your neighbours to this or that dish. The word is inexpressibly vulgar—all the more vulgar for its affectation of elegance. "Shall I send you some mutton?" or "may I help you to grouse?" is better ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... for our English soldiers, some of whom were billeted in the village. "They are very kind to our people, they often help the women, and they never complain." (Has the British Tommy in these parts really forgotten how to grouse?) "I had some of your men billeted here. I could only give them a room without beds, just the bare boards. 'You will find it hard,' I said. 'We will get a little straw,' said the sergeant. 'That will be all right.' Our men would have grumbled." ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... from my knowledge I do not know. The joy of knowing is very great; the delight of picking up the threads of meaning here and there, and following them through the maze of confusing facts, I know well. When I hear the woodpecker drumming on a dry limb in spring or the grouse drumming in the woods, and know what it is all for, why, that knowledge, I suppose, is part of my enjoyment. The other part is the associations that those sounds call up as voicing the arrival of spring: they are the drums that ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... her overwhelming ignorance returned. She was like a woman held beyond the closed door of treasure. "Come over here." He unceremoniously led her to the modeling of a ruffled grouse, faithful in every diversified feather. Linda thought it admirable, really amazing; but he dismissed it with a passionate energy. "The dull figuriste!" he exclaimed. "Daguerre. Once I could have done that, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... and then, as he brought the little tray in, his heart softened. Ellen did look really ill—ill and wizened. He wondered if she had a pain about which she wasn't saying anything. She had never been one to grouse about herself. ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Groats grio. Grocer spicisto. Groin ingveno. Groom cxevalisto. Groove kavo, radsigno. Grope palpeti. Gross (in manner) maldelikata. Grotesque groteska. Grotto groto. Ground tero. Ground-floor teretagxo. Group grupo. Group grupigi. Grouse tetro. Grove arbetaro. Grow kreski. Grow (become) —igxi. Grow young junigxi. Growl bleki, blekadi. Growth kresko. Grub (insect) tervermeto. Grudge malameco. Gruff malgxentila. Grumble riprocxegi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... puff of lifted feathers has marked the innocuous passage of my very best arrow! How often the roar of wings has replied to the 'chuck' of my steel-head shaft as it stabbed the tree branch under the grouse's feet! Oh, le bon temps, que de siecle ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... Charles, he deliberately put his eye to the key-hole, and saw Harry secrete the pistols and dagger about his person. Each, also, brought his gun at the suggestion of Harry, who said, that although they went out merely to course, yet it was not improbable that they might get a random shot at the grouse or partridge as they went along. Upon all these matters Barney made his comments, although he said nothing upon the subject even to Charles, from whom he scarcely ever concealed a secret. That Harry was brave and intrepid even to rashness he knew; but why he should arm ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... it was of no consequence how or by whom they were killed. Another was that "wild game" belonged to everybody, poor and rich. Vainly was it explained to her that rich landowners spent no end of money on breeding and preserving pheasants, grouse, and the like,—she ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... which is nearly seventeen hundred feet above the level of the sea. The whole of this unenclosed moorland is covered with gorse and heather, making it extremely gay in the summer time; it is also tolerably abundant in grouse and black game, and so fruitful in bilberries, that from 400 to 500 pounds worth are said to have been gathered on it in the course of a single season. On first hearing it, this sounds an improbable statement; but any one who has been upon the mountain in a good "whinberry season" as ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr

... incapable of flight. Creatures valued for their flesh, such as the quorno (somewhat like the eland, but with the single horn so common among its congeners in Mars, and with a soft white hide), and the viste, a bird about the size of the peacock, with the form of the partridge and the flavour of grouse or black game, preserve more natural proportions. The wing-quills of the latter, however, having been systematically plucked for hundreds of generations, are now dwarfed and useless. These animals ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... satisfaction. Wynchcote might not be Rotherwood, but it looked an uncommonly pretty little place in the September sunshine. To live there would be like a perpetual picnic. Mother and Queenie looked so complacently smiling that it seemed impossible to grouse, especially with newly-baked scones and ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... see the grouse upon the moor, Or pluck again the beauteous heather bell! Freedom I know not in this dismal cell, As I my anguish from ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... himself." He asked me to keep near him, and this I did as well as I could; but even then, three times during the course of ten days he lost himself completely in the tumultuous upheavals and canons of that badly mixed region. Another, an old grouse-hunter, walked twice in a circle within the confines of a thick swamp about two miles square. On the other hand, many exhibit almost marvelous skill in striking a bee-line for their objective point, and can always tell you, even after an engrossing and wandering hunt, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... said the man in a familiar way. The other Bushmen craned their necks. They were interested. They knew that Grouse had gone over the score, and they waited to see the stuff that the sergeant-major was made of. It was, in fact, the psychological moment which makes or mars the reputation of a sergeant-major in such a corps. The ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... business on the trail behind. Two or three times, there was a vague rustle in the leaves that she couldn't localize—water ouzel in moss covert, or hawk babies in hiding, or—or what? She couldn't descry. Then, suddenly, with a hiss—ss and swear plain as a bird could swear, a little male grouse came sprinting down the trail to stop her, ruff up, tail spread to a fan, wings down, screaming at her in bad words "to stop! to stop! or he'd pick her eyes out!" Eleanor naturally stopped. There ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... habits, and atmosphere in these seasons of villeggiatura. To vigorous athletic country sports and practices, hunting, shooting, fishing, riding, boating, yachting, traversing moors and mountains after black-cock, grouse, salmon, trout and deer. To long walks at sea-side resorts, and to that love of continental travel so strong in both your countrymen and ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... Augurers of old, nor erred In substance, deeming that the life of man— (This is a new reflection, spick and span)— May be much influenced by the flight of birds. Our senate can no longer hold their house When culminates the evil star of grouse; And stoutest patriots will their shot-belts gird When first o'er stubble-field ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... forms which have their home in Central and Southern Asia), also the Guinea fowls (African forms), and the turkeys and curassows, which are American representatives of the order. Besides these may be mentioned partridges, grouse, black-cock, the capercalzie and quails, and, lastly, the megapodius or bush-turkey of Australia. This last is the only bird which hatches its eggs by artificial heat, depositing them in a mound of earth and decaying vegetable matter, wherein they are hatched ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... run, but not in walk. My second is in shout, but not in talk. My third is in barn, but not in house. My fourth is in pheasant, and also in grouse. My fifth is in April, but not in May. My sixth is in night, but not in day. My seventh is in bud, but not in flower. My eighth is in rain, and also in shower. My ninth is in flute, but not in fife. My tenth is in cousin, but not in wife. My eleventh is in circle, but not in ring. My whole ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... ear to the soft wind. Presently he heard, or imagined he heard, low beats. Like the first faint, far-off beats of a drumming grouse, they recalled to him the Illinois forests of his boyhood. In a moment he was certain the sounds were the padlike steps of hoofs in yielding sand. The regular tramp was not that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... roasted unstuffed; but grouse and prairie-chickens may have the same dressing as chickens and turkeys, this being used also for ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... island. In an hour Ethan returned to the shore with a large muskellunge and half a dozen large lake trout. The problem of supplies, therefore, seemed to be solved, especially as there were abundant opportunities to shoot the wild duck, plover, and grouse, that visited the ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... doth become her, To lose those best months in a sweaty city, And wait until the nightingale grows dumber, Listening debates not very wise or witty, Ere patriots their true country can remember;— But there's no shooting (save grouse) till September. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... abundance then, as now—rabbit and deer and grouse enough to provision an army; and Hudson offered reward for all provisions brought in. But the leaven of rebellion had worked its mischief. The men would not hunt. Probably they did not know how. Certainly none of them had ever before felt such cold as this—cold ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... Lost Man's Gulch. Hadn't visited that trap for several days. When I went to it, there was a fine male eagle in it, an' all round about were the remains of rabbits an' birds. Couldn't make out at first just how that trapped eagle had gotten so much food. The rabbits an' lambs an' grouse didn't sure go up an' ask him ter kill an' eat them, and thar wasn't any humans near to take pity on him. Well, I watched from a distance, an' after a while I see the eagle's mate fly down an' give him a cub fox. That's how it had been all ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... severe kind, for it draws from Baden-Powell the exclamation, "I'd like to kill him who invented it—but it does us all a power of good." That is the saying of the old soldier. In the barrack-room it is considered the right thing to grumble, or "grouse" as it is called, while one is working hardest. Thus the man with a jack-boot on his left arm and a polishing brush in his right hand—going like lightning,—the sweat running down his red face, is the man who swears he ain't goin' to bother about ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... See also on the Vidua axillaris, ibid. vol. ii. 1860, p. 211. On the polygamy of the Capercailzie and Great Bustard, see L. Lloyd, 'Game Birds of Sweden,' 1867, pp. 19, and 182. Montagu and Selby speak of the Black Grouse as polygamous and of the Red Grouse as monogamous.) I have been assured by Mr. Jenner Weir and by others, that it is somewhat common for three starlings to frequent the same nest; but whether this is a case of polygamy or ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... so that I might keep my hand on the bold General, in case he should ever prove troublesome. And if the worst should ever come to the worst, Croom is a good country for grouse and stags!" My father can see as ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... I record that, in process of time, the ladies acquired a degree of skill that enabled them, as a general thing, to come off triumphant. One of the ladies, Mrs. Hunter, was a great shot, having brought down her grouse on the wing, to the no small delight of one of the officers, Captain ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... to devote the last day of his stay to visiting the top of Slieveannilaun, where there were plenty of grouse. The plan gave them an excuse for a day of the most absolute solitude and the shooting that she had promised him long ago in Dublin. Biddy would cut sandwiches for them and Gabrielle would carry them in a game-bag slung ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... rest,—trimmings! We go about the world, Stephen, dressing and meeting each other with immense ceremony, we have our seasonal movements in relation to the ritual of politics and sport, we travel south for the Budget and north for the grouse, we play games to amuse the men who keep us—not a woman would play a game for its own sake—we dabble with social reform and politics, for which few of us care a rap except as an occupation, we 'discover' artists or musicians or lecturers (as though we cared), we try to believe in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... in skiff, and bark canoe, Shot grouse and duck, caught fish and eel, and held their title true; For other people's safety took not a single thought— Ten thousand lives were less to them than fish thus daily caught. The dam revealed its weakness by frequent leaks, but they Turned not aside to strengthen it till came the fateful day; ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... a ticket-collector by mistake, I have never met with any sort of contretemps, but enjoyed the journey in comfort, and kept the carriage the whole way entirely to myself. At this season of the year when so many who are off "for the grouse," think twice before putting their hands into their pockets for the exorbitant fare of a journey first-class, my method of securing all its comfort at half the cost, may possibly find some votaries willing to profit ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... precipices. The joys of reading, knitting, and washing the family clothes might—probably would—pall after a time; and the physical exertion of "walking with the guns" in Kashmir is decidedly more of an undertaking than over a Perthshire grouse moor! Our original arrangement, before coming out to join the Smithsons, was that the time should be spent in camping, boating, "loafing," and shooting. Being perfectly ignorant of the conditions ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... birds and squirrels. The raven, the crow, the hawk, the owl, and occasionally the eagle, are seen. Wild geese, ducks, and cranes, are common. Pigeons, including the wild dove, are not often seen. The magpie is found in abundance. Turkeys and grouse are also in abundance. Wild rabbits and a species of hare are also common. Indeed a man can travel for days in the Rocky Mountains and never hear the musical notes of a bird. In these mountains, rattle-snakes are only found in the valleys, where it is warm. In the summer, the deer and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... of August. Shade of St. Grouse! At 3 a.m. we were on the move in bright moonlight and sharp frost, with a wind blowing which cut like a knife. After doing some sixteen or seventeen miles we arrived about 10 a.m. at Wolverdiend station—a large ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... they couldn't grow if the birds didn't eat the insects that would devour their foliage. All day long, the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, and picks off the beetles, the martins destroy weevil, the quail and grouse family eats the chinchbug, the woodpeckers dig the worms from the trees, and many other birds eat the flies and gnats and mosquitoes that torment us so. No flying or crawling creature escapes their sharp ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... considerable value for making brooms, and affords food to sheep, goats, and other animals; particularly to the grouse and heath-cock. The branches of heath placed upright in a wooden frame form the couch of repose to the brave Highlander. It is also stated that an excellent beverage was brewed from the tops of this plant, but the art of making it is now lost. This is the most ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... all gallinaceous birds, even of the black curassow and black grouse, whilst covered with down, are longitudinally striped on the back,—of which character, when adult, neither sex retains a trace,—it might have been expected that the chickens of all our domestic fowls would have been similarly striped. (7/39. My information, which is very ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... wild turkeys and mountain grouse, made fat on the pine-nuts, and Frank and Henry and the soldier huntsmen secured a generous supply for our first meal in our new ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... of Cape Cod, and especially the island of Nantucket, where besides the food cast up by the tides, there are larks and blackbirds and robins, which linger more or less all winter. At home in the far north, the owls feed largely upon hares and grouse; here nothing comes amiss, from a stray cat, roving too far from the house, to stray mussels on the beach that have escaped ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... nature was something quite different, quite different. The councilor himself would have had no objection to maintaining himself by going about in a coat of lamb-skin and shooting hares and snipes and golden plovers and grouse and haunches of venison and wild boars. No, the state of nature really was like ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen



Words linked to "Grouse" :   Tetraonidae, holler, kick, pin-tailed grouse, game bird, complain, grouse whortleberry, sprigtail, grouse-berry, sharp-tailed grouse, red grouse, fowl, capercaillie, gripe, European black grouse, prairie grouse, sage hen, kvetch, bitch, plain, Bonasa umbellus, Asian black grouse, ruffed grouse, sound off, beef, partridge, covey, Centrocercus urophasianus, sand grouse, capercailzie



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