"Woodcock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and discovered that people there did not ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... surroundings, examined everything with great care, and delighted to look out of the window. He selected his own sleeping-place,—the upper one of a set of bookshelves,—and refused to change; and he watched the movements of a wounded woodcock as he ran around the floor with as much interest as did the people. Under human care he grew rapidly stronger, learned to fly more readily and to use his weak side; and every day he was allowed ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... desert of dining room at a vast table loaded with masses of gold plate. The peaches are from South Africa; the strawberries from the Riviera. His chef ransacks the markets for pheasants, snipe, woodcock, Egyptian quail and canvasbacks. And at enormous distances from each other—so that the table may be decently full—sit, with their wives, his family doctor, his clergyman, his broker, his secretary, his lawyer, and a few of the more presentable relatives—a merry party! And that is what he has ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is 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 ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... what is now the gayest and most crowded part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and, was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. [117] On the north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls of a few great houses which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which, long afterwards, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unparalleled insolence,' said 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 most secret ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... about the dam, where he generally burrows, a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as dock-boys stick straws into molasses hogsheads—and once in a great while, the sawyer, if he's wide awake, will ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... imitated by his companions in succession, and another procession to the parlor followed in the same order. By this admirable arrangement, whole flocks of pigeons, certain bevies of quails, shoals of flatfish, bass, and sundry woodcock, found their way into the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... shudder, and turned things before him into a Tantalus feast of rare cruelty. There were Little Neck clams, delicious cold consomme, and white fish, and French chops with a dressing of truffles, and Roman punch and woodcock to follow, and crisp lettuce and toasted crackers-and-cheese, with a most remarkable combination of fruits and ices; and Van Bibber could eat nothing, and sat unhappily looking at his plate and shaking his head when the waiter urged him gently. ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... as Mr. Woodcock is already known by his previous writings, the present work will, we are persuaded, add to his reputation and increase his usefulness. The substance of the work is rich and precious almost beyond praise, and its literary workmanship bears ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... pigeons darkened the sky, and broke down the limbs of trees on which they lighted. From Maine to Virginia these vast flocks were seen. Some years pigeons were so plentiful that they were sold for a penny a dozen in Boston. Pheasant, partridge, woodcock, and quail abounded, plover, snipe, and curlew were in the marsh-woods; in fact, in Virginia every bird familiar to Englishmen at home was found ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the woodcock, but they all refused it, and ate nothing but salad. Laptev did not remember what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the conversation ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... feathered game in his neighborhood was, of course, purely wild. He used to say, after he had been in England, that shooting in 'preserves' seemed to him very much like going out and murdering the barn-door fowl. His shooting was of the woodcock, the wild-duck, and the various marsh-birds that frequent the coast of New England.... Nor would he unmoor his dory with his 'bob and line and sinker,' for a haul of cod or hake or haddock, without having Ovid, or Agricola, or Pharsalia, in the pocket ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... inwardly 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 ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... is deep, and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock and ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... dogs, and horns, with the admiration of his friends and servants, concur to keep his blood boiling; but he will not care to plod alone through the woods for a long afternoon on the chance of bringing home a brace of woodcock; nor can he mention fishing without a sneer. Being thus deprived of the chief resource by which Anglo-Saxons combine activity and indolence, the French nobility cultivated to their highest pitch those human pleasures which are at once the most vivid and the most delicate. They devoted themselves ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole, peeled it; saw, further on, where this unknown man had probed in moss and mud — peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... 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 ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... that he had shot in his morning's hunting. For the modest sum of three lire the game exchanged hands, and the sportsman departed, well satisfied with his luck. Next evening we feasted royally in our inn at Salerno upon a succulent woodcock fattened upon the berries of the wood of Persano, and upon a couple of snipe that had grown plump amongst the Neptunian marshes. Nor was this dainty addition to our supper that night altogether undeserved; for having decided in a momentary fit of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... weasel, and the bear are still met with in the forests. The hare is increasing rapidly, as well as the fox. The avifauna, of course, becomes poorer; nevertheless the woods of the Steppe, and still more the forests of the Ante-Steppe, give refuge to many birds, even to the hazel-hen, the woodcock and the black-grouse. The fauna of the thickets at the bottom of the river-valleys is decidedly, rich and includes aquatic birds. The destruction of the forests and the advance of wheat into the prairies are rapidly impoverishing the Steppe fauna. The various species of rapacious ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... voice,—never the rushing Of a river underground, Not the rising of the wind In the trees before the rain, Not the woodcock's watery call, Not the note the white-throat utters, Not the feet of children pushing Yellow leaves along the gutters In the blue and bitter fall, Shall content my musing mind For the beauty of that sound That in no new way at all Ever will be ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity of the boar-fish and the pig-fish, the dark smoothness of the sting-ray, floating like a fringe, the long snout of the woodcock-fish, the slenderness of the haddock, agile and swift as a torpedo, the red gurnard all thorns, the angel of the sea with its fleshy wings, the gudgeon, bristling with swimming angularities, the notary, red and white, with black bands similar to the flourishes on signatures, the modest ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... valley between the hills where he had shot his first woodcock; there was the great stone on which he had broken his best knife in a fit of geological research; there was the pool where he used to skate; there the sudden break in the lulls that gave the first view of the sea. He could ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday, It had been one of his periods of great exultation. He had just left Oxford, and had fled northward after some weeks in Paris to wash out the taste of civilization from his mouth among the island north-westers. He had had a great day among the woodcock, and now was finishing with a stalk after wild geese. He was furiously hungry, chilled and soaked to the bone, but riotously happy. His future seemed to stretch before him, a brighter continuation of a bright past, a time for high achievement, bold work, and yet no surcease ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... moist by wrapping it in greased leather, and oiled rags, or by burying it in gravel. The Elizabethan pipes were so small that now when they are dug up in Ireland the poor call them 'fairy pipes' from their tininess. These pipes became known by the nickname of 'the woodcock's heads.' The apothecaries, who sold the best tobacco, became masters of the art, and received pupils, whom they taught to exhale the smoke in little globes, rings, or the 'Euripus.' 'The slights' these ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... I came over the fell by the Hanging Stone at break o' day—just above the young larch plantation where we had the record woodcock shoot—I heard his ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... 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
... I went along the street, I carried my hat in my hand, And to every one that I did meet I bravely bent my band. Some did laugh, some did scoff, And some did mock at me, And some did say I was a woodcock, And a great Boobee. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... I should detest a world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered with harvest in autumn. I wish a little variety. I desiderate moors and barren places: the copse where you can flush the woodcock; the warren where, when you approach, you can see the twinkle of innumerable rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, would not feel sorry although Reynard himself had a hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands of his rising family ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... 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 Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... that happen every day. I 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
... 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 squirrels, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... 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 ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... 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 ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... venison. It is not found in the flesh of young animals, which is said, with reason, to be, on that very account, less nutritious. It is only when they have attained the adult age that it appears in them; it is abundant in beef, mutton, kid, hare, pigeon, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, quail, duck, goose, and generally, in all animals having dark coloured flesh. Mushrooms and oysters also contain some, but ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... 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 ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... the features of Saratoga. There is a row of carriages at the sheds—a select party is dining upon those choice trout, black bass and young woodcock. The game dinners are good, the prices are high, and the fried potatoes are noted all over the world. They have never been successfully imitated. Are done up in papers and sold like confectionery. The gayly ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... 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 ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... birds familiar 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 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 ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... told him, "caviare, woodcock, Ruinart." From the man he turned to the girl. "It was very decent of Lennox to introduce ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... (e.g. Shadwell's Epsom Wells and Rawlins' Tunbridge-Wells). Baker decorates his scene with 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 ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... looked like one, and so they gave it that name, Lester calls a quail Pious Imperialis. Now that's an imperial woodpecker—that big black fellow with a red topknot that we sometimes see when we are hunting. He used to be called cock-of-the-woods, but the name was twisted around until it became woodcock, and some people believe that he is the gamey little bird we so much delight to shoot and eat. But they belong to different orders, one being a climber and the other a wader. Lester speaks of a rabbit, ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... 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 upon them. ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... sing you a song, It's not very long: The woodcock and the sparrow, The little dog has burnt his tail, And he ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... acres of glebe land annexed to the rectory. Known, and beloved, by all the gentry in the neighbourhood, he joined frequently in their field diversions, and was particularly fond of coursing. Though one of the best gunners in the world, he was a bad shot at a hare, a woodcock, or a partridge. In pointing a great gun, however, on grand and suitable occasions, at a ship, a castle, or a fort, he was scarcely to be equalled: so well, indeed, was this talent known, and so universally recognized, by his frequently volunteering his services on shore, that he was familiarly ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... mob, and me, if the shells and monkey 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 the use to me of seeing their boiled ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... off his coat and hanging it over the chair—"because he was just up from Pongateague. He and Major Pitts got thirty-seven woodcock in two days. Tom wants me to go down with him ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... collection of specimens comprising many genera, would hear with 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 extravagantly long, sword-shaped bill of Nasica, or ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... o'th traind band has been offring To chaffer Maidenheads with me. I must Confesse I can affect the foole upon Good tearmes, and could devise a plott to noose My amorous woodcock, if you privatlie Assist me and dare trust me with some Jewell Of price, that is not knowne, which ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... 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 so universal ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... six shillings at the London market, costs me but three at Nice. I can buy a good capon for thirty sols, or eighteen-pence; and the same price I pay for a brace of partridges, or a good hare. I can have a woodcock for twenty-four sols; but the pigeons are dearer than in London. Rabbits are very rare; and there is scarce a goose to be seen in the whole county of Nice. Wild-ducks and teal are sometimes to be had in the winter; and now I am speaking of sea-fowl, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the Philippine Islands, and even South Africa and Australia. Seven-tenths of the birds of the Amoor are found in Europe, two-tenths in Siberia, and one-tenth in regions further south. Some birds belong more properly to America, such as the Canada woodcock and the water ouzel; and there are several birds common to the east and west coasts of the Pacific. The naturalists who came here at the Russian occupation found two Australian birds on the Amoor, two from tropical and sub-tropical Africa, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... strayed away into 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, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... work. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Necessity is the mother of invention. Old birds are not to be caught with chaff. Old friends and old wine are best. One swallow makes not a spring, nor one woodcock a winter. People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. Possession is nine points of the law. Procrastination is the thief of time. Short reckonings make long friends. Safe bind, safe find. Strike while the iron is hot. Take care of the pennies ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... absence, and from the houses there and from the city, too, were to come—girls. Privately I made up my mind that the dance was a thing I would miss, and Tony must have read disapproval on my face, for he said no more about the festivities, and a little later proposed the shooting. There were woodcock left in the marshes; he had seen them—by accident, I guessed. He would send to the city for the guns, and we would put in a good day together. That sounded better, and I ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... jorum about, And let us be merry and clever; Our hearts and our liquors are stout; Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever. 20 Let some cry up woodcock or hare, Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons; But of all the birds in the air, Here's a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. Toroddle, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... after all it may have been a couple of young farmers taking a day off, hunting woodcock along the river. This is the time of year for the first brood to be big enough for shooting. The law opens for a short spell, and then it's on again till fall," Owen remarked, with his knowledge of such things, gleaned from ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... fruits, game, flowers, to tempt the appetite and the eye of the fading wife of the man who had taught him all the English and the white man's etiquette that he had ever mastered. Night after night he would return from day-long hunting trips, his game-bag filled with delicate quail, rare woodcock, snowy-breasted partridge, and when the illusive appetite of the sick woman could be coaxed to partake of a morsel, he felt repaid for miles of tramping through forest trails, for ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... very fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a pheasant ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... river now, owing to their preservation by the Conservancy, that any small covers of osier near are full of them. They make extremely pretty old-fashioned shooting when beaten up by a spaniel from the sedge and osier cover. I once turned out a dozen water-hens, a brown owl, a woodcock, and a water-rail from one little withe patch. When shooting the wood we always had one or two water-hens in the bag, and sometimes a chance at a duck flying overhead from the river. Only once were there many woodcocks in the cover. There ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... some wild fruit tree, upon which, when the fruit is ripe, the birds light and are caught by the bird lime. This is called ka riam thit. Another is a kind of spring bow made of bamboo which is laid on the ground in marshy places, such as are frequented by snipe and woodcock. This form of snare is unfortunately most common. A third is a cage into which birds are lured by means of a bait, the cage being hidden in the grass, and the entrance being so contrived that the birds ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... delight of the beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by the thought that it was passing, passing; and that the spirit, whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very soon did, we visited the guns themselves. They were not under our feet at all. They were some two hundred yards away, across a field where the telephone wires stretched over the old plow furrows and through the rank meadow grass, like springs to catch woodcock. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... and the sun, or whether of the inner and struggling soul of Man, so fell upon us all then and there, that we were not man and boys, but bold adventurers, all three of like kidney! This was not a modern land that lay about us. Yonder was not the copse beyond the birches, where my woodcock sometimes found cover. This was not my trout-stream. Those yonder were not my elms and larches moving in the evening air. No, before us lay the picture of the rolling deep, its long green swells breaking high in white spindrift. The keen wind of other days sounded ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... mind,—and only looked on cringingly. In addition to these two old people, and three potbellied brats in long shirts, Anton's great-grandchildren, there dwelt in the service-rooms of the manor a one-armed little old peasant, who was exempt from compulsory service; he made a drumming noise like a woodcock when he spoke, and was not capable of doing anything. Not much more useful than he was the decrepit dog, who had welcomed Lavretzky's home-coming with his bark: it had already been fastened up for ten years with a heavy chain, bought by order of Glafira Petrovna, and ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the dishes were carried in, to Morano's great delight: with wide blue eyes he watched the produce of that mighty estate coming in through the doorway cooked. Boars' heads, woodcock, herons, plates full of fishes, all manner of small eggs, a roe-deer and some rabbits, were carried in by procession. And the men set to with their ivory-handled knives, each handle being the whole tusk of a boar. And with their eating came merriment and tales ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... find some other excuse for sitting here," he said. "I will tell you all about the high pheasants your husband killed, and about the woodcock he brought down after we ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... within a quarter of a mile of our house, but such a trouvaille would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure. And yet the mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few rods of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. There was no growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet these ordinarily shy birds were almost as indifferent to my passing as common poultry would have been. Since ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the fifth son of the alderman, was in the East India Company's Civil Service, as collector at Saharapore. He married Harriet Dawson, and his daughter Harriet married William Woodcock, Esq. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... same time beneficial for the Persians and ourselves. At length, a Persian officer and I were deputed to go into the castle to treat with the Portuguese, and they also desired our vice-admiral, Mr Woodcock, might accompany us. We all three went to the castle gate, but could not be allowed to enter; yet were met by Luis de Brito, the Portuguese almirante, and five or six other cavalieros, but did not see the captain, as the inferior officers and soldiers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... numerous in Hertfordshire as in any other county of equal size; the large flocks of hen chaffinches that haunt the farmyards in winter being quite a notable feature. The goldfinch, it is to be feared, is rapidly becoming scarcer; as are also the jay, the woodcock and other birds much more numerous a few years back. Fieldfares and redwings visit the county in great numbers from the N. during the winter; one morning in the winter of 1886 the writer saw many thousands of fieldfares pass over St. Albans from the direction of Luton. The redwing, being ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Cocking are found as early personal names. The suffix was added to the shortened form of font-names, e.g. Alcock (Allen), Hitchcock (Richard), was apparently felt as a mere diminutive, and took an -s like the diminutives in -kin, e.g. Willcocks, Simcox. In Hedgecock, 'Woodcock, etc., it is of course a nickname. The modern Cox is one of our very common names, and the spelling Cock, Cocks, Cox, can be found representing three generations in the churchyard of ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... our Saxon woodcock in the springe, But he begins to flutter. As I think He was thine host in England when I went To ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... so 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
... their nestes is gone, I can't see no woodcock, nor snipe; My dog he looks dogged and dull, My leggins ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... much and more than as much as she was, moved them artfully hither and thither, gazing all about, 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 ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... there are no woodcock up there, you know, and nothing else can be shot at this time of year," Elmer continued; "but Johnny had something else to say that interested me considerably. It seems at one place he found ashes that told of a fire, and while rooting around he picked up a piece of steel that ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it—'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... killed, as they very quickly lose their flavor. Wild pigeons, on the contrary, should hang a day or two in a cool place before they are dressed. Oranges cut into halves are used as a garnish for dishes of small birds, such as pigeons, quail, woodcock, squabs, snipe, etc. These small birds are either served whole or split down the ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... day the rich smells of roast beef and the salt vapours of boiling hams trailed along the passages, and ascended through the banisters of the staircases in Beech Grove and Manly Park. Fifty chickens had been killed; presents of woodcock and snipe were received from all sides; salmon had arrived from Galway; cases of champagne from Dublin. As a wit said, 'Circe has prepared a banquet and is calling ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... down to the bend of the Valley River over a stretch of sandy land pre-empted by the cinque-foil and the running brier, the country of the woodcock and the eccentric kildee. We could hear the low, sullen roar of the river sweeping north around this big bend, long before we came to it. Under the stars there is no greater voice of power. We rode ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... wit, on the seventeenth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New York aforesaid, did feloniously marry and take as his wife one Alvina Woodcock, and to the said Alvina Woodcock was then and there married, the said Tomascene Startup being then and there living and in full life, against the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... I know," he said, as the others looked their surprise, "and about the only thing we ought to shoot right now would be woodcock. I saw a marsh where I reckon I'll find some of the long-billed mud diggers. You know they get their food by sticking their bills deep down in the mud. That's why you always look for woodcock in a wet spot or marsh. Ready, Steve? All ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... coney Is not to be 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... manner, but is a little city, and affords a posada, (I speak by comparison, remember) comfortable enough; and the sea a fish, they call the red fish, than which nothing can be more delicious; I may venture almost to call it the sea woodcock, for it is eaten altogether in the same manner. We fared better than my poor horse, for not a grain of oats or barley did this city afford; nor has he tasted, or have I seen, a morsel of hay since I parted from my little Dona, near ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... so bad—only look." Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out the bag. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... (from St. James's Square), writes Mrs. Yorke, 'and Mr. Woodcock followed in the chariot with the Great Seal. The King had given it in his closet, and at the same time Mr. Yorke kissed his Majesty's hand on being made Baron of Morden in the county of Cambridge. Not once did Mr. Yorke close his eyes, though at my ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... As a good hawk, who duck or woodcock shy, Partridge or pigeon, or such other prey, Seeing towards her from a distance fly, Raises her head, and shows her blithe and gay; So Mandricardo, in security Of crushing Rodomont in that affray, Gladly ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... : sorcxistino. withdraw : eligxi. wither : velki, sensukigxi. withstand : kontrauxstari. witness : atest'i; -anto. witty : sprita. woe : malgxojo; veo wolf : lupo. wonder : mir'i, -o; ("a —") mirindajxo. woo : amindumi, sin svati. wood : ligno; arbaro. woodcock : skolopo. woodpecker : pego. word : vorto. work : labor'i, -o; (mental) verk'i, -o; funkcii. worm : vermo. wormwood : absinto. worn (out) : eluzita. worry : maltrankvil'igi, -igxi; cxagrenadi, gxenadi. worship : adori; Diservo; kulto. worth : ind'o, -eco, valoro. wound : vundi. wrap : faldi, envolvi. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... sport to be had round Tiflis. The shooting is free excepting over certain tracts of country leased by the Tiflis shooting-club. Partridge, snipe, and woodcock abound, and there are plenty of deer and wild boar within easy distance of the capital. Ibex is also found in the higher mountain ranges. For this (if for no other reason) Tiflis seems to be increasing in popularity every year for European tourists. It is now an easy journey of little ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... 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 ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... one's head, they fly up close to the chaise, swim on the lakes and in the pools—in short, with the poorest sort of gun I could have shot a thousand in one day. One can hear the wild geese calling.... There are lots of them here too. One often comes upon a string of cranes or swans.... Snipe and woodcock flutter about in the birch copses. The hares which are not eaten or shot here, stand on their hindlegs, and, pricking up their ears, watch the passer-by with an inquisitive stare without the slightest misgiving. They are so often running across ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov |
