"Woodpecker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out—twelve of the chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me plumb nervous to ketch sight ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... they fell into a heavy sleep; for the big stub began to burn more freely as the wind changed, and they need not stir every half hour to feed their little fire and keep from freezing. It was broad daylight, the storm had ceased, and a woodpecker was hammering loudly on a hollow shell over their heads when they started up, wondering vaguely where they were. Then while Noel broke out of the commoosie, which was fairly buried under the snow, to find out where he was, Mooka rebuilt the fire and plucked a ptarmigan and set it to ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... white mist before it from wood and rolling meadow-land, rousing the drowsy cattle from their tranquil dreams and quickening into fuller life all the inhabitants of that favored region, from the warlike woodpecker with his head of flame high up in the naked tree-top to the timid ground-squirrel flitting along the graystone fences. It glorified with splendid impartiality the apple blossoms in the orchards and the vagabond blackberry ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... now why a man has to start young to be a riverman," Welton told Bob, as they bent their steps toward camp. "Poor little John Harvey out on that jam when she broke would have stood about as much chance as a beetle at a woodpecker ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... nearest tree, to which it clings in a vertical position, and, remaining silent and motionless, escapes observation by means of its dark protective colour. The Drymornis, a large bird, with feet and tail like a woodpecker, climbs on tree-trunks to seek its food; but also possesses the widely-different habit of resorting to the open plain, especially after a shower, to feed on larvae and earthworms, extracting them from a depth of three or four inches ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... softly upon the upturned face; and if you put your ear close to the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone, things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel scampering and a woodpecker at work—or so I guessed, though it sounded more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... with the configuration of the place; and having waited until night was come and indeed far spent, he returned thither, and though the ascent was such that 'twould scarce have afforded lodgment to a woodpecker, won his way up and entered the garden, where, finding a pole, he set it against the window which the damsel had pointed out as hers, and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... everywhere—orange milkweed, purple phlox, creamy pawpaw, azure bluebells, spotted foxgloves, rose-tinted daisies, brown-eyed coreopsias and unknown flowers of palest blue. Butterflies flit noiselessly among them, and mocking-birds sing loud in the leafy screens above. A red-headed woodpecker taps upon a resounding tree and screams in exultation as he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the will of the organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life—for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavor to prove by indirect evidence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... those so obtained may probably be classed the Blue-throated Warblers, included in Professor Ansted's list and marked as Jersey (these Mr. Gallienne himself told me he believed to be Continental and not genuine Channel Island specimens), the Great Sedge Warbler, the Meadow Bunting, the Green Woodpecker, and perhaps ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... filtering across the branches converted the earth, carpeted with ferns and tender mosses, into a delicate golden embroidery. There were the cheerful voices of spring around us, the cuckoo's call and the woodpecker's knock-knock at the trees. When we joined the others I asked Clara to translate into music the voices of spring. She said there was already a Fruehlingslied singing within her, and she would try to give it expression. Truly she looked ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... little here and there and Colin watched them. They brought him things to look at—buds which were opening, buds which were tight closed, bits of twig whose leaves were just showing green, the feather of a woodpecker which had dropped on the grass, the empty shell of some bird early hatched. Dickon pushed the chair slowly round and round the garden, stopping every other moment to let him look at wonders springing out of the earth or trailing down from trees. It was like being taken in state round the country ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... time to time by a fitful wind, which flapped with hollow note around the great heap of stones, whirled as if in sport, and was gone. Below, in leafy hollows, sounded the cry of a jay, the laugh of a woodpecker; from far heath and meadow trembled the bleat of lambs. Nowhere could be discovered a human form; but man's dwellings, and the results of his labour, painted the wide landscape in every direction. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... pines," said Kit, dropping into her chair, hungrily. "Doesn't it seem good to get some of Cousin Roxy's huckleberry pancakes again, girls? Oh yes, we met my prisoner—I should say, my erstwhile prisoner—on the road. He was tapping chestnut trees over on Peck's Hill like a woodpecker. You needn't laugh, Doris, 'cause Billie saw him too, didn't you, Bill? And he's got a sweet forgiving nature. He doffed his hat to me and I smiled back just as though I'd never caught him in our berry patch, and had Shad lock him up ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... shown, by the increase of our knowledge, to have been uncalled for and absurd, so other supposed instances of non-adaptation will, no doubt, similarly disappear. Mr. Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," 5th edition, p. 220, speaks of a woodpecker (Colaptes campestris) as having an organization quite at variance with its habits, and as never climbing a tree, though possessed of the special arboreal structure of other woodpeckers. It now appears, however, from the observations of Mr. W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., that its habits are in harmony ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... began to feel the life strong in me once more. The dull cloud of depression seemed to drop away, and instead of seeing always that sad, set face of my poor father's, I could look up and around, and whistle to the squirrels, and note the woodpecker running round the tree near me. It has remained a mystery to me all my life, Melody, that this bird's brains are not constantly addled in his head, from the violence of his rapping. When I was a little boy, I tried, I remember, to nod my head as fast as his went nodding: with the effect that ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... in a ring: In One I saw a Robin swing, In Two a Peacock spread his tail, In Three I heard the Nightingale, In Four a White Owl hid with craft, In Five a Green Woodpecker laughed, In Six a Wood-dove croodled low, In Seven lived a quarrelling Crow, In Eight a million Starlings flew, In Nine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle swung in green riot from gnarled old oak trees. A gray Douglas squirrel crept out on a branch and watched him. From somewhere came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... nursery fable of the parsley-bed, in which little strangers are discovered, is perhaps, "A remnant of a fuller tradition, like that of the woodpecker among the Romans, and that of the stork among our Continental kinsmen."[21] Both these birds having had a mystic celebrity, the former as the fire-singing bird and guardian genius of children, the latter as the baby-bringer.[22] In Saterland it is said "infants are fetched ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... vicinity of the lakes and pasture of the low country, that birds become visible in great quantities. In the close jungle one occasionally hears the call of the copper-smith[1], or the strokes of the great orange-coloured woodpecker[2] as it beats the decaying trees in search of insects, whilst clinging to the bark with its finely-pointed claws, and leaning for support upon the short stiff feathers of its tail. And on the lofty branches ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... morning Johnny Chuck sat on his door-step watching Drummer the Woodpecker building a new home in the old apple-tree. Drummer's red head flew back and forth, back and forth, and his sharp bill cut out tiny bits of wood. It was slow work; it was hard work. But Drummer seemed happy, very happy indeed. It was watching Drummer that started Johnny Chuck to thinking ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... What a sudden rustle Fills the air! All the birds are in a bustle Everywhere. Such a ceaseless croon and twitter Overhead! Such a flash of wings that glitter Wide outspread! Far away I hear a drumming,— Tap, tap, tap! Can the woodpecker be coming After sap? Butterflies are hovering over (Swarms on swarms) Yonder meadow-patch of clover, Like snow-storms. Through the vibrant air a-tingle Buzzingly, Throbs and o'er me sails a single Bumble-bee. Lissom swayings make the willows One bright sheen, Which the breeze ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... most part happily preserved; to be with him only for a short time was to live on a different level, where thoughts served best because they were thoughts in common; the primary effect upon our minds of the simple things and beauties that we saw. Once when I caught sight of a lovely gay pigeon-woodpecker eyeing us curiously from a dead branch, and instinctively turned toward William, he gave an indulgent, comprehending nod which silenced me all the rest of the way. The wood-road was not a place for common noisy conversation; one would interrupt the birds ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the woodpecker; the clear flute note of the Pavo del monte; the discordant shriek of the macaw; the shrill chirr of the wild Guinea fowl; and the chattering of the paroquets began to be heard from the wood. The ill-omened gallinaso ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... it? I thought as much. There thou standest, like a woodpecker, chattering and chattering, breaking the bark with thy beak, and leaving the grub where it was. This is enough to put a saint ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... exchange birds' eggs with the correspondents of YOUNG PEOPLE. I give a list of birds found in the Canadian woods: Baltimore oriole, barn swallow, wild canary, sand-martin, cherry-bird, ground-bird, ring-dove, shore-lark, red-headed woodpecker, orchard oriole, brown canary, dipper, phoebe, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Quiscalus quiscula. Mourning dove. Zenaidura macroura. Red-headed woodpecker. Melanerpes erythrocephalus. Blue jay. Cyanocitta cristata. Cardinal grosbeak. Cardinalis cardinalis. American robin. Merula migratoria. Golden-wing woodpecker. Colaptes auratus. House sparrow. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... people enter the bodies of stupid, ugly birds that just squawk around, and are neither interesting to look at nor pleasant to listen to, but are quarrelsome, and thievish. When I asked Oo-koo-hoo to name a few birds into which the spirits of white children entered, he mentioned, among others, the woodpecker—which the Indians consider to have, proportionately, the longest and sharpest tongue of all birds. That reminds me of the reply I received from one of the characters in this book, when I wrote him, among others, requesting that he grant me permission to make use of his name, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... nests and removing impediments. Thus in an anecdote gravely related to Aubrey, we find this virtue mentioned: 'Sir Bennet Hoskins told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton, in Herefordshire, did for experiment's sake drive an iron naile thwart the hole of a woodpecker's nest, there being a tradition that the dam will bring some leafe to open it. He layed at the bottom of the tree a cleane sheet, and before many houres passed, the naile came out, and he found a leafe lying by ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Hathor in her cow manifestation is usually benevolent and as a lioness a power of destruction, the cow may become a demon in certain cases and the lioness a kindly creature. The falcon of Horus (or its representatives, eagle, hawk, woodpecker, dove, redbreast, etc) may be either good or bad: so also the gazelle (antelope or deer), the crocodile, the fish, or any of the menagerie of creatures that enter into the composition of good ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... 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 ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Solomon has a fine appetite. To be sure, Farmer Green isn't happy when Solomon steals some of his fine chickens, and neither are the chickens for that matter. But Solomon doesn't have all the fun on some one else. Oh no! Reddy Woodpecker knows how to tease him by tapping with his bill on Solomon's wooden house in the daytime, when every owl likes to sleep and dream of all the nice frogs and fat chickens they are going to feast on the next night, and then, ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... rested, Tayoga nevertheless knew all that was going on near him. That eardrum of infinite delicacy told him that a woodpecker was tapping on a tree, well toward the north; that a little gray bird almost as far to the south was singing with great vigor and sweetness; that a rabbit was hopping about in the undergrowth, curious and yet fearful; that an eagle ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all the eagerness of a man whose life was depending on the acuteness of his hearing, a noise reached him, which he knew was not made by a human being. It was the distant and sonorous tapping of a woodpecker upon the trunk of a dead tree—a sound often heard in the depths of an American forest. The sound fell upon his ear like the voice of a friend. It seemed to say that, in the direction whence it proceeded, no human creature would ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... she was named "Zoee," and before long she seemed to recognize her name, and would give an answering chirp. The pieces of bark appeared to afford a never-failing interest. They were examined and investigated in every crevice. Like a little woodpecker hanging head downwards, Zoee would hammer at a nut fixed in the cracks of the bark, and would hide away unfortunate mealworms not required ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... insect that fell from the feast of sweets in a blossom-whitened wild crab. The sharp bark of the red squirrel and the low of cattle, lazily chewing their cuds among the willows, came to him. The hammering of a woodpecker on a dead sycamore, a little above him, rolled to his straining ears like a ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the foot of the Palatine Hill, at the very place where the good Evander had begun his city so long before. There the waifs were found by one of the king's shepherds, after they had been, strangely enough, taken care of for a while by a she-wolf, which gave them milk, and a woodpecker, which supplied them with other food. Faustulus was the name of this shepherd, and he took them to his wife Laurentia, though she already had twelve others to care for. The brothers, who were named ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... rays, cooled by her bath in the stream and clad in an Indian maiden's light garb, she was rejoicing in the summer heat. She enjoyed the sleepy feeling that dulled the woodland sights and sounds: the tapping of a woodpecker on a distant tree, the occasional call of a catbird, the soft scurrying of a rabbit or a squirrel, the buzzing of a laden bee—all mingled into one melody of summer of which she did not consciously distinguish the individual notes. Just as pleasantly confused were her thoughts, pictures of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the simple-minded, went Ta-ka, and from the Woodpecker claimed hospitality. And the rights of a stranger gave Khandatagoot to Ta-ka, gave him a place by the fire, and of his food a share, for his head a shelter, treating him as the son of a sister is treated. Together they fished and hunted, together they ate and slept. Of the hunting ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... it was equally evident that neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life; for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... but the blood did not stop, so she called Aponibolinayen, for she was frightened when she saw the blood go up. Aponibolinayen said, "What is the matter with you?" She took her hat which looked like a woodpecker and she went, and the sunshine stopped when she went down out of her house, and Kabkabaga-an saw Aponibolinayen going to Aponitolau. "What good fortune Aponibolinayen has, for she is going to see Aponitolau." As soon as she arrived where Indiapan lived she wrapped ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... game being abundant in these mountains, and the use of small shot being unknown, bird-shooting is but little practised, and the fowl fly in these heavens as unscared as in the original paradise. The nightingale sings in the thickets; the woodpecker makes the primeval woods resound with his chisel; crows of the pink and black species croak from the dead branches of the oaks; ravens with dark red legs and scarlet bills build their nests in the top of the elms; detachments of blue wood-pigeons cover the fields as numerous and as ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... began the other, stopping suddenly, with half-opened mouth, to listen, for just then there came to their ears a half-muffled sound that might be the scream of a red-headed woodpecker up on some rotten treetop, or ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... her mother, for this was a rare treat to wander in such a holiday fashion with the busy, hard-working woman. "Look, look, mother!" she kept crying at every moment: "There comes something! There's something! Listen—a woodpecker! a deer!" ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the good Saint said this when the little old woman went straight up the chimney, and came out at the top changed into a red-headed woodpecker with ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... grebe passes, while that of the little grebe sticks. Of the three woodpeckers found in Britain, the heads of the great-spotted and lesser-spotted will not pass the neck, but the head of the other, the green woodpecker, the largest looking of the three, will pass if care be taken. These things being noted and borne in mind will save the tyro a considerable amount ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... there was a sharp crack and a loud cry. The crack was neither the snapping of a branch, nor the tapping of a woodpecker; the cry was neither the scream of the parrot, nor the howl ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was as full of stir, And prate, and prying, as a woodpecker, And ever inquiring upon everything, Said, "Brother, where is thine inhabiting, In case I come to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... a strong belief that birds are gifted with a knowledge of herbs; the woodpecker, for instance, seeking out the Springwort to remove obstructions, and the linnet making use of the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... secret has grown old with you. If you had told it forty years ago truly you would not long have been lacking the spring-root. Even though you will never climb the mountain now, I will tell you, for a joke, how it is to be found. The easiest way to get it is by the help of a black woodpecker. Look, in the spring, where she builds her nest in a hole in a tree, and when the time comes for her brood to fly off block up the entrance to the nest with a hard sod, and lurk in ambush behind the tree till the bird returns to feed her nestlings. When she perceives that she cannot ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... around the boughs, and hanging from them like gigantic cobwebs. Now and then, the sombre scene was lighted up with a bit of brilliant color, when a scarlet grosbeak flitted from branch to branch, or a red-headed woodpecker hammered at the trunk of some old tree, to find where the insects had intrenched themselves. But nothing pleased the eye of the traveller so much as the holly-trees, with their glossy evergreen foliage, red berries, and tufts of verdant mistletoe. He had been riding all day, when, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... a peculiar attribute of man—but as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with human functions—the jay laughs, and we find, indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker laughs also; but to mark the distinction between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet, smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable condition, and listened. No knock. Nearly a minute passed, and still there was no knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her ears. She composed herself and flung ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... in his Journey from Constantinople, describes a species of woodpecker, about the size of a thrush, of a light, blue colour, with black marks beside the bill. "It entered my room," says he, "with all the familiarity of an old friend, hopped on the table, and picked up the crumbs and flies. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... again remained silent for many minutes, so silent that the faint wash of the river against the bank sounded plainly, and a woodpecker could be heard making his last tap-tap on a tree ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... gazing contentedly at the clusters of elder blossoms which hung above them, filling the air with a rich fragrance which was spiced by the tang of sage. A ruby-throated humming-bird flashed suddenly past them and was gone; a red-shafted woodpecker, still more gorgeous in his scarlet plumage, descended in uneven flights from the sahuaros that clung against the cliff and, fastening upon a hollow tree, set up ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... a "Sacred Spring." All the children born in this year belonged to the god. Arrived at the age of manhood, they left the country and journeyed abroad. These exiles formed several groups, each taking for guide one of the sacred animals of Italy, a woodpecker, a wolf, or a bull, and followed it as a messenger of the god. Where the animal halted the band settled itself. Many peoples of Italy, it was said, had originated in these colonies of emigrants and still preserved the name of the animal ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... of the Woodpecker is by far the most sociable representative of the family in the United States, and it is no unusual occurrence to see half a dozen or more in a single tree. It is also a well disposed bird, and seldom quarrels or fights with its own kind, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... a small gourd of the size of one's two fists, into which were introduced shotlike seeds, such as those of the canna. In character it was a rattle, a noise-instrument pure and simple, but of a tone by no means disagreeable to the ear, even as the note produced by a woodpecker drumming on a log is not without its pleasurable ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the moose and the caribou, all of which I had killed, and of our fishing on the long river of the north with a lure made of the feathers of a woodpecker, and of covering the bottom of our canoe with beautiful speckled fish. All this warmed the heart of Sir Benjamin who questioned me as to every detail in my experience on trail and river. He was a born sportsman and my stories had put a smile on his face so that I felt sure he had a better feeling ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... in the infancy of science," replied the woodpecker, "I am quite unable to do so. Some naturalists affirm that I hide acorns in these pits; others maintain that I get worms out of them. I endeavoured for some time to reconcile the two theories; but the worms ate my acorns, and then would not come out. Since then, I have left science to work ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... then that morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call, The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... of a stream, he encountered one of those strangely assorted bands of woods-creatures which are always cruising it through the country. He heard the cheerful little chickadee; he saw the grave nuthatch with its appearance of a total lack of humor; he glimpsed a black-and-white woodpecker or so, and was reviled by a ribald blue jay. Already the wilderness was taking its ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... my inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself in the sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure where the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge, I kept picking off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and breaking ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... feathered life appeared to be going on there between the round-headed cactus, with its cruel fishhook thorns, and the warning, blood-red blossoms that dripped from the ocatilla. Little frisk-tailed things ran up and down the spiney shrubs, and a woodpecker, who had made his nest in its pithy stalk, peered at ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... didn' git erlong widout his trials en tribberlations. One day a woodpecker come erlong en 'mence' ter peck at de tree; en de nex' time Sandy wuz turnt back he had a little roun' hole in his arm, des lack a sharp stick be'n stuck in it. Atter dat Tenie sot a sparrer-hawk fer ter watch de tree; en w'en de woodpecker come erlong nex' mawnin' fer ter finish his nes', ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Academy exhibitions a dozen times at least. From Munich she has received an official letter thanking her for sending her works to exhibitions in that city. Fellow of the Royal Painter-Etchers' Society; president of the Woodpecker Art Club, Norwich; Member of Norwich Art Circle and of a Miniature Painters' Society and the Green Park Club, London. Born in Norwich. Self-taught. Has worked in the open at Barbizon, in Normandy, in Cornwall, Devon, London, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... after we had been abroad for three or four hours, and the sun was just getting up, we heard a noise such as we had never heard before. Chuck! chuck! chuck! It came at regular intervals for a while, then stopped and began again. What could it be? It was not the noise of a woodpecker, nor that which a beaver makes with its tail. Chuck! chuck! chuck! It was not the clucking of a grouse, though perhaps more like that than anything else, but different, somehow, in quality. Chuck! chuck! chuck! I think we all knew in our ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the Sitta europoea (the nuthatch). Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodpecker does the same. This noise may be heard a furlong ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... pines was a group of young, stalwart maple trees, each of a different dye—gold, bronze, or red. It was here that they lingered, and Alec gathered boughs for the children till their hands were full. The noise of the golden-winged woodpecker was in the air, and the call of ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... may-flower, now rear their cold snowy heads that contrast so strangely with the funereal pall that envelopes all around them. No living thing is seen there, nor bird, nor animal, nor insect, nor verdant plant; even the hardy fire-weed has not yet ventured to intrude on this scene of desolation, and the woodpecker, afraid of the atmosphere which charcoal has deprived of vitality, shrinks back in terror when he approaches it. Poor Dechamps, had you remained to witness this awful conflagration, you would have observed in those impenetrable ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... also, he would wade into the swamps around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep and ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... one killed that first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's stint—victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed Alpine jackdaw, that lanius ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... it should be to suit the place, Heroic, for a hero lies beneath, Grave, solemn!' Walter warped his mouth at this To something so mock-solemn, that I laughed And Lilia woke with sudden-thrilling mirth An echo like a ghostly woodpecker, Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt (A little sense of wrong had touched her face With colour) turned to me with 'As you will; Heroic if you will, or what you will, Or be yourself you hero ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... California, on being stripped of their bark, are found to be perforated all over with holes about the size of a musket-ball. These are pierced by the woodpecker with such precision and regularity that one might believe they had been cut out by a ship-carpenter. The summer is spent by this busy little bird in making these holes and in filling them with acorns. One ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... hermit thrush from that of the wood thrush. The melody, no doubt, went to his heart, and that was enough. Though he sauntered through orchards and rested under apple trees, he never observed that the rings of small holes in the bark were usually made by the yellow-bellied woodpecker, instead of by Downy, and that the bird was not searching for grubs or insects, but was feeding upon the milky cambium ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... honey-bee. We have no lizard that destroys the bee; but our tree- toad, ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and our kingbird has been charged with the like crime, but the latter devours only the drones. The workers are either too small and quick for it or else ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... species which he enumerates; but it may be sufficient to excite attention to this subject, to mention, that the birds which lay an egg perfectly white (the most attractive of colours) make their nests in holes of the earth, and cavities of trees, such as the kingfisher and the woodpecker, or construct them with a very narrow opening, as the domestic swallow; that the same coloured egg is found amongst the birds which scarcely quit their nests in the day, as hawks and owls; and that such birds as doves, which only lay one or two eggs, and sit immediately after, have their eggs white. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... birds know of this root; the queer paisano (? ground woodpecker) which eats snakes, when wounded by a vibora de cascabel, runs into woods, digs up and eats a root of the agave, just like the mongoose; but more than that, goes back, polishes off his enemy, and eats him. This has been ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... Toad hopped down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better to do!" said ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... A woodpecker, who had bored a multitude of holes in the body of a dead tree, was asked by a robin to explain ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... she was soon frolicking about the cage and singing. The song sounded at first like the cooing of a dove; then it changed to quick notes more like the cuckoo; and, after that, the noise was like the tapping of Mr. Woodpecker on a tree. ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various
... legislation is on the same basis. Here's a legislature that's like Dave Darrington's hogs. After old Dave lost his voice and couldn't holler to the hogs, he used to rap on the trough with his cane at feeding-time. Then a woodpecker made his home in the pig-pen and the hogs went crazy. Vard Waymouth is all bill! I'd reckoned I'd go home. But I guess I'll stay and see just how far dam foolishness ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... sunrise; there was a slight frost on the crisp grass about the cabins. The fire had gone out, hours before; not even a smoldering ember or a wreath of smoke, remained of it. The squirrels had already begun to "chicker" in the hazel copses; and a large pileated woodpecker was calling out loudly from the top of a tall pine stub, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... influences, went over the same ideas; but there was a livelier movement in her thoughts, and a freshening of sensation, like the brightness which came over the underbrush after a shower. A persistent affirmation—or denial—was going on in her, like the tapping of the woodpecker in the one tall pine tree across the chasm. Musical phrases drove each other rapidly through her mind, and the song of the cicada was now too long and too sharp. Everything seemed suddenly to take the form of a ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... summer with the ever-varying and wild minstrelsy of the robin, the veery, the songsparrow, the red-start, the hermit-thrush, the red-eyed flycatcher and other feathered choristers, while the golden-winged woodpecker or rain fowl, heralds at dawn the coming rain of the morrow, and some crows, rendered saucy by protection, strut through the sprouting corn, in their sable cassocks, like worldly clergymen computing their tythes. On the aforesaid walk, once trodden over by the prince ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... they are great believers in omens. A single crow bathing in a stream is a sign of death. A cock which crows in the night should be instantly killed and thrown into the darkness, a custom which some would be glad to see introduced into much more civilised centres. The woodpecker and owl are birds of bad omen. The Baigas do not appear to have any idea of a fresh birth, and one of their marriage songs says, "O girl, take your pleasure in going round the marriage-post once and for all, for there is no second birth." ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... blotch in the sky. The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been a low-hanging ambition to be thrilled with the prospect of teaching school, or was it buoyant health that made me happy? I eased down my trunk, and boyishly threw stones away off into an echoing hollow. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... what a dreadful time I had all alone here last evening. I cried and prayed that vengeance might not fall on you and him—the innocent—but on me alone—if all I have suffered up to now is not enough. And then a woodpecker came and sat outside under the window, with its eerie tapping. And a little after came a magpie croaking on the roof, like a chuckling fiend. It made me shudder all over. I dare say you will laugh at my weakness. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... other ways, it would be strange if the tomtits did not display acuteness in the selection of nesting sites. A cosy hollow in a dead snag or stump is especially acceptable. Sometimes it is a deserted woodpecker's cavity made trig and clean, while quite often, when the wood is soft enough, the tits themselves chisel out a little hole in a tree or stump or fence post. I recall having once watched a pair of chickadees hollowing ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... orchards where the gay woodpecker Flits, flashing o'er you, like a winged jewel; Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal, The wild brooks laugh, and raps ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... closely resembled the well-known downies of our eastern longitudes. I suppose them to have been their western representatives, which are known, according to Mr. Aiken and Professor Cooke, as Batchelder's woodpecker. Near the same place I saw a second pair of mountain bluebirds, flitting about somewhat nervously, and uttering a gentle sigh at intervals; but as evening was now rapidly approaching, I felt the need of finding lodging for the night, and could not stop to ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... folks in Ruscino. All surrounding him was grass and moor and wood, called communal property, but in reality belonging legally to no one; vast, still, fragrant leagues of uninhabited country stretching away to the blue hills, home of the fox and the hare and the boar, of the hawk and the woodpecker and the bittern. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... mahala draws tough grasses or fine tree roots dyed in different colors, and after the pattern she chooses. Sometimes she works into the baskets the quail's crest, small red or yellow feathers from the woodpecker, green from the head of the mallard duck, or beads. She also hangs wampum or bits of abalone shell on the finest ones. The storage baskets are four or five feet high to hold grain or acorns, and ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Lincoln, Swallow, Hermit-thrush, Cedarbird, Vesper-sparrow, Cowbird, Robin redbreast, Martin, Song-sparrow, Veery, Scarlet tanager, Vireo, Summer redbird, Oriole, Blue heron, Blackbird, Hummingbird, Fifebird, Yellowbird, Wren, Whippoorwill, Linnet, Water-wagtail, Peewee, Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pigeon-woodpecker, Yokebird, Indigo-bird, Lark, Yellowthroat, Sandpiper, Wilson's ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 39, August 5, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... jay pecking at an acorn, or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the top of an oak, and hear them break them off. They then fly to a suitable limb, and placing the acorn under one foot, hammer away at it busily, making a sound like a woodpecker's tapping, looking round from time to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon reach the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they hold the remainder very firmly with their claws. Nevertheless, it often drops to the ground ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... of sight, a small noise yet disturbing, that followed them wheresoever they went. Thus they wandered, close entwined, but ever the wood grew darker until they came at last to a mighty tree whose sombre, far-flung branches shut out the kindly sun. And lo! within this gloom the woodpecker was before them—a most persistent bird, this, tap-tapping louder than ever, whereat Hermione, seized of sudden terror, struggled in his embrace and, pointing upward, cried aloud, and was gone from him. Then, looking where she ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... so clever with your wonderings," said Peter and Paul again, "as if you'd never heard a woodpecker hacking and pecking at ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... moved on, uttering private chuckles as numerous as a woodpecker's taps, and Ethelberta with him. She walked as by a miracle, but she would walk. She would have died rather ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... how he lives. That is nature study. By study we learn that the hop-toad is our best garden friend. He will spend the whole night watching for the cutworms that are after our tomato plants. When we see a woodpecker industriously pecking at the bark of our apple trees, we know that he is after the larvae of the terrible codling moth and we call ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. And in the chattering of the dry leaves there is a ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the Latins, a small tribe whose chief town was Laurentum. Faunus a god of the fields and cattle-keepers, was afterwards identified with the Greek Pan. Picus was a prophetic god. We are told by Ovid that he was changed into a woodpecker (picus) by Circe, whose love he had slighted. Saturnus was the old Latin god of sowing, and was later identified with the Greek Kronos, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... he sought the lumberers' gang Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, With sudden roar the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a slight plateau, of which they accordingly took possession, tethering the horses to graze. From the branches overhead the squirrels surveyed them as if asking what manner of people were these, and the busy woodpecker ceased his drumming, cocking his head inquisitively at the intruders; then shyly drew away, mounting spirally the trunk of the tree to the hole, chiseled by his strong beak for a nest. As Barnes gazed around upon the pleasing prospect, he straightway became the duke ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... cauldron look strange, amid the solemn loneliness of the forest, along whose stately aisles of cathedral-like grandeur the eye may gaze for days, and see no living thing—the ear hear no sound, save it may be the tapping of the woodpecker, or the whispering of the wind as it sighs through the boughs, seeming to mourn with them for the time when the white man knew them not. But these thoughts pass away when the proprietor, with his pale intelligent face, shaded by a flapping sun hat from the glaring snow, ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... fern, of the shy fallow-deer Who come at noon down to the water here. You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along 195 Under the thorns on the green sward; and strong The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, And the weird chipping of the woodpecker Rang lonelily and sharp; the sky was fair, And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere. 200 Merlin and Vivian stopp'd on the slope's brow, To gaze on the light sea of leaf and bough Which glistering plays all round them, lone and mild. As if to itself the quiet forest smiled. Upon ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... glancing up quickly I saw my early visitor. There he was, as neighbourly as you please, and not in the least awed by my intrusion; there he was, far out on the limb of a dead tree, stepping energetically up and down, like a sailor reefing a sail, and rapping and tapping as he worked—a downy woodpecker. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... The vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped, and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around. The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Domestic fowls are supposed to be indigenous. Wild geese are numerous among the mountains of Hawaii, and plovers, snipe, and wild ducks, are found on all the islands. A handsome owl, called the owl-hawk, is common. There is a paroquet with purple feathers, another with scarlet, a woodpecker with variegated plumage of red, green, and yellow, and a small black bird with a single yellow feather under each wing. There are few singing birds, but one of the few has as sweet a note as that of the English thrush. There are very few varieties ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... rail of the fence, he looked cautiously along the edge of the thicket. It did not look so dismal in there, after all. A woodpecker's cheerful tapping sounded somewhere within. Butterflies flitted fearlessly down into its shady ravines. A squirrel ran out on a limb, and sat chattering at him saucily. Then a big gray rabbit rustled through the leaves, and went loping ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shown what might be called by some much ambition when they went house-hunting early that spring; for although the place they chose had been put into fairly good repair by rather an able carpenter,—a woodpecker,—still, it had been lived in before, and might have been improved by having some of the rubbish picked up and thrown out. But do you think Solomon spent any of his precious evenings that way? No, nor Mrs. Otus ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... 'Curfew Bell,' And no fixed hour for the cry, 'Out lights!' We will give free way to true 'Woman's Rights,' Which are to thump, strum, tap, twirl, trill, From morn till night at her own sweet will. That's why we cherish, despite male spleen, Typewriter, Piano, and Sewing-Machine! The 'woodpecker tapping' is, indeed, not in it With Emancipate Woman—no, not for a minute! Our Hotel will be, when we've won the battle, 'The Paradise of unlimited Rattle,' 'The Realm of the Spindle,' 'the Home of the Duster!'" Says Mrs. WHEELER ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... voyage. Dido. Cercopians changed to apes. Descent of AEneas to hell. The Cumaean Sybil. Adventures of Achaemenides with Polyphemus: and of Macareus amongst the Lestrigonians. Enchantments of Circe. Story of the transformation of Picus to a woodpecker; and of the nymph Canens to air. The Latian wars. Misfortunes of Diomede. Agmon and others changed to herons. Appulus to a wild olive. The Trojan ships changed to sea-nymphs. The city Ardea to a bird. Deification of AEneas. Latin kings. Vertumnus ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Long Iram to buy salt and other goods, taking a small quantity of rattan. The following day, late in the afternoon, the party returned, having passed the night a short distance away. As they had approached Long Blu an omen bird, evidently a small woodpecker, had flown across their path in front of the first prahu, whereupon the whole flotilla at once retraced their course—a tedious day's trip against the current. It makes no difference whether this bird flies from left to right, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the tension. I moved around and looked toward Jakie's grave, then returned to the side of the tree-trunk which had escaped the ravages of fire, and ran my finger up and down, feeling the holes which the red-headed woodpecker had bored and ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire to know what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once or twice, undulated lightly up and down, like a woodpecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first, rolled over several times, then steadied again, and, coming at last to rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quivering along all its borders in its peculiar way, and humping up ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... them by our forefathers, because they resembled the European quail. There is no pheasant in America either; but our grouse looked like one, and so they gave it that name, Lester calls a quail Pious Imperialis. Now that's an imperial woodpecker—that big black fellow with a red topknot that we sometimes see when we are hunting. He used to be called cock-of-the-woods, but the name was twisted around until it became woodcock, and some people believe that he is the gamey little ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... all. The steady tapping was a woodpecker at work upon an old tree. The faint musical note was another little gray bird singing the delight of his soul as he perched himself upon a twig; the light shuffling noise was the tread of a bear hunting succulent nuts; a caw-caw so distant that it was like an echo was ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... spider a land-pirate, Neddy was wrong. He was no more a pirate—that is, one who robs and murders—than is the woodpecker or swallow, for they feed on worms and insects. The spider was just as blameless in his work of catching and eating flies as was Neddy's white bantam when she went off into the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... he must go softly now lest the very fowl of the air and fish of the sea be destroyed forever. Within my memory the passenger pigeon, by some cataclysm perhaps, has apparently become extinct; and the ivory-billed woodpecker probably, this latter by the hand of man, for I knew the man who believed that he had killed the last pair of these noble birds reported from the Florida forests. So we thought it had fared also with the snowy ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... doubtless a disaster, but to me it was a treasure-trove, for it told her well-kept secret. The hint was taken, the home soon found in the heart of an oak, with entrance twenty feet from the ground, and close watching from a distance revealed the owner, a golden-winged woodpecker. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... blind alleys. It must be compelled to reform its microcosmic reflections, even down there, where it has to be driven by force. It is extraordinary how superficial even the great writers are; how lacking in the Mole's claws, in the Woodpecker's beak! They seem labouring beneath some pathetic vow, exacted by the Demons of our Fate, under terrible threats, only to reveal what will serve their purpose! This applies as much to the Realists, with their traditional animal chemistry, as to the Idealists, with their traditional ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... wrapped in a deceitful stillness; no breath of wind moved the trees or dimpled the water. Bright wreaths of scarlet berries and wild grapes hung in festoons among the faded foliage. The silence of the forest was unbroken, save by the quick tapping of the little midland woodpecker or the shrill scream of the blue jay, the whirring sound of the large white-and-gray duck (called by the frequenters of these lonely waters the whistlewing) as its wings swept the waters in its flight, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... anything of her goodman, seeing that she went up the mountain every day. My daughter said she had not; but, woe is me, she was soon to hear enough of him. For one morning, before sunrise, as she came down into the wood on her way back from her forbidden digging after amber, she heard a woodpecker (which, no doubt, was old Lizzie herself), crying so dolefully, close beside her, that she went in among the bushes to see what was the matter. There was the woodpecker, sitting on the ground before a bunch of hair, which was red, and just ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Association with a monthly report in the magazine. We had a chapter, Hartford B., that met for years out of doors on Saturday mornings through the spring, early summer and autumn, and even through one winter when some specimens of the redheaded woodpecker were on the edge of the city. Usually our winter meetings were in the library, and we often had readings from Burroughs, Thoreau, Frank Buckland and others of the earlier nature-lovers. The children came from ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... washing-basins, and I shall quench hunger and thirst in the tiled kitchens of lonely farmsteads. If I hear the shriek of a train I shall smile when I think of its cooped and harried passengers, and plunge devious into some pathless wood, in whose depths the only sounds are the tap of the woodpecker's bill or the measured axe-strokes of the woodman. I shall fling myself down to rest under what tree I will, and pulling from my pocket the book of my choice, I shall summon a wise and cheerful companion to my side as easily ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... see the woodpecker hammering with his chisel-like bill, making a home in some dead tree. You can hear his strokes a long way through the woods. The chips fly from ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... acorns and beech-mast in autumn. The men who dug in the sand-pits or for gravel came this way in and out to their labour, and so did those who split up the fallen trunks into logs. Now and then a woodpecker came with a rush up from the meadows, where he had been visiting the hedgerows, and went into the forest with a yell as he entered the trees. The deer fed up to the precincts, and at intervals a buck at the dawn got into the garden. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... adapted to animals, as a plant which cannot be impregnated without agency of insect; or hooked seeds depending on animal's existence: woolly animals cannot have any direct effect on seeds of plant. This point which all theories about climate adapting woodpecker{50} to crawl up trees, miseltoe, <sentence incomplete>. But if every part of a plant or animal was to vary , and if a being infinitely more sagacious than man (not an omniscient creator) during thousands and thousands of years were to select all the variations which tended towards certain ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the Woodpecker (Picus Viridus).] The name Yaffil is provincial, but is so very expressive of the noise it continually makes, that I have preferred it on that account. It is a beautiful bird, and is sometimes called the English parrot; the colour of its plumage, green, yellow, and ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how tinkling ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... fire-breathing serpents which surrounded that fell personage, shot them with arrows as they struck at him, and having thus reached the lodge of his enemy he engaged him in combat. All day long they battled to no purpose, but toward evening a woodpecker flew overhead and cried, "Your enemy has but one vulnerable point. Shoot at his scalp-lock." Hiawatha did so and his foe fell dead. Anointing his finger with the blood of his foe, he touched the bird, and the red mark is found on the head of every woodpecker to this day. A ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... People used to fear his judgment, but there are none like him left! That one, as gaudy as a woodpecker, was a great nobleman once; he did nothing but drink and dance; he could drain a barrel at a bout, and he spent so much money that he had to sell his family estate, poor wretch! There's a Uhlan; they used to fight for Napoleon and conquer all the nations, but there are no fighters left in the world. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... said. "Twice have his warriors broke into this valley, and twice have the tomahawks of his young men been redder than the head of the woodpecker. The fire was not good fire; the tomahawk will kill surer. Had not the voice of my brother said to his young men, 'let the scalps of the prisoners alone,' he could not now say 'yet do ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... office a red head was thrust suddenly out like a surprised woodpecker's. Barbee hurried to the entrance and looked up the street. He saw a good many people. He looked down the street and noticed ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... all unconscious of the beneficent fairy she was to meet there in the form of a new Mamita. Trees and shrubs were beautiful with young, glossy foliage. Pines and firs offered their aromatic incense to the sun. Birds were singing, and bees gathering honey from the wild-flowers. A red-headed woodpecker was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with undulating swiftness. To Flora's great disappointment, they found all the ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child |
