|
|
|
More "Woodpecker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... umph! yer talkin' ter de wrong nigger now, chile! I don't hab nuffin te do wid 'im mysef! I'se er God-fyearn nigger, I is; an', let erlone dat, I keeps erway fum dem jay birds. Didn' yer neber hyear wat er trick he played de woodpecker?" ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... inches) is marked very similarly to the preceding, but the plumage is brown instead of gray. They normally nest in hollow trees, generally in deserted Woodpecker holes, in extensively wooded sections, and usually in mountainous country, especially in the United States. They have also been known to nest in bird boxes near farm houses and in old Crow's nests. During April or May, they lay ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... when 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 ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... has many a time gone "nutting" in this way in the middle of winter with good success. The nests of squirrels are generally built in trees, either in a crotch between the branches or in some deserted woodpecker's hole. Some species live in burrows in the ground, and those individuals who are lucky enough to be in the neighborhood of a barn often make their abode therein, taking their regular three meals a day from the granary. In many localities these animals thus become a ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... door, looked and listened—only the distant rattle of a woodpecker's beak on a dead tree in the woods. The snow began to fall in little fitful dabs. It was two miles to the nearest cabin, and her soul rose in fierce rebellion at her loneliness. It was easy for a man who loved the woods, the fields and running waters, this life, but for ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... 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 ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... straight up into the sun. Away from its direct rays, cooled by her bath in the stream and clad in an Indian maiden's light garb, she was rejoicing in the summer heat. She enjoyed the sleepy feeling that dulled the woodland sights and sounds: the tapping of a woodpecker on a distant tree, the occasional call of a catbird, the soft scurrying of a rabbit or a squirrel, the buzzing of a laden bee—all mingled into one melody of summer of which she did not consciously distinguish the individual notes. Just as pleasantly ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... get it? Who shall I swindle? Where shall I steer this cutter? (looking upwards, then jubilantly) I've got my auspices, my auguries: the birds let me steer it where I please! Woodpecker and crow on the left, raven and barn owl on the right. "Go ahead," they say! By Jove, I'll follow your ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... flew and chattered crowds of green paroquets and glossy crows, while here and there we could see a Bird of Paradise drooping its smart tail-feathers amid the foliage. A little further, and deep in the forest the ear caught the busy tap-tap of the woodpecker, the snap of the toucan's beak, or far away the deep trumpeting of the elephant. Once we startled a leopard that gazed a moment at us with flaming eyes, and then was gone with a wild bound into the thicket. From tree to tree trailed hosts of gorgeous ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Birds, such as we had not before seen on the island, and which reminded me of some of my old acquaintances of the New England woods, perched upon the trees, or flew familiarly around us. One or two, of the woodpecker tribe, looked wonderfully natural and home-like, as they sat industriously drumming upon hollow logs. Another, a small, brown bird, with modest plumage, surprised and delighted me, by a clear, full whistle, that sounded not unlike that of our own robin redbreast. We also ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... scattered senses, and just as I was awakening 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 in the middle shot me five feet into the air ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... no spindles, nor wheels to be whirled, No forges nor looms from the outside world, Stunning the ear with clamour; You hear but the whisper of leaves unfurled, And the tap of the woodpecker's hammer ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... third time, till she said, 'I cannot roll you a small bannock.' Then Christ said, 'For your selfishness, you shall become a bird, and seek your food 'twixt bark and bole.' Gertrude at once became a bird, and flew up into a tree with a screech. And to this day the great woodpecker of Scandinavia is called 'Gertrude's Bird,' and has ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... his canoe, he escapes by the exertion of these powers, but always, as much as possible, in accordance with Indian maxims and means. He is provided with a magic canoe, which goes where it is bid; yet, in his fight with the great wampum prince, he is counselled by a woodpecker to know where the vulnerable point of his antagonist lies. He rids the earth of monsters and giants, and clears away windfalls, and obstructions to the navigation of streams. But he does not do these feats ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... 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 night's ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... forests crawled among thickets or lurked in sinister shadows. No bird poured out its heart in them; no lark soared out of them, breasting heaven. At rare intervals a note fell on the ear—the scream of hawk or eagle, the bitter cackling laugh of blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry—solitary notes, and unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring down the long waterway until the sound sank and was overtaken again by ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "A woodpecker," he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs! "And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... not the only bird that liked beechnuts. Reddy Woodpecker was fond of them, too. And when he saw that the beechnut crop was going to be a big one he decided that he would stay in Pleasant ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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, off in ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that of the wood thrush. The melody, no doubt, went to his heart, and that was enough. Though he sauntered through orchards and rested under apple trees, he never observed that the rings of small holes in the bark were usually made by the yellow-bellied woodpecker, instead of by Downy, and that the bird was not searching for grubs or insects, but was feeding upon the milky cambium layer of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... seemed peaceful around them. Now and then a bird would fly out of a thicket, or give a little burst of song from the branch of some tree. A red-headed woodpecker tapped boisterously on the dead top of a beech near by, trying hard to arouse the curiosity of the worms that lived there, so as to cause them to poke out their heads to see who was so noisy at their front doors; when of course the feathered hammerer ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... are inhabited by few birds: occasionally the plaintive note of a white-tufted tyrant-flycatcher (Myiobius albiceps) may be heard, concealed near the summit of the most lofty trees; and more rarely the loud strange cry of a black woodpecker, with a fine scarlet crest on its head. A little, dusky-coloured wren (Scytalopus Magellanicus) hops in a skulking manner among the entangled mass of the fallen and decaying trunks. But the creeper (Oxyurus tupinieri) is the commonest bird in the country. Throughout the beech forests, high up and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... sound of musketry grew faint and the cannon boomed in the distance. The sun, suddenly apparent, blazed among the trees. The insects were making rhythmical noises. They seemed to be grinding their teeth in unison. A woodpecker stuck his impudent head around the side of a tree. A bird flew on ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... river, through the woods, across the mountain chain. The dew still hung on the grass, and above in the oaks and beeches, it seemed as if all the birds were holding high festival, there was such a fluttering, and calling, and chirping, and trilling, and singing, while the woodpecker beat time. The sunshine played among the branches, and fell through onto the flowery earth, where it lay among the shadows of the leaves like so many round pieces of gold. Although George was climbing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and nearer until, becoming suspicious, they winged their journey away. And then we were invaded by a troop of grosbeaks who gathered in the neighboring bushes, their queer, tiny voices, seeming quite out of place, coming out of such stocky, strong little bodies. In the meanwhile a woodpecker was tap-tapping on a dead juniper. It was all so very different from the cruel, ragged coast with its unceasing turmoil of hungry waves breaking upon the cliffs. Here there reigned such a wonderful peace, interrupted only by the song of birds. There were soft outlines in the ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Penobscot, the water ran up this stream quite to the pond of the same name, one or two miles. The Spencer Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were now in plain sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us, the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what possibly was never spelt before, but I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... flourished dark cypresses and holly-trees, draped with gray Spanish moss, twisted around the boughs, and hanging from them like gigantic cobwebs. Now and then, the sombre scene was lighted up with a bit of brilliant color, when a scarlet grosbeak flitted from branch to branch, or a red-headed woodpecker hammered at the trunk of some old tree, to find where the insects had intrenched themselves. But nothing pleased the eye of the traveller so much as the holly-trees, with their glossy evergreen foliage, red berries, and tufts of verdant mistletoe. He had been riding all day, when, late in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... we are carpenters today and pound the wooden objects on the floor in exact time with a building song; let us play we are drummer boys and tap with our drumsticks for the soldiers to march; or shall we make believe that the sphere is a woodpecker and let it tap on the trees while we recite ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... A woodpecker, who had bored a multitude of holes in the body of a dead tree, was asked by a robin ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... they drove on, while I zigzagged back to my inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself in the sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure where the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge, I kept picking off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and breaking them up in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... mown underneath, and each of these walks is a shaded grove, losing itself in the distance. The deep silence of the place is only broken by the cooing of the wood-pigeon, and the occasional piercing note of the green woodpecker. It is said that the nightingales appear here about the 13th of April and continue singing until June, and that the best time for seeing this neighbourhood is during the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... wood to Thor was that once within its shadows he could, to some degree, stop thinking of the life outside. He could give his first attention to the sounds and phenomena about him. As he stood now, listening to the resonant tapping of a hairy woodpecker on a dead tree-trunk he could forget that the world held a Lois, a Rosie, and a Claude, each a storm-center of emotions. It was a respite from emotions—in a measure, a respite from himself. He stepped craftily, following the sound of the woodpecker's tap till he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... 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 ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the room his long arms were behind him under his coat-tails and held them extended, and he bore some resemblance to a bird. In fact, one did not require much imagination to note resemblance to a bird in Peter Briggs—many folks likened him to a woodpecker—for he flitted to and fro in Colonel Dodd's anteroom, among those awaiting audience, tapping here and rapping there with the metaphorical beak of questions, starting up the moths and grubs of business which men who came and waited hid under the bark ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the whole house seemed to spring into voice. Then she stopped and listened. There was no response: the empty rooms seemed to have relapsed into their old stillness. She stepped out on the veranda. A woodpecker recommenced his tapping on an adjacent tree: the rattle of a cart in the rocky gulch below the hill came faintly up. No one was to be seen far or near. Miss Milly, re-assured, returned. She again ran her fingers over the keys, stopped, caught at a melody running in her ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... trunk of a fallen tree to take a short breathing spell. It was a warm afternoon, and the air was calm; not a breath stirred the leaves on the old trees around us; the forest sounds were hushed, save the tap of the woodpecker on his hollow tree, or an occasional drumming of a partridge on his log. It was drawing towards one of those calm, still, autumnal evenings of which poets sing, but which are to be met with in all their glory only among the beautiful lakes that lay sleeping in the wild woods, and surrounded ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... 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 a ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... went through the chimney. Never speaking a word; And out of the top flew a woodpecker, For she was changed to ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... The air was redolent with forest fragrance. An impudent Labrador Jay[3] scolding them in its harsh voice, came so close that Charley could almost have caught it with his bare hands. Chickadees[4] chirped in the trees. A three-toed arctic woodpecker hammered industriously upon a tree trunk. In the distance a red squirrel ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... forbidden fruit, but forbidden meats and vegetables. For one reason or another people have resolutely refused to eat any and all kinds of flesh, fish, fowl, fruits, and plants. Thus, the apple, the pear, the strawberry, the quince, the bean, the onion, the leek, the asparagus, the woodpecker, the pigeon, the goose, the deer, the bear, the turtle, and the eel—these, to name only a few eatables, have been avoided as if unwholesome or positively ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... guileless chatter of the boy's voice. Why, assuredly it was young Crossjay who was the man she loved. And he loved her. And he was going to be an unselfish, sustaining, true, strong man, the man she longed for, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice! woodpecker and thrush in one. He never ceased to chatter to Vernon Whitford walking beside him with a swinging stride off to the lake for their morning swim. Happy couple! The morning gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. They seemed to Clara made of morning ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... impediments. Thus in an anecdote gravely related to Aubrey, we find this virtue mentioned: 'Sir Bennet Hoskins told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton, in Herefordshire, did for experiment's sake drive an iron naile thwart the hole of a woodpecker's nest, there being a tradition that the dam will bring some leafe to open it. He layed at the bottom of the tree a cleane sheet, and before many houres passed, the naile came out, and he found a leafe lying by it on the sheete. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better to do!" ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... "If you do as I command, divine youth, you shall be an eagle among the clouds; if not, you shall be neither turtle-dove, nor eagle, nor woodpecker." ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... great to-do, were a pair of small woodpeckers, which closely resembled the well-known downies of our eastern longitudes. I suppose them to have been their western representatives, which are known, according to Mr. Aiken and Professor Cooke, as Batchelder's woodpecker. Near the same place I saw a second pair of mountain bluebirds, flitting about somewhat nervously, and uttering a gentle sigh at intervals; but as evening was now rapidly approaching, I felt the need of finding lodging ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... 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
... redwood forests, each tree rising tall and stately for a hundred feet without branches, while the green tops seem almost to touch the sky as one looks up. Through the woods one hears the blue jay scream and chatter, and the tap, tap of the woodpecker as he drills holes in the bark to fill with acorns ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... on the top 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 away into ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... there glimmered a halcyon, like an opal on a miser's bony finger. From above the tree-tops there sounded cynic bird-laughter, and gazing upwards Martin saw a magpie flaunt his black and white plumage across the valley; while at hand the more musical merriment of a woodpecker answered him. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... to the county. The rest of this 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
... where no other birds can reach them. They are equally useful in an orchard except that here man may only at great trouble and expense partly hold them in check. Downy woodpeckers are also great eaters of scales, and the fruit grower need not begrudge the red-headed woodpecker a meal of cherries or apples, especially as it will usually be found that it is the wormy fruit that ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... a succession of long bounding flights from one tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... 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
... care of the Mindoro," he assured his son-in-law. "Early in life I adopted the woodpecker as my patron saint. Ever since, whenever I want anything I keep pecking away, and pretty soon I ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... evenings as this that she had come to know her son best, as she sat on the arm of his chair and listened with tactful sympathy to his stories of the big black bass that kept house in the pool at the end of the lake, or of the downy woodpecker's nest in the old hickory, or, perhaps, of the big hoot owl that perched on the granary warm nights to watch for mice. It was with a certain feeling of sadness, as well as of pride, that she watched him grow older, lose his boyhood ways, and ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... had set to work again by herself. She did not put any more nuts into the woodpecker's hole, because she had always doubted how they could be got out again. She hid them under a tree root; they rattled down, down, down. Once when Goody emptied an extra big bagful, there was a decided squeak; and next time Goody ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... The owl, I suspect, thrusts its leg into the cavities of woodpeckers and into the pocket-like nest of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth the birds in its talons. In one case which I heard of, a screech-owl had thrust its claw into a cavity in a tree, and grasped the head of a red-headed woodpecker; being apparently unable to draw its prey forth, it had thrust its own round head into the hole, and in some way became fixed there, and had thus died with the woodpecker ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... had been passed from hand to hand and returned to their owner; then, rotund, chipper and birdlike as ever, began his cross-examination much like a woodpecker attacking a stout stump. The witness had been an old friend of Mr. Appleboy's, had he not? Tunnygate admitted it, and Tutt pecked him again. Never had done him any wrong, had he? Nothing in particular. Well, any wrong? Tunnygate hesitated. Why, yes, Appleboy had tried to fence in the public ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... a hole in a tree," said Old Mother Nature. "He is very fond of an old home of a Woodpecker. He makes a comfortable nest of bark lining, grass, and moss, or any other soft material he can find. Occasionally he builds an outside nest high up in a fork in the branches of a tree. He likes to ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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 voice ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 Eyebright to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... great variety visit the island, and the low-lying land within the sea-wall is the favourite haunt of many sea-birds; and several varieties of plover, the redshank, greenshank, sandpiper, and snipe may be found there. The crossbill comes very often, and the green woodpecker's cry is quite familiar. But perhaps the most beautiful little winged creature that favours us ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... eyes. They can see the woodpecker on the rotten tree across the river, but they reach not here," laying his hand upon his breast. "The Holder of the Heavens loves not to see things alike. He therefore made the leaf of the oak to differ from that of the hickory, and the pine from both, and also the white race ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... find to thrill you in, 'It was the season in which the reapparelled earth, more than in all the other year, shows herself fair'? The rhythm is lost; the flow, sweet as the first runnings of the maple where the woodpecker has tapped it, stiffens into sugar, the liquid form is solidified into the cake adulterated with glucose, and sold for a cent ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the Chickadee was so weak that he could hardly fly, and he shook with chills. He made straight for the apple-tree where Farmer Brown's boy always keeps a piece of suet tied to a branch for Tommy and his friends. Drummer the Woodpecker was there before him. Now it is one of the laws of politeness among the feathered folk that when one is eating from a piece of suet a ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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. ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... another in September, and often in August and in October, in consecutive clucking notes, and in this way make exactly the same kind of noise that they are always heard making in early spring just before the pairing season. The young male green woodpecker (Picus viridicanus) sings in September as beautifully as in April, as I have myself heard more than once; the young great spotted woodpecker (Picus major) may even be heard at times in autumn, just as in spring, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... sat on the front porch and watched the people moving into the next house another pair of eyes peeped out of the old hollow maple over the way. This was the red-headed woodpecker, who had a warm, cosey nest far down in the old hollow maple, and in the nest there were four beautiful eggs, of which the red-headed ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... 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
... the level of the forest mould. Beyond, in a slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle swung in green riot from gnarled old oak trees. A gray Douglas squirrel crept out on a branch and watched him. From somewhere came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel were as yardsticks with which to measure the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... woody river-course and tried a shot at us; some close; the bullets making a low, quick whistle as they flit overhead. My two companions—there are three of us—are still blazing an indignant reply at the distant bushes. By the amount of fire tap, tap, tapping like an old woodpecker all round the horizon, it seems that there is a sudden wish for a closer acquaintanceship among the pickets generally this morning. Those fellows in the river are at ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... listening for strains of music. In the stillness of the forest they heard nothing but the songs of the birds, broken occasionally by the caw of a crow or the tapping of a woodpecker. But it was good to stop chattering for a while in this peaceful place, and Billie, lying on her back looking up into the interlacing branches of the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... forest, where the fairest flowers grew, the morning dew still hung glittering from the blossoms and grasses. Here it was secluded, yet full of life, and amidst the wealth of sounds in which might be heard the tapping of the woodpecker, the cry of the lapwing, and the call of the distant wood-pigeon, it was so still and peaceful that Eva's heart grew lighter in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... comer, who arrives shortly after Robin-Redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the Golden-Winged Woodpecker, alias, "High-Hole," alias, "Flicker," alias, "Yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... my ears that made me feel that I was not quite alone in this desolate swamp. The gray squirrels scolded among the tree-tops; robins, the brown thrush, and a large black woodpecker with his bright red head, each reminded me of Him without whose notice not a sparrow ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... began a catalogue of the month's birds, and at the end of a fortnight discovered, to my astonishment, that the name of the downy woodpecker was missing. He had been common during November, and is well known as one of our familiar winter residents. I began forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for him, particularly whenever I went near any apple orchard. A little later, I actually commenced making excursions on purpose ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... Redhead woodpecker: "Chip! Chip! Chee!" Promise dat he'll marry me. Whar shall de weddin' supper be? Down in de lot, in a rotten holler tree. What will de weddin' supper be? A liddle green worm an' a bumblebee, 'Way down yonder on de holler tree. De Redhead ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... orphan; how she left her uncle's house to come to California for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an orphan too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which, from a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid and a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... KIENG, the woodpecker (LEPOCESTES PORPHYROMELAS), has two notes, one of which is of good, the other of had omen. If they have secured good omens from the birds already mentioned, they will then try to avoid hearing KIENG, lest he should utter the note of evil omen; ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... rock. Continuation of AEneas' voyage. Dido. Cercopians changed to apes. Descent of AEneas to hell. The Cumaean Sybil. Adventures of Achaemenides with Polyphemus: and of Macareus amongst the Lestrigonians. Enchantments of Circe. Story of the transformation of Picus to a woodpecker; and of the nymph Canens to air. The Latian wars. Misfortunes of Diomede. Agmon and others changed to herons. Appulus to a wild olive. The Trojan ships changed to sea-nymphs. The city Ardea to a bird. Deification of AEneas. Latin kings. Vertumnus ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... don't want the birds to hear, I guess we'd better go up to the house. If you don't mind that woodpecker up yander an' them two sparrers out there in the road, I guess this is about as private a place ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... as I see you. Have I not seen her grow up, since she used to be wheeled about in a baby carriage in Piazza Navona, like a flower in a basket? Her nurse made love with the 'woodpecker' who was ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... their brood, empty now, and covered thick with the scattered dust of passing teams. Forgetful that he was weary he climbed well up the bole of a shaggy old friend, to peep in at the opening of a deserted woodpecker's home. He came to the big tree at whose roots, on that other night he remembered so well, he had thrown himself hopelessly. With a stolid sort of curiosity he looked down at the spot. Yes, there was the place. A few fallen leaves were scattered upon the earth where his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... me. But 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 endeavor to prove by indirect evidence that species ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... you are so fond of it what did you leave it for?" demanded Peter. "It is just as I said before—you birds are funny creatures. You never stay put; at least a lot of you don't. Sammy Jay and Tommy Tit the Chickadee and Drummer the Woodpecker and a few others have a little sense; they don't go off on long, foolish journeys. But ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... answer. There were sounds in the air: a metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the first glimpse of them she slipped ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... spring. This sacrifice was called 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 ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... We have here introduced two drawings from the Nuttall Codex (Pl. 27, figs. 5, 6) which seem to represent the Imperial ivory-billed woodpecker, a large species that occurs in the forests of certain parts of Mexico. The figures show a long-billed bird with acutely pointed tail feathers, a red crest, and otherwise black and white plumage. The red crest of the woodpecker is of course ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... woodpecker and his kind have sharp eyes, still I was surprised to see how quickly Downy found out some bones that were placed in a convenient place under the shed to be pounded up for the hens. In going out to the barn I often disturbed ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... is the great red-headed woodpecker, or woodcock, as he is called by the country people, looking like a miniature man with a crimson turban and sable spear, attacking the bark of yon old oak. He is making a sounding-board of the seamed mail of the venerable ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... 'tention to him," she said. "The 'Colonel' is wearin' himself out restin'. He's kep' his head bobbin' all day like a woodpecker's. Jest laughs till he's sick every time he an' ol' John gits together. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... 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: ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... and, rolled in a pill, put down the throat of a cow to promote the restoration of her cud, which she was supposed to have lost. Gowk, cuckoo. Fuzz-Buzz, traveller's joy. Palmer, caterpillar. Dish-washer, water-wagtail. Chink, chaffinch. Long-tailed caper, long-tailed tit. Yaffil, green woodpecker. "The yaffil laughed loud."—See Peacock at Home. Smellfox, anemone. Dead men's fingers, orchis. Granny's night-cap, water avens. Jacob's ladder, Solomon's seal. Lady's slipper, Prunella vulgaris. Poppy, foxglove. To routle, to rummage (like a pig in straw). To terrify, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... comer, who arrives shortly after robin redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the golden-winged woodpecker, alias "high-hole," alias "flicker," alias "yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence,—a thoroughly melodious April sound. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life and of one organic being to another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and the mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives through the water; ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the blue kingfisher flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove. On either side, as the path mounted, the long sweep of country broadened and expanded, sloping down on the one side through yellow forest and brown moor to the distant smoke ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said the woodpecker, 'I wouldn't build on the ground anyway. I should be afraid that a deer or a bear or some other creature would step on me. If you want a safe nest, I'll show you how to build one. You just find a dead limb, not too dead, and bore a deep hole into it. Put a little ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... 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 ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... could make out what Chops done with his money. He had a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came round, besides having the run of his teeth—and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all Dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him in so many halfpence that he'd carry 'em for a week together, tied up in a pocket- handkercher. And yet he never had money. And it couldn't be the Fat Lady from Norfolk, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... listened. Ellen heard the beating of her heart, the rustle of leaves, the tapping of a woodpecker, and faint, remote sounds ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... he said. "Twice have his warriors broke into this valley, and twice have the tomahawks of his young men been redder than the head of the woodpecker. The fire was not good fire; the tomahawk will kill surer. Had not the voice of my brother said to his young men, 'let the scalps of the prisoners alone,' he could not now say 'yet do ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... hemlocks whisper: high Above, the spires of yellowing larches show, Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow And jay and nut-hatch ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... green elms, that a cottage was near. And I said, "If there's peace to be found in the world, "A heart that was humble might hope for it here!" It was noon, and on flowers that languished around In silence reposed the voluptuous bee; Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound But the woodpecker ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like to watch the working of his bill and throat, the quaint sidle of his body, and flex of his long tail. I hear the woodpecker, and night and early morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will—noons, the gurgle of thrush delicious, and meo-o-ow of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name; but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... words adaptability and adjustability, our discussion assumes a somewhat different aspect. Instead of contemplating further the mechanical selection of individuals on the basis of characters that, like the structure of "the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees," can not be attributed to the influence of the external conditions that render them useful, we are invited to consider immediate and plastic adjustments of the organism to the very ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... &c., as the only possible cause of variation. In one very limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the misseltoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes absolutely ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... rained in the night,—a soft, warm rain,—and the air was full of the smell of the apple-bloom and pear from the little orchard behind the house. The bees were already humming about the straw-bound hives along the garden wall, and a misguided green woodpecker clung upside down to the eaves, and thumped at the beams of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... blamed ef I won't. Har, you, Jim,' speaking to a well-dressed darky standing near. 'Har, go ter thet red-headed woodpecker, thar at the cabin, and tell him I'll smash his peepers if he doan't send me sum glasses ter onst—d'ye ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... partly for that reason, "partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name (which was dubious), was Stakes." Wearing a diamond ring "(or quite as good to look at)" on his forefinger, having the run of his teeth, "and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all dwarfs are," receiving a good salary, and gathering besides as his perquisites the ha'pence collected by him in a Chaney sarser at the end of every entertainment, the Dwarf never has any money somehow. Nevertheless, having what his admiring proprietor ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... do birds of the same kind associate, but certain species are almost always found together. Thus, the chickadee, the golden-crested wren, the white-breasted nuthatch, and, less constantly, the brown creeper and the downy woodpecker, form a little winter clique, of which you do not often see one of the members without one or more of the others. No sound in nature more cheery and refreshing than the alternating calls of a little troop of this kind echoing through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... on the habits, movements, and foods of common birds, as crow, woodpecker, king-bird, phoebe, blackbird, etc. (See ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... at her. The long sharp nose seemed to be rapping her on the forehead like a woodpecker's beak on the bark of the tree. "Begin," he said, pointing ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... little town, and struck out up a winding lane to the hills. The copses were full of anemones and primroses; birds sang sharply in the bushes which were gemmed with fresh green; now and then I heard the woodpecker laugh as if at some secret jest among the thickets. Presently the little town was at my feet, looking small and tranquil in the golden noon; and soon I came to the top. It was grassy, open down-land up here, and in an instant the wide view of a rich wooded and watered plain spread before me, with ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... alang (falco), is very common, as is the crow, gadak (corvus), and jackdaw, pong (gracula), with several species of the woodpecker. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... moorland, and in gloomy defiles of the mountains. Ellen followed the road, a white, glaring, dusty line, all day. Nothing broke the dreary silence but the whirr of some unseen bird through the forests, or the hollow thud, thud of a woodpecker on a far-off tree. Once or twice, too, a locomotive with a train of cars rushed past her with a fierce yell. She slept that night by the roadside with a fallen tree for a pillow, and the next morning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... summer as befits the time, And something 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 ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and they were going to have a stew. The boys' task was soon through and it was not long until the smell of the partridge stew and the fresh trout on the fire fairly made the boys' mouths water. They soon set the table and then went off to try and get a look at a woodpecker they heard hammering away in the woods. They had just gotten under the big old tree on which the woodpecker was busy and were watching his diligent operations when they heard a welcome call and they broke for the camp. They arrived with ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race in America. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree before he left it. It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and still flies, from the wood to pluck them, much to the farmer's sorrow. ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... the 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 of the higher trees, the hornbill[3] (the toucan ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... enemies. The little screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree, and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the softened heart-wood of upright limbs and pays for his lodging by devouring all grubs and borers that otherwise might make his house fall too soon. The bluebird finds his dwelling ready made, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... him! 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 ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... moment of silence. The drone of a bumble-bee near by seemed to make the silence swim drowsily in their ears; far off they heard the faint beat of a woodpecker. The suggestion of their kneeling figures in this magic mirror was vague, unreasoning, yet for the moment none the less irresistible. His arm instinctively crept around her little waist as he whispered,—he scarce knew what he said,—"Perhaps ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... from each other's society, because they are all fed with just the same intellectual food. You hear them repeat to each other the things they have all read in the "Daily Trumpet," or the "Saturday Woodpecker." In these things, of course, there can be but little variety, all the Saturday Woodpeckers of the same date being very much like each other. When, therefore, the people in the same circle meet each other, their conversation cannot ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... whirring wings before the bell-shaped blossoms of the fuchsias. [Note 3.] From the deeper recesses of the wood at intervals comes a loud, cackling cry, resembling the laugh of an idiot. It is the call-note of the black woodpecker. And, as if in response to it, a kingfisher, perched on the limb of a dead tree by the beach, now and then ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... Cedar Bird, Hermit Thrush, Cow-bird, Robin Redbreast, Martin, Song Sparrow, Veery, Scarlet Tanager, Vireo, Summer Redbird, Oriole, Blue Heron, Blackbird, Humming Bird, Fifebird, Yellow-bird, Wren, Whip-poor-will, Linnet, Water Wagtail, Pewee, Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pigeon Woodpecker, Yoke Bird, Indigo Bird, Lark, Yellow Throat, Sandpiper, Wilson's ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... so clever with your wondering," laughed Peter and Paul again, "as if you'd never heard a woodpecker hacking and pecking at a ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree before he left it,—a thing which he had never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out how ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... Lord will 'quire dat chile's happiness of yo' han's, an' will so do by yer as yer do by her.'—'Be yer de angel ob de Lord, massa?' says I. 'Clar' to goodness, sah! I was dat skeered one knee knocked ag'in de udder like a woodpecker a-hammerin' a rotten tree.—'Yes,' says he: 'I be de messenger ob de Lord, an' my name is John Brown, but I don't s'pose yer ebber heern tell ob it.'—'No, massa,' says I, 'we don't see no powerful sight ob angels down in de rice-swamps.'—'Well, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... low wooden house, which may still be seen with its roof of red shingles, at the head of Woodpecker street, on the south side, in the city of Williamsburg, the residence of Judge Waller, and still owned by his grandson Dr. Robert Page Waller, and in a small room up stairs, at the north-east corner, looking on the street, in ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... and 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 them from ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... to the broken tale, the forest around was vocal, the chipmunks scampered from tree to tree, the woodpecker's tap-tap, tap-tap, went on over their heads, the leaves rustled and gave forth their divine sweetness, as though man and nature were at peace, and there were no storms in sky above or soul beneath, or in the waters of life that are deeper than "the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reached His Majesty that, although blind, he was exceedingly skilled in the art of playing the biwa, both in the Flowing Fount manner and the Woodpecker manner, and that, especially on nights when the moon was full, this aged man made such music as transported the soul. This music His Majesty desired ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... hawk screams or a woodpecker Startles the stillness from its fixed mood With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear The dreamy white-throat from some far off tree Pipe slowly on the listening solitude His five pure notes ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... bravest work of civilized backwoodsmen is feeble and bungling. The completeness of form, finish, and proportion of these timbers suggested skill of a wild and positive kind, like that which guides the woodpecker in drilling round holes, and the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... in that way, even when it stands alone in the middle of a pasture,) but grating their boughs against each other, as old horn-handed farmers press their dry, rustling palms together,—dropping a nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a woodpecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It was now the season of singing-birds, and the woods were haunted with mysterious, tender music. The voices of the birds which love the deeper shades of the forest are sadder than those of the open fields: these are the nuns that have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... magpie, the turtle-dove, the swallow, the horned owl, the buzzard, the pigeon, the falcon, the ring-dove, the cuckoo, the red-foot, the red-cap, the purple-cap, the kestrel, the diver, the ousel, the osprey, the woodpecker. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... '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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... ear testifies to the traveller that when he has reached an altitude of 5000 feet he has entered another avian realm. The golden-backed woodpecker, the green bee-eater, the "blue jay" or roller, the paddy bird, the Indian and the magpie-robin, most familiar birds of the plains, are no longer seen. Their places are taken by the blue-magpies, the beautiful verditer flycatcher, the Himalayan and the black-headed ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... to move us. At the same time, we realize that it is not from any poverty of ideas that Mrs. Preston sometimes dwells too long upon a subject: her poetry is not diluted with a mere harmonious jingle of words, as destitute of any meaning as the silver chime of sleigh-bells. "The Legend of the Woodpecker" is remarkable for its simplicity and terseness: it is one of the best of all the poems; only we wish that in the last verse but one she had not thought it necessary to use the word "chode" for "chided." So ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... said the Woodpecker, who was a born philosopher, 'I don't care an atomic theory for explanations. If a thing is so, it is so, and at ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... that he had first shown her his peep-stone with simple, childlike importance. How young they had both been! The sunshine on the hill, the voice of the golden woodpecker, the scent of the fallen beech leaves, came back to her. A decade of terrible years had passed over them both, and he stood seeking her faith just ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... butt of the rifle and resting it carelessly on the toe of his shoe. Dominick hesitated, but the black man, Scipio, who had drawn near to witness the shooting, trudged away to the foot of the tree, where he found a dead woodpecker lying on the ground. He picked up the bird, still warm and bleeding, and brought it to Blennerhassett, who expressed enthusiastic admiration for the marksman's skill. Plutarch received the praise without showing the pleased vanity ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... more story. It is true that Irving writes three pages of essay before beginning the real story in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but the most of this preliminary matter is very interesting description. The quiet valley with its small brook, the tapping woodpecker, the drowsy shade of the trees, the spots haunted by the headless Hessian,—all fascinate us and provide an atmosphere which the modern short-story teller too seldom secures. The novice in modern short-story ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... sidled into the tavern, and began beslavering me about the way the money left by my mother was being eaten up by expenses and debts, I blurted out: "Well, what will you give me to clear out and let you and your red-headed woodpecker alone?" ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... the first to wake in the soft grey morning, to lie listening to a regular sharp tapping made by a busy woodpecker somewhere among the ancient pines; and he wondered some time what it meant and where he was. But a soft deep breath close to his ear made him start round so suddenly that he awoke Dr Martin, who started up looking ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... blossoms in three years, and that she has a dozen of these two-year-old seedlings that she will send me as soon as I have place for them. Remembering your habit of giving every old tree a vine to comfort its old age, and in particular the silver maple by the lane gate of your garden, with its woodpecker hole and swinging garniture of Wisteria bloom, I have promised a similar cloak to a gnarled bird cherry that stands midway in the fence rockery, and yet another to an attenuated poplar, so stripped of branches as to be little more than a pole and ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... it was!—the silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. There seem'd from the remotest seat Of the wide mountain waste To the soft flower beneath our feet A magic circle traced A spirit interfused ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... day before Christmas," twittered Snow Bunting. "And you're going to give a Christmas party," chirped the Robin. "And you want us all to come!" said Downy Woodpecker. "Hurrah! Three ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Sacramento boat, and my hotel, just round the corner. Ye just sample me a bit o' everythin'; don't mind the expense. I'll take YOUR word for it. The way you—a young fellow—jest stuck to your work in thar, cool and kam as a woodpecker—not minding how high-toned she was—nor the jewelery and spangles she had on—jest got me! I sez to myself, 'Rube,' sez I, 'whatever's wrong o' YOUR insides, you jest stick to that feller to ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... 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
... stalks of these cacti die, the succulent portion is dried, and nothing is left but the woody fiber. They are hollow in places, and easily penetrated. A species of woodpecker, Melanerpes formicivorus, is found to have adopted the use of these dry stalks for storing the winter's stock of provisions. There are several round apertures seen on the stems in the pictures, which were pecked by this bird. This species of woodpecker is about the size of our common ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... almost at the crown of the ridge when a brown flying-squirrel, routed from his cave in a dead limb by the hammering of a hungry woodpecker, stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight and then made a flying leap for an oak on the opposite side of the road; but his estimate was calculated on the moonlight basis, and he missed by a fraction of an inch and went ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodpecker's beak on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a 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. ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... little woodpecker!" said Ewen from the outside, in a disgusted tone. "That's the way with Hayes. He thinks he's the whole works, and that he ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the bravery and the treachery of Indian tribes, the mortal jealousies of French and English. Every inch of ground about her was historical. These forests had resounded for years with the ugly sounds of battle, and more than once with the shrieks of women and children. To-day the woodpecker tapped, the bluejay cried in those depths unaffrighted; the singing of a mountain stream, the roar of a distant waterfall alone lifted a louder voice to the eternal whisper of the pines. The forest ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... was flushing upon the mountain tops every moment stronger. The dewy scents of the May morning were filling the air with their nameless and numberless tokens of rich nature's bounty. The voice of a cataract, close at hand, made merry down the rocks along with the song of the blackbird, woodpecker and titmouse. And still, as Eleanor stood there and looked and listened, the rush and the stir of sweet life grew more and more; the spring breeze wakened up and floated past her face bringing the breath of the flowers fresher and nearer; and the hill tops ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... been doing some more interesting work with orchids. Talk of adaptation in woodpeckers (106/4. "Can a more striking instance of adaptation be given than that of a woodpecker for climbing trees and seizing insects in the chinks of the bark?" (Origin of Species," Edition HAVE I., page 141).), some ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton in Hereford-shire, did, for experiment sake, drive an iron naile thwert the hole of the woodpecker's nest, there being a tradition that the damme will bring some leafe to open it. He layed at the bottome of the tree a cleane sheet, and before many houres passed the naile came out, and he found a ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... 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 ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... beginning to prick in little points here and there, I began to feel the life strong in me once more. The dull cloud of depression seemed to drop away, and instead of seeing always that sad, set face of my poor father's, I could look up and around, and whistle to the squirrels, and note the woodpecker running round the tree near me. It has remained a mystery to me all my life, Melody, that this bird's brains are not constantly addled in his head, from the violence of his rapping. When I was a little boy, I tried, I remember, to nod ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... adapted for that purpose. The original meaning of adaptation in animals and plants, of organic adaptation to use another term, is the relation of a mechanism to its action or of a tool to its work. A hammer is an adaptation for knocking in nails, and the woodpecker uses its head and beak in a similar way for making a hole in the bark of trees. The wings and the whole structure of a bird's body form a mechanism for producing one of the most difficult of mechanical results, namely, flight. Then, again, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... and the day was blithe, with no blotch in the sky. The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been a low-hanging ambition to be thrilled with the prospect of teaching school, or was it buoyant health that made me happy? I eased down my trunk, and boyishly threw stones away off into an echoing hollow. A rabbit ran ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... air came to her cars. The dear guileless chatter of the boy's voice. Why, assuredly it was young Crossjay who was the man she loved. And he loved her. And he was going to be an unselfish, sustaining, true, strong man, the man she longed for, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice! woodpecker and thrush in one. He never ceased to chatter to Vernon Whitford walking beside him with a swinging stride off to the lake for their morning swim. Happy couple! The morning gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. They seemed to Clara made of morning air and clear lake ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... made it very comfortable for herself in a hole in a tree. It was safe and dry, and stayed warm the greater part of the night because the sun shone on the entrance all day long. Once, early in the morning, she had heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting on the bark of the trunk, and had lost no time getting away. The drumming of a woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be to us. But at night she ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... thus addressed his attendants: "Who amongst you, in this company, can now delight our wearied ears by whistling?" which is not easily done by people out of breath. He affirming that he could, if he thought fit, the sweet notes are heard, in an adjoining wood, of a bird, which some said was a woodpecker, and others, more correctly, an aureolus. The woodpecker is called in French, spec, and with its strong bill, perforates oak trees; the other bird in called aureolus, from the golden tints of its feathers, and at certain seasons utters a ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... will often dislodge numbers of the nuts. The writer has many a time gone "nutting" in this way in the middle of winter with good success. The nests of squirrels are generally built in trees, either in a crotch between the branches or in some deserted woodpecker's hole. Some species live in burrows in the ground, and those individuals who are lucky enough to be in the neighborhood of a barn often make their abode therein, taking their regular three meals a day from ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... a form of Crow (Hura), in which the female has undergone a very curious modification. It is the only case I know, in which the bill is differently shaped in the two sexes. The bird has taken on the habits of a Woodpecker, and the stout crow-like bill of the cock-bird is admirably adapted to tap trees, and if they sound hollow, to dig down to the burrow of the Insect; but it lacks the horny-pointed tip of the tongue, which ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... you don't want the birds to hear, I guess we'd better go up to the house. If you don't mind that woodpecker up yander an' them two sparrers out there in the road, I guess this is about as private a place as you'll ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... general form which is equally common to the diminutive Nonpareil, the gorgeous Ara, and the high-crested Cockatoo. Neither will any one, who has ever observed the small head, the straight bill, the flat back, and stiff tail of the Woodpecker, hesitate to identify the family form in any of the numerous Genera into which this group is now divided. The family characters are even more invariable than the generic ones; for there are Woodpeckers which, instead of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... perhaps not in as large a measure; yet he took fire as only a poet can. While making a journey on foot to Philadelphia, shortly after landing in this country, he caught sight of the red-headed woodpecker flitting among the trees,—a bird that shows like a tricolored scarf among the foliage,—and it so kindled his enthusiasm that his life was devoted to the pursuit of the birds from that day. It was a lucky hit. Wilson had already set up as a poet in Scotland, and was still fermenting when ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... 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 Romulus and Remus, grew up on ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... 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 ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... a popular but unfounded idea. The woodpecker strikes the trees in order to frighten the insects that are concealed under the bark; and the action which l'Encuerado has interpreted in his own way is performed with a view of getting hold of ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... magazine. We had a chapter, Hartford B., that met for years out of doors on Saturday mornings through the spring, early summer and autumn, and even through one winter when some specimens of the redheaded woodpecker were on the edge of the city. Usually our winter meetings were in the library, and we often had readings from Burroughs, Thoreau, Frank Buckland and others of the earlier nature-lovers. The children came from families of more than usual intelligence, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house to come to California for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an orphan too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which, from a woodpecker's view-point, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid and a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at the outskirts ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... The carpenter-bird—the great woodpecker—hangs against the decayed trunk of some dead tree, beating the hollow bark, and now and then sounding his clarion note, which is heard to the distance of a mile. Out of the underwood springs the crested curassow; or, basking ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight falls, And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field; The orchard tree has grown one copse Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops; The footpath down to the well is healed. I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart On that disused and forgotten road That has no dust-bath now for the toad. Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart; The whippoorwill is coming to shout And hush and ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. There seem'd from the remotest seat Of the wide mountain waste To the soft flower beneath our feet A magic circle ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... overlong for his answer. There were sounds in the air: a metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... birds is his greatest delight. I have to imitate the notes of birds, and he does it after me, showing memory in it. He knows at once stork, woodpecker, pigeon, duck, pelican, siskin, and swallow. The little verses I sing at the same time amuse him, e. g., "Zeislein, Zeislein, wo ist dein Haeuslein?" (Little siskin, where is your little house?); and he retains them when he hears them often. Russian ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... look and listen. It was only one hundred yards to the interesting spot, but Rolf was fifteen minutes in covering the distance, and more than once, he got a great start as a chicadee flew out or a woodpecker tapped. His heart beat louder and louder, so it seemed everything near must hear; but he kept on his careful stalk, and at last had reached the thicket that had given him such thrills and hopes. Here he stood ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... spring, from the trees of the Common, which are close, but, except for the crown of one noble English elm, are shut away from me, I hear an occasional robin and Baltimore oriole. Very rarely a woodpecker will go over. The great northern shrike is a frequent winter visitor, but by ill chance I have not been up when he has called ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... drinking it delightedly, the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodpecker's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pound the wooden objects on the floor in exact time with a building song; let us play we are drummer boys and tap with our drumsticks for the soldiers to march; or shall we make believe that the sphere is a woodpecker and let it tap on the trees while we ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... so 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 ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... odorous bed of pine needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky gleamed bright azure through the openings of the great trees, a dry west breeze murmured through the forest. I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left no room for imagination. There was some kind of an ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... cat-fish. Unattractive as are the names of the two last, the fish themselves are excellent. Among the birds, Professor Hind mentions prairie-hens, plovers, various ducks, loons, and other aquatic birds, besides the partridge, quail, whip-poor-will, hairy woodpecker, Canadian jay, blue jay, Indian hen, and woodcock. In the mountain region are bighorns and mountain goats; the grizzly bear often descends from his rugged heights into the plains, and affords sport to the daring hunter. The musk-rat and beaver inhabit the borders of the lakes. The cariboo ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... usual practice, I began a catalogue of the month's birds, and at the end of a fortnight discovered, to my astonishment, that the name of the downy woodpecker was missing. He had been common during November, and is well known as one of our familiar winter residents. I began forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for him, particularly whenever I went near any apple orchard. A little later, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... and shelter—and find a wench. He stood in the mud: long, thin, brown in his doctor's gown of fur, with his black flapped cap that buttoned well under his chin and let out his brown, lean, shaven and humorous face like a woodpecker's peering out of a hole in ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... of the words adaptability and adjustability, our discussion assumes a somewhat different aspect. Instead of contemplating further the mechanical selection of individuals on the basis of characters that, like the structure of "the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees," can not be attributed to the influence of the external conditions that render them useful, we are invited to consider immediate and plastic adjustments of the organism ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Judy,” which I think comes nearer to my own interpretation. The body of this bird is in colour a mixture of grey and brown, but its tail and wings are most beautifully marked with dark zig-zag bars, which make it very handsome. In size it is between the blackbird and the lark. Like the woodpecker, it has a very long tongue, which is covered with a glutinous matter, and which it inserts into the grass roots or tree bark, in search of its ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Conanchet wish?" he said. "Twice have his warriors broke into this valley, and twice have the tomahawks of his young men been redder than the head of the woodpecker. The fire was not good fire; the tomahawk will kill surer. Had not the voice of my brother said to his young men, 'let the scalps of the prisoners alone,' he could not now say 'yet ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... on the upper side of a sloping branch of considerable size; the head was uppermost, and it rested on the feet and tarsi, the latter being bare on the under surface for that purpose. Its attitude in this situation much resembled that of a woodpecker. One that was kept alive with its wing broken sat across the finger, like another bird. When about to take flight it makes a cracking noise, as if the wings smote together, after the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... long, low wooden house, which may still be seen with its roof of red shingles, at the head of Woodpecker street, on the south side, in the city of Williamsburg, the residence of Judge Waller, and still owned by his grandson Dr. Robert Page Waller, and in a small room up stairs, at the north-east corner, looking on the street, in which his mother ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... sensation served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I was awakening 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 in the middle shot me ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... thought of his supper; and the two continued their journey till they reached another tree with a woodpecker ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... such as we had not before seen on the island, and which reminded me of some of my old acquaintances of the New England woods, perched upon the trees, or flew familiarly around us. One or two, of the woodpecker tribe, looked wonderfully natural and home-like, as they sat industriously drumming upon hollow logs. Another, a small, brown bird, with modest plumage, surprised and delighted me, by a clear, full whistle, that sounded not unlike that of our own ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the special objects of my search during a certain June among the hills of northern New York was a nest of the golden-winged woodpecker; not that it is rare or hard to find, but because I had never seen one and had read attractive stories of the bird's domestic relations, the large number of young in the nest, and his devotion and pride. Moreover, I had become greatly interested in the whole family, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... know a man named Umslopogaas, Macumazahn, the chief of a tribe that is called The People of the Axe, whose titles of praise are Bulalio or the Slaughterer, and Woodpecker, the latter from the way he handles his ancient axe? He is a savage fellow, but one of high blood and higher courage, a great captain in his way, though he will never come to anything, save a glorious death—in ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... stripes—tail long—sits hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like to watch the working of his bill and throat, the quaint sidle of his body, and flex of his long tail. I hear the woodpecker, and night and early morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will—noons, the gurgle of thrush delicious, and meo-o-ow of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name; but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him—the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen ran ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Australian genus of small creeping-birds, called also Tree-Runners (q.v.). Sittella is the Latin diminutive of sitta, which is from the Greek sittae, a woodpecker, whose habits the Tree-runners or Sittellae have. Gould's enumeration of the species ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the predatory kinds, the long coast-line attracting numerous seafowl, and the fenny country of the centre affording a feeding ground for the different kinds of waders. Of the resident species which are comparatively uncommon elsewhere may be mentioned the hawfinch, the greater and lesser spotted woodpecker, the carrion crow, the raven, the buzzard, the hen-harrier, and the peregrine falcon. Among the regular visitors are included the white wagtail, the pied flycatcher, the nightjar, the black redstart, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... 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 ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... leaves and the black earth, have never been tasted before, except by the wild denizens of these woods. We cross the trails of lurking animals,—paths that heighten our sense of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the drumming of the solitary partridge,—all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesomeness of nature. The roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of pebbles, rising ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a woodpecker in ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... promote the restoration of her cud, which she was supposed to have lost. Gowk, cuckoo. Fuzz-Buzz, traveller's joy. Palmer, caterpillar. Dish-washer, water-wagtail. Chink, chaffinch. Long-tailed caper, long-tailed tit. Yaffil, green woodpecker. "The yaffil laughed loud."—See Peacock at Home. Smellfox, anemone. Dead men's fingers, orchis. Granny's night-cap, water avens. Jacob's ladder, Solomon's seal. Lady's slipper, Prunella vulgaris. Poppy, foxglove. To routle, to rummage ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... 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 Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... certainly don't like to have any visits from Solomon Owl when 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, out comes Solomon all blinking with his big, black eyes. ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the current rippled gently on between the beautiful banks, which were now darkly wooded, now smiling with green prairies and sunny flowers. The sweet clear song of the robin, or the monotonous tapping of the brilliant crimson-headed woodpecker, alone broke the stillness of the scene; and after a time, Tom, somewhat wearied and heated by the exertion of rowing, felt inclined to yield to the spirit of rest which breathed around. So he laid aside his oars, and let the boat drift idly on while he refreshed ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... the cry of the woodpecker! Well, it was charming, and the whole of Paris will sing that song with delight for a year. I also shall do like the whole of Paris, and ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the undergrowth all about them was alive with Drilgoes. The three dodged and doubled like hunted hares. High overhead something began to clack with a sound like that made by a woodpecker drilling a tree, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... shall be my 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 ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... a mirindajxo. Wonderful mirinda—ega. Wonted kutima. Woo amindumi. Wood (material) ligno. Wood arbareto. Woodcock skolopo. Woodcutter arbohakisto. Wood flooring (parquetry) pargeto. Woodhouse lignejo. Woodpecker pego. Wooer amisto, amindumisto. Woof teksajxo. Wool lano. Woollen stuff lanajxo, drapo. Woolly laneca. Word (spoken) parolo. Word (written) vorto. Wordiness babilajxo. Word for word lauxvorte. Work labori. Work (physical) laboro—ado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Chickadee was so weak that he could hardly fly, and he shook with chills. He made straight for the apple-tree where Farmer Brown's boy always keeps a piece of suet tied to a branch for Tommy and his friends. Drummer the Woodpecker was there before him. Now it is one of the laws of politeness among the feathered folk that when one is eating from a piece of suet a newcomer shall ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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. It had belonged to the doctor's ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... Vesper Sparrow, Cedar Bird, Hermit Thrush, Cow-bird, Robin Redbreast, Martin, Song Sparrow, Veery, Scarlet Tanager, Vireo, Summer Redbird, Oriole, Blue Heron, Blackbird, Humming Bird, Fifebird, Yellow-bird, Wren, Whip-poor-will, Linnet, Water Wagtail, Pewee, Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pigeon Woodpecker, Yoke Bird, Indigo Bird, Lark, Yellow Throat, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... Certhia Familiaris; the smallest of our birds after the wren. It belongs to a class nearly related to the woodpecker. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... branch of the great corvine family. Their enormous beaks are peculiarly adapted for searching in quest of eggs about the crevices of trees. The varieties here, include the Janeiro toucan, and the yellow-breasted toucan. The three next cases contain the many varieties of the Woodpecker. Woodpeckers are represented by naturalists as crows with a structure adapted to "an insect-eating life amidst growing timber." They are to be found in all quarters of the globe, searching out, with their long beaks, the minute life that gathers ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... 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 ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... bird in North America is more universally known than the Red Headed Woodpecker. He is found in all parts of the United States and is sometimes called, for short, by the significant name of Red Head. His tri-colored plumage, red, white and black, glossed with steel blue, is ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree before he left it,—a thing which he had never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... emphasizing each syllable at will, in despair of response. Passing into the loftier woods, we find them resounding with the loud proclamation of the Golden-Crowned Thrush,—scheat, scheat, scheat, scheat,—rising and growing louder in a vigorous way that rather suggests some great Woodpecker than such a tiny thing. And penetrating to some yet lonelier place, we find it consecrated to that life-long sorrow, whatever it may be, which is made immortal in the plaintive cadence of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... silently listening for strains of music. In the stillness of the forest they heard nothing but the songs of the birds, broken occasionally by the caw of a crow or the tapping of a woodpecker. But it was good to stop chattering for a while in this peaceful place, and Billie, lying on her back looking up into the interlacing branches of ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... advised it. On account of the rise of the Penobscot, the water ran up this stream quite to the pond of the same name, one or two miles. The Spencer Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were now in plain sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us, the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what possibly was never spelt before, but I pronounced after him till he said it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... scanty. 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. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... acknowledge that the arm of fate had reached me at last. You cannot think 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
... commanded one of the runways indicated. How light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,—all for my benefit, I suspected. All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of the 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 ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... to 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
... us of the help given to Hiawatha by the woodpecker during his fight with Megissogwun; but the one incident can hardly be copied from the other. Hiawatha was published some years ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... 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 ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... for all who seek complete seclusion from storms and enemies. The little screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree, and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the softened heart-wood of upright limbs and pays for his lodging by devouring all grubs and borers that otherwise might make his house fall too soon. The bluebird finds his dwelling ready made, lower down, often in a horizontal limb, having neither strength nor inclination ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... satisfied that the mere preference for a better inmate furnishes the only reasons why the lady wants Mr. Woodpecker's room rather than his company. Perhaps he is in arrear; but no, he pays his bill: so it is not on that score that he is so ruthlessly sent away. You are, however, not kept long on the tiptoe of conjecture, but soon learn that Mrs. W. has a niece, and you already know that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that have been a setting for sorrow, haunt the mind. After that day, Eleanor could never hear the hammer of the woodpecker, the lone cry of circling hawk, the whistling of the solitary mountain marmot, without hearing also the thin treble of the Indian pupils breaking and silencing on that funeral hymn till only the mother's voice sang clarion to the end. She ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... arrives shortly after Robin-redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the gold-winged woodpecker, alias "high-hole," alias "flicker," alias "yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... this was doubtless a disaster, but to me it was a treasure-trove, for it told her well-kept secret. The hint was taken, the home soon found in the heart of an oak, with entrance twenty feet from the ground, and close watching from a distance revealed the owner, a golden-winged woodpecker. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... alcedo ispida of Linnaeus), a very beautiful bird, frequenting waters, and feeding on fish. It builds in deep holes in the banks of rivers, and lays five, or, according to some, nine eggs. It much approaches to the Picus, or Woodpecker, in many points; but wants its great character, which is, the having two toes behind. The legs of this bird are very short, and are black before and red behind; its colours, particularly its green and blue, which are its general ones, are extremely bright and beautiful. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... a sigh, and looked up in the air; then took a glance at Martha's broom, and as he looked down he thought he saw Toody winking at him. So he just smiled and said: "I declare, by the tom-tit's folly, and the mole's pin-hole eye, and the woodpecker's thorny tongue, that I ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... 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; ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the blue, blue sky and took a seat on a convenient dead tree, where he could see all that went on. Ol' Mistah Buzzard began to grin as soon as he saw that tin pail on Buster's neck. Then came others,—Redtail the Hawk, Scrapper the Kingbird, Redwing the Blackbird, Drummer the Woodpecker, Welcome Robin, Tommy Tit the Chickadee, Jenny Wren, Redeye the Vireo, and ever so many more. They came from the Old Orchard, the Green Meadows, and even down by the Smiling Pool, for the voices of Sammy ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... tree, just as if it wanted some one to open the door! Soon he saw it draw out of the bark of the tree, a little worm, which hung upon the end of its tongue as if it had been a hook! His mother told him this little bird, was called a woodpecker, and this was the way it took ...
— Happy Little Edward - And His Pleasant Ride and Rambles in the Country. • Unknown
... already vanished in the thicket with the undeliberate and impulsive act of an animal. There was a momentary rustle in the alders fifty feet away, and then all was silent. The hidden brook took up its monotonous murmur, the tapping of a distant woodpecker became suddenly audible, and Mr. Hamlin was ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... fieldfares, and redwings are birds of the North, and never nest in Great Britain. Besides these, there are a certain number of birds which have no claim to be termed British, and which are found in Norway all the year round—the nut-cracker, several kinds of woodpecker, the ryper (the game-bird of the country), and others. And, on the other hand, some of our common resident birds migrate from Norway ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... or climate. What would you find to thrill you in, 'It was the season in which the reapparelled earth, more than in all the other year, shows herself fair'? The rhythm is lost; the flow, sweet as the first runnings of the maple where the woodpecker has tapped it, stiffens into sugar, the liquid form is solidified into the cake adulterated with glucose, and sold for a cent as the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... stretches of moorland, and in gloomy defiles of the mountains. Ellen followed the road, a white, glaring, dusty line, all day. Nothing broke the dreary silence but the whirr of some unseen bird through the forests, or the hollow thud, thud of a woodpecker on a far-off tree. Once or twice, too, a locomotive with a train of cars rushed past her with a fierce yell. She slept that night by the roadside with a fallen tree for a pillow, and the next morning began ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the chief surgeon of all the Southwestern pineries came along. This surgeon was the Texas woodpecker. He probably did not long explore the ridges and little furrows of the bark before he discovered the wound or heard these hidden insects working. After a brief examination, holding his ear to the bark for a moment to get the location of the tree's deadly foe beneath, he was ready to act. He made ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... up from beneath there was a sharp crack and a loud cry. The crack was neither the snapping of a branch, nor the tapping of a woodpecker; the cry was neither the scream of the parrot, nor the howl ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... just commissioned. He wears his close-fitting uniform and overseas cap with a dignity that becomes one of that most enviable rank. The bold bugle of the Carolina wren sounds through the leafy encampment and like the colors ascending for retreat, the red, white and blue of the red-headed woodpecker is seen rising diagonally to a dead oak stub. Like a fine accompaniment the music of the fluttering leaves blends with that of the rippling stream and the many woodland voices mellow and supplement them until ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... even a book-worm inside of it), and their loud rapping often makes me think I have a caller indeed. I place fragments of hickory-nuts in the interstices of the bark, and thus attract the nuthatches; a bone upon my window-sill attracts both nuthatches and the downy woodpecker. They peep in curiously through the window upon me, pecking away at my bone, too often a very poor one. A bone nailed to a tree a few feet in front of the window attracts crows as well as lesser birds. Even the slate-colored snowbird, a seed-eater, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... immutable productions. But I cannot see how the two supposed "impulses" account in a scientific sense for the numerous and beautiful coadaptations which we see throughout nature; I cannot see that we thus gain any insight how, for instance, a woodpecker has become adapted to its peculiar habits of life. The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying in the early editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation. In my opinion it has done excellent service in this ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... hollow notes: now here, now yonder, for as one ceases another takes it up. They cannot settle for some time: each as he arrives perches awhile, and then rises and tries a fresh place, so that there is a constant clattering. The green woodpecker approaches at a rapid pace—now opening, now closing his wings, and seeming to throw himself forward rather than to fly. He rushes at the trees in the hedge as though he could pierce the thick branches like a bullet. Other birds rise over or pass at the side: he goes ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... XI) consisted of 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 ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... 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 ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... 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 Baigas are generally the priests of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Woodpecker, who had been rapping on the dead trees of the woods, appeared, Bumper decided it was time for him to call a halt. "That's all I can spare," he said, and darted back into the ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... in a thousand of our skilled mechanics could do as good work. Compared with it the bravest work of civilized backwoodsmen is feeble and bungling. The completeness of form, finish, and proportion of these timbers suggested skill of a wild and positive kind, like that which guides the woodpecker in drilling round holes, and the bee in making ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race in America. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree before he left it. It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and still flies, from the wood to pluck them, ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... full glare of midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the tap-tap of the woodpecker and ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... the air warmer, the trees taller. Birds, such as he had never seen before, sang in the bushes, and fowl of many kinds were pluming themselves in the warm sun on the shores of the lake. The gay woodpecker was tapping the hollow beech, the swallow and the martin were skimming along the level of the green vales. He heard no more the cracking of branches beneath the weight of icicles and snow, he saw no more the spirits of departed men dancing ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... time used to call the men to dinner by blowing into a woodpecker hole in an old hollow stub that stood near the door. In this stub there was a nest of owls that had one short wing and flew in circles. When Mr. Shepard made a sketch of Paul, Mrs. Bunyan, with wifely solicitude for his appearance, parted ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... have no closed chinks, no 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 ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... 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 than ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... these powers, but always, as much as possible, in accordance with Indian maxims and means. He is provided with a magic canoe, which goes where it is bid; yet, in his fight with the great wampum prince, he is counselled by a woodpecker to know where the vulnerable point of his antagonist lies. He rids the earth of monsters and giants, and clears away windfalls, and obstructions to the navigation of streams. But he does not do these feats by miracles; he employs strong men to help him. When he means to destroy the great serpents, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... 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 the upper ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... 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, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 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 it ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... shut and brain rested, Tayoga nevertheless knew all that was going on near him. That eardrum of infinite delicacy told him that a woodpecker was tapping on a tree, well toward the north; that a little gray bird almost as far to the south was singing with great vigor and sweetness; that a rabbit was hopping about in the undergrowth, curious and yet ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... own part,' said the Woodpecker, who was a born philosopher, 'I don't care an atomic theory for explanations. If a thing is so, it is so, and at ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... Paul, "you must have been fledged yesterday! Didn't you ever hear a woodpecker pecking at the trunk of ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... into Chopski by the public, he gets called in the line Chops, partly for that reason, "partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name (which was dubious), was Stakes." Wearing a diamond ring "(or quite as good to look at)" on his forefinger, having the run of his teeth, "and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all dwarfs are," receiving a good salary, and gathering besides as his perquisites the ha'pence collected by him in a Chaney sarser at the end of every entertainment, the Dwarf never has any money somehow. Nevertheless, having what his admiring proprietor considers "a fine mind, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... through rock on the feeble Fly's behalf. Urged by a presentiment that to us remains an unfathomable mystery, the Cerambyx-grub leaves the inside of the oak, its peaceful retreat, its unassailable stronghold, to wriggle towards the outside, where lives the foe, the Woodpecker, who may gobble up the succulent little sausage. At the risk of its life, it stubbornly digs and gnaws to the very bark, of which it leaves no more intact than the thinnest film, a slender screen. Sometimes, even, the rash one opens the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... sit like a statue so still When the rain made her mansion a pound, Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill, And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill, From the tiles of the ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... this morning, half asleep—and saw what I thought was a red breasted woodpecker as big as a pigeon! Presently it came down on the lawn and I made up my mind it was only a robin about the size of ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... stew. The boys' task was soon through and it was not long until the smell of the partridge stew and the fresh trout on the fire fairly made the boys' mouths water. They soon set the table and then went off to try and get a look at a woodpecker they heard hammering away in the woods. They had just gotten under the big old tree on which the woodpecker was busy and were watching his diligent operations when they heard a welcome call and they broke for the camp. They arrived with Pud bringing up the rear, puffing and blowing. ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... you, Uncle Wiggily. I know that no one lives here," said the bird. "But you see I am a woodpecker, and I am pecking holes in the tree to get some of the sweet juice, or sap. The sap is running in the trees now, for it is Spring. Later on I will tap holes in the bark to get at bugs and worms, when there is no more sap ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... melody, no doubt, went to his heart, and that was enough. Though he sauntered through orchards and rested under apple trees, he never observed that the rings of small holes in the bark were usually made by the yellow-bellied woodpecker, instead of by Downy, and that the bird was not searching for grubs or insects, but was feeding upon the milky cambium layer of the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... of trees. There, in deep burrows, lurked great succulent beetle-grubs, demanding only a tool with which they might be dug out. This has been perfected by many stages, and I have now before me a splendid specimen of the most improved pattern—namely, the bill of the great black woodpecker of Western India, a bird nearly as big as a crow. It is nothing else than a hatchet in two parts, which, when locked together, present a steeled edge about three-eighths of an inch in breadth. The hatchet is two and a half inches long by one in ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... 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 ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... good letter-press," he said—"and the grey stones, and that white oak in the meadow. And is not that woodpecker a pretty illustration?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... from 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. On mountain sides, and across the undulating lowland, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... we were already beginning to get rich, and wondering how many more nests we should find in the grand sunny woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill that the shanty stood on, and down to the meadow, searching the trees and grass tufts and bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird's and a woodpecker's nest, and began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the creeks ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... thick leaves, made little radiant patches of golden light among the deep shadows under the trees; the whole air seemed alive with the hum of insects; and here and there rang out the sharp tap of a woodpecker, or the melancholy ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... but he thought much and deeply of what the tinker said. They lay back a while on the needle carpet, thinking. They could hear the murmur of the brook and a woodpecker drumming on a ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
