"Woodcock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frust that chicken, unbrace that mallard, unlace that coney, dismember that hern, display that crane, disfigure that peacock, unjoynt that bittern, untach that curlew, allay that pheasant, wing that partridge, wing that quail, mince that plover, thigh that pidgeon, border that pasty, thigh that woodcock; thigh ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... all in our nice soft beds; such as found three blankets too little added a dressing-gown of flannel, or print lined with wadding or fleecy hosiery, and so made shift. In particular all those who had the care of Josephs took care to lie warm and soft. Hawes, Jones, Hodges, Fry, Justices Shallow and Woodcock, all took the care of their own carcasses they did not ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... in carving the woodcock or snipe is, that the bird is not drawn like other birds, but roasted as it is plucked, suspended by the head, with a toast beneath, on which the trail, as it is called, or internal part, is allowed to drop; and when the birds are roasted, which should be rapidly done in twenty ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... of the alderman, was in the East India Company's Civil Service, as collector at Saharapore. He married Harriet Dawson, and his daughter Harriet married William Woodcock, Esq. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects—I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz—'Cursed be he who stirs these bones.' Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry in this ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities it required little time ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... evening, rejoicing in their liberty and security; for I have, as much as possible, prohibited the grounds from invasion, and sometimes almost wished for game-laws, when my orders have not been sufficiently regarded. The partridge, the woodcock, and the pigeon are too great temptations ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... froth them with flour; lay the toast on a hot dish, and the birds on the toast; pour some good beef gravy into the dish, and send some up in a boat. Twenty or thirty minutes will roast them. Some epicures like this bird very much underdone, and direct that the woodcock should be just introduced to the cook, for her to show it to the fire, ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... difference to the mob, and me, if the shells and monkey skeletons were taken away from the mid-gallery, and instead, three gradated series of birds put down the length of it (or half the length—or a quarter would do it—with judgment), showing the transition, in length of beak, from bunting to woodcock—in length of leg, from swift to stilted plover—and in length of wing, from auk to frigate-bird; the wings, all opened, in one specimen of each bird to their full sweep, and in another, shown at ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... man for his time, and the guests of the high table must lack no wine: the lusty bloods must look about them like men, and piping and dancing puts away much melancholy: stolen venison is sweet, and a fat coney is worth money: pit-falls are now set for small birds, and a woodcock hangs himself in a gin: a good fire heats all the house, and a full alms-basket makes the beggar's prayers:—the maskers and the mummers make the merry sport, but if they lose their money their drum goes dead: swearers and swaggerers are sent ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... sort of woodcock in July and August; we have also a kind of grouse, plover, dove, and wild pigeon, snipe, wild fowl, and a wonderful variety of small birds; among which, the reed-bird [Footnote: So called from their note resembling the word ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... riding or walking through it. In such a world the tourists would be few. Personally, I should detest a world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered with harvest in autumn. I wish a little variety. I desiderate moors and barren places: the copse where you can flush the woodcock; the warren where, when you approach, you can see the twinkle of innumerable rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, would not feel sorry although Reynard himself had a hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands of his rising family cost Farmer Yellowleas a fat capon or two in the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... gun. Hares and rabbits, not then the pest of the country, swelled our bag. We had a moderate number of black game, and the fox-hunters were somewhat astonished to find that we of the gentry set much store by woodcock, which bulked so little in the day's sport. The fox-hunter brothers had the run of the servants' hall at Crathes, and they were said to have consumed fabulous numbers of kitchen pokers, which required to be heated red-hot to give the jugs of ale of their evening draught the right temperature ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... home because the old gentleman wanted him to marry Rosetta, whom he had never seen. He called himself Thomas, and entered the service of Justice Woodcock as gardener. Here he fell in love with the supposed chamber-maid, who proved to be Rosetta, and their marriage fulfilled the desire of all the parties interested.—I. Bickerstaff, Love in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... European sportsmen, partridges and quails are to be had at all times; the woodcock has occasionally been shot in the hills, and the ubiquitous snipe, which arrives in September from Southern India, is identified not alone by the eccentricity of its flight, but by retaining in high perfection the qualities which have endeared it ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... autumn the woodcock were very plentiful, and as my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as the forest. I had already killed four or five of the long-billed birds, when I knocked over one, which fell into a ditch full of branches, and I was obliged to get into it, in order to pick ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was fancy which plays us strange tricks, still but a year ago, having gone to set a springe for a woodcock, I chanced to pass by yonder big oak upon a November eve, and I could have sworn that I saw it all again. I saw myself a lad, my wounded arm still bound with Lily's kerchief, climbing slowly down the hill-side, while ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... however, are not the only good fathers that carry their young (like woodcock) in their own mouths. A freshwater species of the Sea of Galilee, Chromis Andreae by name (dedicated by science to the memory of that fisherman apostle, St. Andrew, who must often have netted them), has the same ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Woodcock is already known by his previous writings, the present work will, we are persuaded, add to his reputation and increase his usefulness. The substance of the work is rich and precious almost beyond praise, and its literary workmanship bears unmistakable ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... to catch woodcock!" he said to himself, quoting Shakespeare, then went on to reflect in his own vernacular: "The chap is trying to bribe me, confound him! Well, here goes!" Thereupon he said aloud, for they were approaching the station: "If you really would ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... a boat, and getting suddenly frightened when the world grew big and strange,—in all this he is simply recalling a multitude of our own vague, happy memories of childhood. He goes out into the woods at night to tend his woodcock snares; he runs across another boy's snares, follows them, finds a woodcock caught, takes it, hurries away ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... still met with in the forests. The hare is increasing rapidly, as well as the fox. The avifauna, of course, becomes poorer; nevertheless the woods of the Steppe, and still more the forests of the Ante-Steppe, give refuge to many birds, even to the hazel-hen, the woodcock and the black-grouse. The fauna of the thickets at the bottom of the river-valleys is decidedly, rich and includes aquatic birds. The destruction of the forests and the advance of wheat into the prairies are rapidly impoverishing the Steppe fauna. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... fourpence apiece. Flights of pigeons darkened the sky, and broke down the limbs of trees on which they lighted. From Maine to Virginia these vast flocks were seen. Some years pigeons were so plentiful that they were sold for a penny a dozen in Boston. Pheasant, partridge, woodcock, and quail abounded, plover, snipe, and curlew were in the marsh-woods; in fact, in Virginia every bird familiar to Englishmen at home was found save peacock and ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... preserved. The head was at first supposed to be wanting, but Mr. Evans detected on the slab what seems to be the impression of the cranium and beak, much resembling in size and shape that of the jay or woodcock. This valuable specimen is now in the British Museum, and has been called by Professor Owen Archaeopteryx macrura. Although anatomists agree that it is a true bird, yet they also find that in the length of the bones of the tail, and some other minor points ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the brushy banks of water-courses. In many places a fair shot may reckon on from ten to fifteen brace, and I could name two guns that have not unfrequently bagged from thirty to fifty brace on the Eastern Shore; but I believe they shot with unusually "straight powder." There is a good show of woodcock at certain seasons; but it sounds strange to English ears when they speak of the season opening in June; the bird is much smaller than ours, weighing, I believe, about seven or eight ounces, and it is found much oftener in comparatively open ground than ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... it may have been a couple of young farmers taking a day off, hunting woodcock along the river. This is the time of year for the first brood to be big enough for shooting. The law opens for a short spell, and then it's on again till fall," Owen remarked, with his knowledge of such ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... for sauce: to these, a coney Is not to be despair'd of for our money; And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there; and godwit if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe'er my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we'll speak our minds, amidst ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... a common (one). This surrender of Lord Cornwallis (178) seems to have put le comble a nos disgraces. What has been said about it, either at White's or parmi les Grenouilles at Brooks's, I know not.(179) I have not been out but for an hour before dinner to Mr. Woodcock. I received the first news of this yesterday from Williams, who dined with me, but you may be sure it was a subject he did not like to dwell upon, and I chose to talk with him rather of old than of modern times, because of them we may ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... therefore obliged to employ that part of life in study which my progenitors had devoted to the hawk and hound, I was in my eighteenth year despatched to the university, without any rural honours. I had never killed a single woodcock, nor partaken one triumph over a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... with a wave of his arm, "you settle it among yourselves. Jacqueline, is it true that Le Bihan saw woodcock dropping into the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... you a song, It's not very long: The woodcock and the sparrow, The little dog has burnt his tail, And ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... are the eagle, the turkey-buzzard, the hawk, pelican, heron, gull, cormorant, crane, swan, and a great variety of wild ducks and geese. The pigeon, woodcock, and pheasant, are found in the forests ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... used to come to Amiens at that period; Colonel Woodcock and Colonel Belfield, the "Spot King," and Ernest Courage, "Jorrocks," in particular. It all became one large party at night for dinner. Maude was very popular with all the French officials, and great goodwill existed between the French ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and thus left the woods to ring again with their echoes; and it may be many russet-clad children, lurking in those broad meadows, with the bittern and the woodcock and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and hardhack and meadow-sweet, heard our salute ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday, It had been one of his periods of great exultation. He had just left Oxford, and had fled northward after some weeks in Paris to wash out the taste of civilization from his mouth among the island north-westers. He had had a great day among the woodcock, and now was finishing with a stalk after wild geese. He was furiously hungry, chilled and soaked to the bone, but riotously happy. His future seemed to stretch before him, a brighter continuation of a bright past, a time for high achievement, bold work, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the peregrine falcon, a little pigmy falcon, and five other falcons; a big brown wood-owl, 2 feet in length, a pigmy owlet measuring only 6 inches, and nine other owls; and six kites;—among the game-birds, besides pheasants, three quails, two hill-partridges, a jungle-fowl, woodcock, a snow-cock, and a snow-partridge;—among other classes of birds, nine or ten species of pigeons and doves; the European raven and a jungle crow; one jay and several magpies; two hornbills, one of which ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... so bad—only look." Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... "Our living here is extremely moderate; the markets are well supplied and cheap, beef only two and one half cents a pound, and I am able to supply a good deal myself. Partridges are frequently in the streets, and I can shoot wild turkeys within a mile or so. Squirrels and Woodcock are very abundant in the season, and fish ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... you order the racing droshky to be got out, and set off to the forest to shoot woodcock. It is pleasant making your way along the narrow path between two high walls of rye. The ears softly strike you in the face; the cornflowers cling round your legs; the quails call around; the horse moves along at a lazy trot. And here is the forest, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... at Salt Hill, he dined at the Castle Inn, and when Partridge, the host, produced his bill, which was rather exorbitant, the comedian asked him his name. "Partridge, sir," said he. "Partridge! It should have been Woodcock, by the length ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the direction of East Terrace, it may be a little too far for public convenience, but this is a question that admits of doubt. It is a neat and unostentatious brick building, at which the Rev. Mr. Woodcock performs service, whose exertions amongst the natives in the West Indies have stamped him both as a christian and a philanthropist. The two churches are calculated to hold about 1000 sittings, and the average ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... mutton taste like venison, provide for it the following gravy. Pick a very stale woodcock or snipe, and cut it to pieces, after having removed the bag from the entrails. Simmer it in some meat gravy, without seasoning; then strain it, and serve ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... silence for some time, broken only by the rattling and bumping of the cart, and once by the whir of a woodcock that volleyed across the road. Young Atkinson chewed the cud of gloomy bewilderment. At length he roused himself to ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the long green-wooded valley between the hills where he had shot his first woodcock; there was the great stone on which he had broken his best knife in a fit of geological research; there was the pool where he used to skate; there the sudden break in the lulls that gave the first view of the sea. He could not help springing ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and varied them as I exclaimed, "Louder, louder." All this time she appeared to be fast asleep.—And what a dog she was in thick cover, or in rushy swamps! No day was too long for her, nor could a woodcock or ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Goulds and Manlys, and day after day the rich smells of roast beef and the salt vapours of boiling hams trailed along the passages, and ascended through the banisters of the staircases in Beech Grove and Manly Park. Fifty chickens had been killed; presents of woodcock and snipe were received from all sides; salmon had arrived from Galway; cases of champagne from Dublin. As a wit said, 'Circe has prepared a banquet and is calling ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Diamond and in the thickets of the Coteau Sainte Genevieve, more especially when scurvy or the dearth of provisions rendered indispensable the use of fresh meats. We should have heard of grouse, woodcock, hares, beavers, foxes, caribou, bears, &c., at that period, as the probable denizens of the mounts and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... swampy island-slant, Where, busy in their grassy homes, Woodcock and snipe the hollows haunt, And ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... cause much fluttering in the dove-cote of the housekeeper's room.—"To hear Signer Gnudi talk sometimes made your blood run cold. It seemed as if you couldn't be safe anywhere from those wicked foreign barricades and massacres," as Clara put it. And yet, in point of fact, no milder man ever larded a woodcock or stuffed ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and the famous red snow of the Arctic regions is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the skin, like reptiles imbedded in rock. Elizabeth Woodcock lived eight days beneath a snow-drift, in 1799, without eating a morsel; and a Swiss family were buried beneath an avalanche, in a manger, for five months, in 1755, with no food but a trifling store of chestnuts and a small daily supply ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... you, Em, for your words of cheer. And now is the woodcock near the gin. Good-bye. Now, Harding, we'd ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... he had married his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, to whom it is supposed that he was very tenderly attached. In 1657 she died in child-birth, together with her child, an event which he has recorded in a very beautiful sonnet. This loss, added to his blindness, must have made his home, for some years, desolate and comfortless. Distress, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Adam Woodcock, the falconer of Avenel, was an Englishman by birth, but so long in the service of Glendinning, that he had lost much of his notional attachment in that which he had formed to his master. He was a favourite in his department, jealous and conceited of his ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... here again, and yonder too, and beyond that, Miss Elliott—in a dozen places they set the grass afire. If that wet east wind had not come up, nothing on earth could have saved a thousand acres of white pine—and I'm afraid to say how many deer and partridges and woodcock.... It was a savage bit of business, was ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the inside of the leg and around the vent, the flesh of freshly killed birds will be fat and fresh colored; if it is dark, and discolored, the game has been hung a long time. The wings of good ducks, geese, pheasants, and woodcock are tender to the touch; the tips of the long wing feathers of partridges are pointed in young birds, and round in old ones. Quail, snipe, and small birds should have full ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... happen every day. I believe these things are called coincidences. But to the story. The day I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, wounding ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... see now once again The glen And fern, the highland, and the thistle? And do you still remember when We heard the bright-eyed woodcock whistle Down by the rippling, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... hare or a rabbit, a pair of partridges, and a pair of grouse; or one of each, with a pheasant, a woodcock, or any other game that you can most easily obtain. Season them and put them into the soup. Add a dozen small onions, a couple of heads of celery cut small, and half a dozen sliced potatoes. Let the soup simmer till the game is sufficiently done, ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... whose sorrowful soul the delight of the beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by the thought that it was passing, passing; and that the spirit, whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... uncle; "I suppose you expected a black fire and impertinent apologies by way of substitute for warmth; a stuffy room, and damp sheets, roasted, like a woodcock, twenty ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... brick house with a narrow gateway and a dingy yard, to which it applies. At the theatre last night I saw Hamlet, and should have done better to 'sit at home and mope' like the idle workmen. In the last scene, Laertes on being asked how it was with him replied (verbatim) 'Why, like a woodcock—on account of my treachery.'" ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "Scotch woodcock be blowed," says the Captain, who, it must be confessed, does not include an appreciation of delicate humour amongst his numerous merits; "Scotch, real Scotch, a noggin of it, my boy, with soda in a long glass; glug, glug, down it goes, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... him. I have seen a physician examining a patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring teeth. It is a terrible ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... irreclaimable, and do incredible mischief. There are instances, however, of their returning to their homes bringing game with them. One known to the above gentleman, used every winter evening to bring in a woodcock; another brought back rabbits and hares; the latter was constantly caught in traps, which accident did not cure him of his wanderings, and he never struggled, but sat quietly till some one came and effected ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... trouvaille would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure. And yet the mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few rods of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. There was no growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet these ordinarily shy birds were almost as indifferent to my passing as common poultry would have been. Since bird-nesting ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... impressive than argument, that the memorial "might be attended with dangerous consequences to your person and contribute to exasperate the nation." He closed with the significant sentence: "I heartily wish you a prosperous voyage and long health." The significant words remind one of the woodcock's feather with which Wildrake warned the disguised monarch that no time was to be lost in fleeing from Woodstock. But if the hint was curt, it was no less wise. There was no doubt that it was full time for the sage to be exchanging his farewells, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a pheasant or two ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... to their nestes is gone, I can't see no woodcock, nor snipe; My dog he looks dogged and dull, My ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... went along the street, I carried my hat in my hand, And to every one that I did meet I bravely bent my band. Some did laugh, some did scoff, And some did mock at me, And some did say I was a woodcock, And ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... feathered game in his neighborhood was, of course, purely wild. He used to say, after he had been in England, that shooting in 'preserves' seemed to him very much like going out and murdering the barn-door fowl. His shooting was of the woodcock, the wild-duck, and the various marsh-birds that frequent the coast of New England.... Nor would he unmoor his dory with his 'bob and line and sinker,' for a haul of cod or hake or haddock, without having Ovid, or Agricola, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... us at the top of the Black Copse, sir," the man answered. "He was coming round by the other side—shot a woodcock there ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Cobhurst on the morning of his intended departure for Barport, bringing with him more of his manuscript and some other copying which he wished Cicely to do. He had never known until now how much he needed a secretary. He saw only the ladies, Ralph having gone off to try to shoot some woodcock. The young man was not in a good humor, for he had no dog, and his discontent was increased by the reflection that a fine setter had been presented to him, and he had not yet come into possession of it. He wanted the dog, Congo, because he thought it was ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... Bishop Osbert built a palace here about 1080. In the third year of Richard II's reign the palace was fortified under a licence to Bishop Brantyngham, but now only a very few fragments of it are still to be seen. The manor of Chudleigh was bound to provide twelve woodcock for the bishop's table on the day of his election, but should they be unobtainable, twelve pence was considered a just equivalent! In 1547 Bishop Vesey alienated 'the manor, town, palace, and limekiln,' and rather more than a hundred years later it came into the possession ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... cranes, ducks, teal, coot, snipe, and plover swarmed all around us, many being of varieties that were quite new to me, and all so tame that one could almost have knocked them over with a stick. Among these birds I especially noticed a very beautiful variety of painted snipe, almost the size of a woodcock, and with a flight more resembling that bird's than an English snipe's. In the pools, too, was a species of small alligator or enormous iguana, I do not know which, that fed, Billali told me, upon the waterfowl, also large quantities ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... had been about India when he was Viceroy here. He threw himself into it with just as much vigour. That beats me. He was a big man, of course, and I am not. I suppose that's the explanation. Anyway, the School Board was not for me. I put in my winters for some years at Corfu shooting woodcock. And in the summer I met a man or two back on leave at my club. But on the whole it was pretty dull. Yes," and he nodded his head, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice. "Yes, on the whole it was pretty dull. It will ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... his freedom, Milton lived in peace and obscurity in Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street. During the commonwealth his first wife, the mother of his three children, had died; on which he sought solace and companionship in a union with Catherine Woodcock, who survived her marriage but twelve months; and being left free once more, he, in the year of grace 1661, entered into the bonds of holy matrimony for a third time, with Elizabeth Minshul, a lady of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... b. iii, p. 70, ed. 1720.) Wit without money Woad, patents for planting of ("Woad is an herbe brought from the parts of Tolouse in France, and from Spaine, much used and very necessary in the dying of wollen cloath."—Cowell's Interpreter.) Woman Hater, the Wonning Woodcock ( simpleton) ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... handsome but poisonous B. luridus. Boletus edulis is, as its name imports, very good to eat and perfectly wholesome; so, too, is B. scaber and B. luteus. Holloa! what bird has just fled before us? it is a woodcock evidently, and has probably lately arrived in this country from the south of Europe, though woodcocks occasionally reside here all through the year. The woodcock is a very handsome bird with its dark mottled brown plumage, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... lead-like spaghetti and the bad oil and the queer cheese made him shudder, and turned things before him into a Tantalus feast of rare cruelty. There were Little Neck clams, delicious cold consomme, and white fish, and French chops with a dressing of truffles, and Roman punch and woodcock to follow, and crisp lettuce and toasted crackers-and-cheese, with a most remarkable combination of fruits and ices; and Van Bibber could eat nothing, and sat unhappily looking at his plate and shaking his head when the waiter urged him gently. "Economy!" he said, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... One afternoon he abandoned the sport in an exceedingly bad temper, and pulled up to the jaws of Cuckoo Valley. Here he landed, and after an hour's trudge in the marshy bottoms had the luck to knock over two couple of woodcock. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... night, and yet one that came near costing Kirkendall his life. Among the men left with the train was William Woodcock, Lieutenant Jacobs' servant. He was armed with a double-barreled shotgun and ordered to take ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never before noticed the sheath of his bill going over the front of the lower mandible that he may dig comfortably! But the others! the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and light, and black and tan and gold, and golden sand, and ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... spoken in jest. Many hands make light work. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Necessity is the mother of invention. Old birds are not to be caught with chaff. Old friends and old wine are best. One swallow makes not a spring, nor one woodcock a winter. People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. Possession is nine points of the law. Procrastination is the thief of time. Short reckonings make long friends. Safe bind, safe find. Strike while the iron is hot. Take ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... Square. Following the trail farther, the hardy voyager wandered over "hills and valleys, dales and fields," through a countryside where trout, mink, otter, and muskrat swam in the brooks and pools; brant, black duck, and yellow-leg splashed in the marshes and fox, rabbit, woodcock, and partridge found covert in the thicket. Here and there was a farm, but the city, then numbering one hundred thousand persons, was far away. Then, in 1824, the first stretch of the Avenue, from Waverly Place to Thirteenth Street, was opened, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... generally do. It happened that at the distance of some sixty or seventy miles farther up the vale of the Mohawk, lived a man whom she had previously known in New-Jersey, and whose occupation was that of "teaching young ideas how to shoot"—not grouse and woodcock, but to shoot forth into scions of learning. He had a son whom he desired exceedingly to send to college; but as he was forever compelled to be scraping the bottom of his scanty exchequer to supply the ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... one of those playful English names for dishes, like Pink Poodle, Scotch Woodcock (given below), Bubble and Squeak (Bubblum Squeakum), and Toad in ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... short distance below the bridge. It is probable that Hawthorne frequented the latter place, as being more remote from human habitations. He did not take to his gun again, although he could see the wild ducks in autumn, flying past his house. There were grouse and quail in the woods, and woodcock were to be found along the brook which ran through Emerson's pasture; but perhaps Hawthorne had become ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... would drop like a plummet for a thousand feet, catch himself in mid-air, and zigzag down to the nest in the spruce top, whirling, diving, tumbling, and crying aloud the while in wild, ecstatic exclamations,—just as a woodcock comes whirling, plunging, twittering down from a height to his brown mate in the alders below. Then Ismaques would mount up again and repeat his dizzy plunge, while his larger mate stood quiet in the spruce top, and the little fishhawks tiptoed about the edge of the nest, pip-pipping ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... and such as do not find it in themselves will hardly believe 'tis anywhere. But it will easily be granted, that most people make haste to be miserable; that they put on their fetters as inconsiderately as a woodcock runs into a noose, and are carried by the weakest considerations imaginable to do a thing of the greatest consequence of anything that concerns this world. I was told by one (who pretends to know him very well) that nothing tempted my cousin Osborne to marry his lady (so much) ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... shouting,—orders, presumably,—and once a clink of metal,—an iron kettle it might have been. But the sound was back of me, in front of me, at the sides of me, above me. I could not hold it. It reverberated like the drumming of a woodcock that comes to the ear from four quarters at once. And all the time the fog pressed on my eyelids like ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... philosophy, and he liked to hear it. The reader will remember that the occasion and philosophy to which we allude were, respectively, the dinner at Mr. Karl Benson's, and a conversation in which Mr. Harry Benson expressed it as his decided opinion that living in a country where one could eat woodcock and drink claret without having to pay very high taxes or do any hard work, was much better than some other things which he then and there suggested. But in the silence which often falls over a small dinner circle, and over a circle where there are good talkers and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... a perspiring and vociferous close when the Antiquary whispered an invitation to the Painter, the Patron, and the Critic. A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs heavily, even against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore down an avenue toward "Dick's" smoky realm, where they found a quiet corner ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... which the will or desire of the many is or may be made the law of the land, it is surely only right and reasonable that lovers of lark's flesh should be prevented from gratifying their taste at the cost of the destruction of so loved a bird, that they should be made to content themselves with woodcock, and snipe on toast, and golden plover, and grouse and blackcock, and any other bird of delicate flavor which does not, living, appeal so strongly to the aesthetic feelings in us and is not so ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... are full of all kinds of game,—wild cattle, does, deer, stags, bears, turkeys, partridges, parrots, quails, woodcock, wild pigeons, and ring-doves. There are also beaver, otters, and martens. The cattle of this country surpass ours in size. Their head is monstrous and their look is frightful, on account of the long, black hair with which it is surrounded and which hangs below the chin. The ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... abound in game which has been driven from the tamer parts of Europe. There are bears, wolves, jackals, wild boars, deer, chamois; and all kinds of birds, such as eagles, falcons, bustards, wild geese, pheasants, partridges, woodcock, snipe, and moorhen. For the sportsman the Balkan Peninsula is almost the only tract left in Europe offering really wild game. King Ferdinand, who recognises the tourist possibilities of his country, has lately ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... other visible member of the crew was a long, lazy-looking Yankee, whom the Skipper called Rento, and the others plain "Rent," his full name of Laurentus Woodcock being more than they could away with. But it was not to see the crew, neither the schooner (though she was a pretty schooner enough, as anybody who knew about such matters could see), that the village had come out; it was to see the exhibition, and the exhibition was ready for ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... well tanned by out-of-door living. His eyes, of an iron-grey colour, were fierce or gentle as you took him, but as a rule extraordinarily gentle. He would walk you thirty miles any day without fatigue, and shoot you a woodcock against any man; but as an angler ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... than anything on earth, with the soft, quick, dark eyes of a woodcock and a long, greenish, knitted waistcoat, black cutaway, and tight trousers strapped over his boots, opened ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and so they gave it that name, Lester calls a quail Pious Imperialis. Now that's an imperial woodpecker—that big black fellow with a red topknot that we sometimes see when we are hunting. He used to be called cock-of-the-woods, but the name was twisted around until it became woodcock, and some people believe that he is the gamey little bird we so much delight to shoot and eat. But they belong to different orders, one being a climber and the other a wader. Lester speaks of a rabbit, not knowing that there is no such thing as a wild rabbit in our country, ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... as she was, moved them artfully hither and thither, gazing all about, and was quick to note who delighted to look upon her,) soon became aware of Rinieri and said, laughing, in herself, 'I have not come hither in vain to-day; for, an I mistake not, I have caught a woodcock by the bill.' Accordingly, she fell to ogling him from time to time with the tail of her eye and studied, inasmuch as she might, to let him see that she took note of him, thinking that the more men she ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... little of everything; a few oysters first, and then dried salmon, and then ham and eggs, done in small curled rashers, and then a few collops of venison toasted, and next to that a little cold roast-pig, and a woodcock on toast to finish with, before the Scheidam and hot water. And having changed his wet things first, he seemed to be in fair appetite, and praised Annie's cooking mightily, with a kind of noise like a smack of his lips, and a rubbing of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... tickled!" said the King; "that must be with a woodcock's feather, and not with sweet sounds. Hark thee, Thomas, do thine ears know the singing of Blondel from the braying ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... foes. They lacked not food; the forest was filled with grazing deer and antlered stags. There was also abundance of smaller game,—the hare, the coney, the roe; and of birds,—the partridge, pheasant, woodcock, mallard, and heron. Fuel could be had in profusion when fire was needed. For winter shelter there were many caverns, for Sherwood forest is remarkable for its number of such places of refuge, some made by ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dress'd your woodcock, and drawn it under the leg, take out the bitter bit, put in the trales again; whilst the woodcock is roasting set under it an earthen dish with either water in or small gravy, let the woodcock drop into it, take the gravy and put to it a little butter, and thicken it with flour; your woodcock ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur that can kill woodcock in close cover, or well-grown snipe on a windy day; but there are few, who can do these things, who can kill with both barrels in their first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the wary and cautious manner of their approach, the nice modulations necessary ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... brook. These birds, being tame and common, are not much regarded either for sport or the table, yet a moorhen shot at the right time of the year—not till the frosts have begun—is delicious eating. If the bird were rare it would be thought to rival the woodcock; as it is, probably few people ever taste it. The path to Lucketts' Place from this rickyard passed a stone-quarry, where the excavated stone was built up in square heaps. In these heaps, in which there were ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... sing you a song Of the days that are long, Of the woodcock and the sparrow, Of the little dog that burnt his tail, And shall ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... Progress. Ah, hunting lost its national character assuredly with tiny new-growth trees which had not had time to grow. And, besides, one nowadays had not time for hunting. All the big game was so far away. Lucky enough if one seized the time to bring down a brace of woodcock early in the morning. At this point in Thaddeus's conversation there was a babble of talk among the convivial gentlemen, for they had all the time in the world at their disposal and could not see why he ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... shore and out of which they had taken at noon some fine fish, but at present the water was too high. Another of his sons had been out shooting, but had not shot anything; though the day before he had shot a woodcock and a partridge before the door of the house, which we must taste this evening with still some other things. Also because we were there the fuyck must be lifted again, from which they took out two fine bass, of a kind we had not yet seen. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... had funnier shooting than I've ever had—fancy snipe, my dear man, amongst palm trees! tall cocoa-nut palms, betel nuts, and toddy palms, and banana trees—big snipe, and decently tame. Fancy them dodging like woodcock at home, from a blaze of sun into the deep shadows ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... inquiries as to woodcock, the cover being just suited to them, and after a great deal of difficulty in explaining the bird to him, he declared that he knew the kind of creature perfectly, and that there were plenty of ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... dainties, wild fruits, game, flowers, to tempt the appetite and the eye of the fading wife of the man who had taught him all the English and the white man's etiquette that he had ever mastered. Night after night he would return from day-long hunting trips, his game-bag filled with delicate quail, rare woodcock, snowy-breasted partridge, and when the illusive appetite of the sick woman could be coaxed to partake of a morsel, he felt repaid for miles of tramping through forest trails, for hours ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... of standard in matters of taste. In China, a well-roasted pup, of any variety of the very variable Canis familiaris, is a dainty dish. In London the greatest exquisite delights in the taste of a half-cooked woodcock, but would scruple to eat a lady's lap-dog, even though descended, by indubitable pedigree, from a genuine "liver-and-tan" spaniel, that followed King Charles II. in his strolls through St James's Park; and which was given to her ladyship's ancestress on a day recorded, perhaps, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... for the granting of a pension to the beneficiary therein named, describing her as the "widow of Robert Woodcock, deceased, late a private in the Fourth United States Volunteer Infantry in the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt by day in the oak-scrub near the "set," and had fed at night in the swampy thickets by the rill, heard the voice of a curlew descending from the heights of the sky, and rose, on quick, glad pinions, far beyond the soaring ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... some weeks afterwards. In struggling for its liberty, it twisted itself round my arm, and discharged its excrements on my coat-sleeve, which seemed nothing more than milk, or like the chalkings of a woodcock. It made its escape from me several times by boring a hole through the gauze; I had lost it for some days at one time, when at length it was observed peeping out of a mouse-hole behind one of the cellar ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... flames got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I went round to the further side of the pan to wait for the lions, standing well out in the open, as we stood at the copse to-day where you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do, but I used to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much as mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds parting before ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... are no woodcock up there, you know, and nothing else can be shot at this time of year," Elmer continued; "but Johnny had something else to say that interested me considerably. It seems at one place he found ashes that told of a fire, ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... banks of the river Wharfe, and on the 14th of that month I had been out with my gun, endeavouring to shoot some of them. On my return I sprung this Snipe from a pond near home, and killed it. When I picked it up, I was astonished to find a Snipe with the plumage of a Woodcock, and showed it to a friend of mine, who is a good practical ornithologist, but he was as much puzzled as myself to give it a name; so not being able to find a description of it in any books to which we had access, we jumped to the conclusion that it was a hybrid between the Snipe ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... "And then the woodcock-shooting in November—I must take you back once more to my favourite Downs. With the first full moon during that month, especially if the wind be easterly or the weather calm, arrive flights of woodcocks, which drop in the covers, and are dispersed among the bushy valleys, and even over the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... your business, you foolish boy!" she retorted. "Go and try something that you do know about. You can snare a partridge, or shoot a woodcock, perhaps!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... growled one of his comrades. 'This fellow is a limb of Satan for sure, and doth follow a calling that none but a mean, snivelling, baseborn son of a gun would take to. Yet I warrant, from the look of him, that he could truss you like a woodcock if he had his great hands upon you. And you would howl for help as you did last Martinmas, when you did mistake Cooper Dick's wife ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... same nature with the Woodcock, and is ordered in every respect like it. These may be larded with Bacon upon the Breast, or else strew'd with Salt and Crumbs of Bread, while they are roasting. Besides the Sauce used for Woodcocks and Snipes, the aforesaid ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... and seemed to take an ingenuous pride in making it known that Lawrence was prospering. This gave Foster a hint that he acted on later. They, however, shot a brace of partridges in a turnip field, a widgeon that rose from a reedy tarn, and a woodcock that sprang out of a holly thicket in a bog. It was a day of gleams of sunlight, passing showers, and mist that rolled about the hills and swept away, leaving the long slopes in transient brightness, checkered with the green of mosses and the red of withered ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They were very small and piercing eyes, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... there's a breath of heat, Summer and winter at Candlemas meet. In April the year grows moist and warm the air, The old folks' lives without their doors bids fair; The woodcock then comes flying from the sea, Brings back the Spring from ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... deep, and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock and ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... companions in succession, and another procession to the parlor followed in the same order. By this admirable arrangement, whole flocks of pigeons, certain bevies of quails, shoals of flatfish, bass, and sundry woodcock, found their way into ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... forty-five pheasants, fifty-six rabbits, eleven hares, three pigeons, and a woodcock. We should have got a hundred and eighty pheasants if they hadn't dodged us in the big wood. I can't make out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... must be acknowledged not so commonly as the house-swallow; and the feat is done in so quick a manner as not to be perceptible to indifferent observers. He also advances some (I was going to say) improbable facts; as when he says of the woodcock that, 'pullos rostra portat fugiens ab hoste.' But candour forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false, because I have never been witness to such a fact. I have only to remark that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is perhaps the worst adapted ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... was scarcely a day that the old gentleman's servant did not knock at their door, bearing a present of game. The second time he came with some fine larks; next was a superb grouse; then woodcock again. Curiosity strove with astonishment ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... or Caserta. Those Neapolitan shooting parties are a thing of the past. I have heard my brother-in-law, King Leopold, tell how once, when he had been invited by the King to a shoot of large and small game at Mondragone, at which, in the course of a few days, three thousand woodcock had been killed, besides other game, he stayed on for a day longer than the other sportsmen, and in one morning he brought down sixty woodcock put up by his dog, on the very ground that had ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... unfamiliarity with the sordidness of so much human life and endeavour, amounting to a kind of consecration. A man of this stamp once told me that no emotion in his life had ever equalled that of his first woodcock. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... They are sending to the prairie for prairie oysters; to Egypt for Pot-au-feu (soupe a la mauvaise femme); to Jerusalem for artichokes, to Bath for chaps, and Brussels for sprouts. Bordeaux will be ransacked for pigeons, Scotland for Scotch woodcock, Wales for rabbits, Sardinia for sardines, and Turkey for rhubarb. Special messengers are travelling through Germany in search of sausages; others are in Ireland seeking supplies of the stew of that country. Bombay is being ransacked for its celebrated Bombay ducks, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... males at least anger must be intimately associated with love. And below both of these lies the possibility of fear. In combat the animal is defeated who is first afraid. Competitive exhibition of prowess will inspire the less able birds with a deterring fear. Young grouse and woodcock do not enter the lists with the older birds, and sing very quietly. It is the same with the very oldest birds. Audubon says that the old maids and bachelors of the Canada goose move off by themselves during the courting of the younger birds. In order to succeed in love, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... famous place. His purse was light, and when he came to scan the bill of fare, and note the large sums affixed to each item, his heart sank within him, and he waited in silent agony to hear his fair companion make her selection. After due consideration, she ordered a woodcock. Now woodcocks are expensive luxuries at Delmonico's, and the cost of one such bird represented more than the total contents of the lover's purse. He was in despair, but a lucky thought occurred to him. Turning to the lady, he asked with an ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that's the famous Irishman they used to call "Woodcock" Hussey, because he was never hit, though ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... generally clean, earth sometimes adheres to them: in one case I removed sixty-one grains, and in another case twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from the foot of a partridge, and in the earth there was a pebble as large as the seed of a vetch. Here is a better case: the leg of a woodcock was sent to me by a friend, with a little cake of dry earth attached to the shank, weighing only nine grains; and this contained a seed of the toad-rush (Juncus bufonius) which germinated and flowered. Mr. Swaysland, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... remember the woodcock, long bill, big, big eyes—look at you so trustingly I never ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... hotels here. Japan abounds in fish and game in great variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and fineness of the soil. Vandy measured some of each, and reports: "Radishes, eighteen inches, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... of rough, open land there that gave from the covert edge, with scattered brake-fern and a stream in the midst and a lot of blackthorn scrub round about. A noted place for a woodcock, also a snipe, and a spot from which trespassers were warned very careful. So Samuel took a look over to see that all was quiet, and there, in the midst, he marked a big girl struggling with a sloe-bush! But, quick though he was, she'd seen him first, and before he could ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... or minerals, one frequently comes upon evidence of the former occupation of the country. Speaking of game, the partridges are not preserved, and they are scarce; of course I was too early, but in autumn the woodcock-shooting, I understand, is first-rate. Quails and snipes are also common ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... still under my control. To-morrow or next day my brain, you know, will send in its resignation. I'm not quite certain even now whether I'm expressing myself clearly. While I've been lying here, I've kept fancying red dogs were running round me, while you were making them point at me, as if I were a woodcock. Just as if I were drunk. Do you understand ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... jorum about, And let us be merry and clever; Our hearts and our liquors are stout; Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever. 20 Let some cry up woodcock or hare, Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons; But of all the birds in the air, Here's a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. Toroddle, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a squirrel or mink; thee, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little dog,—it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... would not take precedence of her, but entirely spoiled this act of politeness by exclaiming in a rude tone, "Pass, madame, pass on!" And turning towards the King of Naples, added, loud enough to be heard, this disgraceful exclamation, "The old woodcock!" ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant |
