"Woodpecker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... the subject, tried to prove that these were originally totem signs. Roman names of families and old Italian tribe-names are still often quoted as totemistic; but the Fabii and Caepiones, named after cultivated plants, and the Picentes and Hirpini, after woodpecker and wolf, though tempting to the totemist, have not persuaded Dr. Frazer to accept them as totemistic, and may be left out of account here; there may be many reasons for the adoption of such names besides the totemistic one. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... 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 ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... the 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 ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... free way to true 'Woman's Rights,' Which are to thump, strum, tap, twirl, trill, From morn till night at her own sweet will. That's why we cherish, despite male spleen, Typewriter, Piano, and Sewing-Machine! The 'woodpecker tapping' is, indeed, not in it With Emancipate Woman—no, not for a minute! Our Hotel will be, when we've won the battle, 'The Paradise of unlimited Rattle,' 'The Realm of the Spindle,' 'the Home of the Duster!'" Says Mrs. WHEELER to Mrs. CUSTER. "Nought tabooed save Man! So ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... and lithe, Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe, Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap, Ringdove ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... fish, with 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 by ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... 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 ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... 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
... equally evident that neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life—for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... group of young, stalwart maple trees, each of a different dye—gold, bronze, or red. It was here that they lingered, and Alec gathered boughs for the children till their hands were full. The noise of the golden-winged woodpecker was in the air, and the call ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... 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 was born before ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... buoyant, and lonely, the valley and 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 past—a waiting, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... debauch comes to an end right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out—twelve of the chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me plumb nervous to ketch ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the sitta europaea (the nut-hatch). Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodpecker does the same. This noise may be heard a ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... so sincerely, that 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 ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... interesting to look at nor pleasant to listen to, but are quarrelsome, and thievish. When I asked Oo-koo-hoo to name a few birds into which the spirits of white children entered, he mentioned, among others, the woodpecker—which the Indians consider to have, proportionately, the longest and sharpest tongue of all birds. That reminds me of the reply I received from one of the characters in this book, when I wrote him, among others, requesting that he grant me permission to make use ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... went through the chimney. Never speaking a word; And out of the top flew a woodpecker, For she ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees know them, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... nest. Summer was in its prime;—the parrot-flocks Darkened the passing sunshine on the rocks; 10 The chrysomel[194] and purple butterfly,[195] Amid the clear blue light, are wandering by; The humming-bird, along the myrtle bowers, With twinkling wing, is spinning o'er the flowers, The woodpecker is heard with busy bill, The mock-bird sings—and all beside is still, And look! the cataract that bursts so high, As not to mar the deep tranquillity, The tumult of its dashing fall suspends, And, stealing drop by drop, in mist descends; 20 Through whose illumined spray and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... their heads, shining with the 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 the screech of ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... rear office a red head was thrust suddenly out like a surprised woodpecker's. Barbee hurried to the entrance and looked up the street. He saw a good many people. He looked down the street and noticed a parasol ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... permitted to attend the potlatches and witness the animal and other dances, among which were the "Panther," "Red Headed Woodpecker," "Wild Swan" and the "Sawbill Duck." Generally we were welcome at the festivals, provided we did not laugh or show sign of any feeling save that of grave interest. Among my Indian acquaintances of those days was Ka-coop-et, better known in the district as Mr. Bill. Bill is a fine type ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... him through the tunnel, the lines in his face a tangle of emotions, the colonel was standing on the mat, in his favorite attitude—back to the fire, coat thrown open, thumbs in his armholes, his outstretched fingers beating woodpecker ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... every motion is elegant, and their forms of the most beautiful proportions. A kingfisher of considerable size, and splendid colouring, frequents the banks of the streams. A grey heron perches on the lower boughs of the trees, and fishes in the ponds. A small-winged woodpecker, and a large red-headed species, climb up and down the trees in sequestered places, and a thrush with a yellow beak and black head utters a sweet note among the bamboo groves and thickets; while owls, falcons, eagles and other ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... prima donna riveter. He was always clattering away like a hungry woodpecker, but he always had time to stop and discuss ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... turned them out to eat the mast. After the mast was gone he still let them run and would go out with a basket of corn and feed them. He's dumb, he can't holler. He called them by pounding with a rock on a dead snag. Since the woodpecker's came this spring them fool hawgs have nigh 'bout run ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... 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 had ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... around and looked toward Jakie's grave, then returned to the side of the tree-trunk which had escaped the ravages of fire, and ran my finger up and down, feeling the holes which the red-headed woodpecker had bored and ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... can a plant become adapted to animals, as a plant which cannot be impregnated without agency of insect; or hooked seeds depending on animal's existence: woolly animals cannot have any direct effect on seeds of plant. This point which all theories about climate adapting woodpecker{50} to crawl up trees, miseltoe, <sentence incomplete>. But if every part of a plant or animal was to vary , and if a being infinitely more sagacious than man (not an omniscient creator) during thousands and thousands of years were to select all the variations which tended towards certain ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... calm 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 ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... A woodpecker tapping on the dead top of a tree now stopped amidst a breathless stillness. Bees were droning in the air, and softly over the land came the song of a happy field hand. It was all very peaceful and very quiet; too peaceful, too ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... sat down on the 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 ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... 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 ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... trees in California, on being stripped of their bark, are found to be perforated all over with holes about the size of a musket-ball. These are pierced by the woodpecker with such precision and regularity that one might believe they had been cut out by a ship-carpenter. The summer is spent by this busy little bird in making these holes and in filling them with acorns. One acorn ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... from Constantinople, describes a species of woodpecker, about the size of a thrush, of a light, blue colour, with black marks beside the bill. "It entered my room," says he, "with all the familiarity of an old friend, hopped on the table, and picked up the crumbs and flies. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... 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 some simple ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 of Lymington and the blue misty channel which ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... imitated 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, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... 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 ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... all mystery and whisper, as she shut down the tea-pot lid, 'is sitting prosingly breaking his new laid egg in the back parlour over the City article exactly like the Woodpecker Tapping and need never know that you are here, and our little friend you are well aware may be fully trusted when she comes down from cutting out ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... 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
... sounds for January. All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound,—his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly three ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... 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 ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... 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
... apes, he comes to Italy; and landing near the spot which he calls Caicta, he learns from Macareus many particulars respecting Ulysses and the incantations of Circe, and how king Picus was changed into a woodpecker. He afterwards wages war with Turnus. Through Venulus, Turnus asks assistance of Diomedes, whose companions have been transformed into birds, and he is refused. Venulus, as he returns, sees the spot where an Apulian shepherd had been changed into an olive tree. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... apples per hundred do you find injured by the codling moth? Collect some cocoons from a pear or an apple tree in winter, place in a breeding-cage, and watch for the moths that come out. Do you ever see the woodpecker hunting for these same cocoons? Can you find cocoons that have been emptied by this bird? Estimate how many he considers a day's ration. How many ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... 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 ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... 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
... now reached 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 falleth ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... set of London. Pope made a mock-heroic poem on the subject, in which he satirized the fads and fashions of Queen Anne's age. Ordinarily Pope's fancy is of small range, and proceeds jerkily, like the flight of a woodpecker, from couplet to couplet; but here he attempts to soar like the eagle. He introduces dainty aerial creatures, gnomes, sprites, sylphs, to combat for the belles and fops in their trivial concerns; and herein we see ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... before, felt the same influences, went over the same ideas; but there was a livelier movement in her thoughts, and a freshening of sensation, like the brightness which came over the underbrush after a shower. A persistent affirmation—or denial—was going on in her, like the tapping of the woodpecker in the one tall pine tree across the chasm. Musical phrases drove each other rapidly through her mind, and the song of the cicada was now too long and too sharp. Everything seemed suddenly to take the form of a ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Campanula and a Chimaphila, which last was found at 7,000 feet. Berberis asiatica scarcely occurs below 6,000 feet, Hedera. The birds seen were the jay, barbet, red-and-black-headed, variegated short-wing, large ditto of Khegumpa, orange-breasted Trochilus, brown Fringilla, green woodpecker, black pheasant, and small squirrel of Assam ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... blithe humour; and between every mouthful he rattled or rather drolled on, now infant-like, now sage-like. He cast out the rays of his liberal humour, careless where they fell,—on the child, on the dog, on the fishes that played beneath the wave, on the cricket that chirped amidst the grass; the woodpecker tapped the tree, and the cripple's merry voice answered it in bird-like mimicry. To this riot of genial babble there was a listener, of whom neither grandfather nor grandchild was aware. Concealed by thick brushwood a few paces farther on, a young angler, who might be five ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... husband: 'at will keep de udder boys from pesterin' her. But 'member dis: de 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the form of a new Mamita. Trees and shrubs were beautiful with young, glossy foliage. Pines and firs offered their aromatic incense to the sun. Birds were singing, and bees gathering honey from the wild-flowers. A red-headed woodpecker was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... lumberers' gang Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... out, as if delving into the treasures of his future. "Whew-w-w!" he sighed. "I'll need oodles of money. I'm going to be as busy as a woodpecker in the acorn season." ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a rain was our favorite time for work, and it was pleasant to hear the tap-tap-tapping of our neighbor the woodpecker, as he located with his busy little bill the bugs in the tree limb. It was like the hammer of an industrious blacksmith breaking on the still air. His jaunty red cap and broad white shoulder cape made of him a very pretty object ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... kitchens of lonely farmsteads. If I hear the shriek of a train I shall smile when I think of its cooped and harried passengers, and plunge devious into some pathless wood, in whose depths the only sounds are the tap of the woodpecker's bill or the measured axe-strokes of the woodman. I shall fling myself down to rest under what tree I will, and pulling from my pocket the book of my choice, I shall summon a wise and cheerful companion to my side as easily ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 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 ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... 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
... deer, 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 ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... toward the top of the tree and calling.] Mr. Woodpecker! [To CHANTECLER.] We will ask the learned gentleman in the green coat. [To the WOODPECKER the upper half of whose figure appears at a round hole high up in the tree trunk; his coat is green, his waistcoat buff, and he wears a red skull-cap.] Do you say ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... 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 ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... shelter. I felt a new interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things, more disposed to be sentimental, perhaps, than if I had been ten years older, and thinking of the contrast between the warmth and jollity of their green summer haunts and the cold and darkness ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... 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, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... only, Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree, From whose branches trailed the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow. Suddenly from the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be wounded!" Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, Just as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... enough, when alarmed it flies to the trunk 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 from a depth of three or ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... woods, and was never so happy as when surrounded by their solitude. The cawing of the crows, the tapping of the sapsucker, the rat-tat-tat of the bold red-headed woodpecker inviting insects in the rotten limb to look out, and he gobbled up, the frisking of the red squirrel as he darted like a flash around to the other side of a tree trunk—-all these and more he noted as he pushed ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and charged up mileage 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 ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... 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 path, and at the first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... But by daylight my fingers were crimson'd with gore, And the half-eaten fragment was flesh at the core; And once—only once—for the love of its blush, I broke a bloom bough, but there came such a gush On my hand, that it fainted away in weak fright, While the leaf-hidden woodpecker shriek'd at the sight; And oh! such an agony thrill'd in that note, That my soul, startling up, beat its wings in my throat, As it long'd to be free of a body whose hand Was doom'd to work torments a Fury ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a woodpecker in the heart ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... 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 ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... by immense leaps to right and left that Manabozho could save his head from the sturdy blows which fell about him on every side, like pine-trees, from the hands of the Manito. He was badly bruised, and at his very wit's end, when a large woodpecker flew past and lit on a tree. It was a bird he had known on the prairie, near his ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... Woodpecker, The Wren and the Eagle, The Blackbird and Swallow, The Jackdaw and Starling, And the wonderful Peacock; The Lapwing and Peewit, The bold Yellowhammer, The bad Willy-wagtail, The Raven so awful, And the Cock with his Hens; Stone-checker, Hedge-sparrow, And Lint-white ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... the King's little eyes, made sure that he was sent for—as had often been the case—to turn into Latin some jest the King had made. His gown fell about his kneeling shins, his cap was at his side, his lean, brown, and sly face, with the long nose and crafty eyes, was like a woodpecker's. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... 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 as surprised as ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... 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
... 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
... reached and touched a certain stone on the trail near him! WHY he did this he did not know, but he clung to his sublime purpose with the courage and tenacity of a youthful Casabianca. He was cramped, tickled by dust and fir sprays; he was supremely uncomfortable—but he stayed! A woodpecker was monotonously tapping in an adjacent pine, with measured intervals of silence, which he always firmly believed was a certain telegraphy of the bird's own making; a green-and-gold lizard flashed by his foot to stiffen itself suddenly with a rigidity equal to his own. Still ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... than deliberate, so far as parasitical intent is concerned. The lapse is especially noticeable among such birds as build in hollow trees and boxes, as the woodpeckers and wagtails. Thus the English starling will occasionally impose upon and dispossess the green woodpecker. In the process of nature in such cases the stronger of the two birds would retain the nest, and thus assume the duties of foster-parent. Starting from this reasonable premise concerning the prehistoric cuckoo, it is ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... seem to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... fell from the feast of sweets in a blossom-whitened wild crab. The sharp bark of the red squirrel and the low of cattle, lazily chewing their cuds among the willows, came to him. The hammering of a woodpecker on a dead sycamore, a little above him, rolled to his straining ears like a ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... 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 have told you ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... of a certain tree that continually bar one's path. The murmur of streams and cascades fell sometimes upon our ears as we wandered in the deep shade, and mingled with the cooing of wild doves and the mysterious, haunting sound of a native woodpecker at work. Our Chinaman, who was with us on our first survey, busied himself with taking samples of the soil, and grew almost incoherent with the richness of what he called the 'dirty.' We, for our part, were no less enchanted with what we saw, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... with trepans, bores 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 ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... all the rest, and makes it part of the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant cries of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... 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
... strong belief that birds are gifted with a knowledge of herbs; the woodpecker, for instance, seeking out the Springwort to remove obstructions, and the linnet making use of the Eyebright to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... this artist have been hung on the line at the Royal Academy exhibitions a dozen times at least. From Munich she has received an official letter thanking her for sending her works to exhibitions in that city. Fellow of the Royal Painter-Etchers' Society; president of the Woodpecker Art Club, Norwich; Member of Norwich Art Circle and of a Miniature Painters' Society and the Green Park Club, London. Born in Norwich. Self-taught. Has worked in the open at Barbizon, in Normandy, in Cornwall, Devon, London, and all around the east ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... tremble in the sun; a faint mist passes through the air; the uncertain flies hover, booming like an organ; the grasshoppers, drunk with the summer, chirp eagerly and hurriedly; all is silent.... Under the vault of the trees the cry of the green woodpecker has magic sounds. Far away on the plain a peasant's voice harangues his oxen; the shoes of a horse ring out on the white road. Jean-Christophe's eyes close. Near him an ant passes along a dead branch across a furrow. He loses consciousness.... Ages have passed. He wakes. The ant has not ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a sudden rustle Fills the air! All the birds are in a bustle Everywhere. Such a ceaseless croon and twitter Overhead! Such a flash of wings that glitter Wide outspread! Far away I hear a drumming,— Tap, tap, tap! Can the woodpecker be coming After sap? Butterflies are hovering over (Swarms on swarms) Yonder meadow-patch of clover, Like snow-storms. Through the vibrant air a-tingle Buzzingly, Throbs and o'er me sails a single Bumble-bee. Lissom swayings make the willows One bright sheen, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... up the mountain every day. My daughter said she had not; but, woe is me, she was soon to hear enough of him. For one morning, before sunrise, as she came down into the wood on her way back from her forbidden digging after amber, she heard a woodpecker (which, no doubt, was old Lizzie herself), crying so dolefully, close beside her, that she went in among the bushes to see what was the matter. There was the woodpecker, sitting on the ground before a bunch of hair, which was red, and just like what old Seden's ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... wide vale of Evesham, with its ripening crops, its fruiting orchards, watered by sacred Avon. Beyond, softly blue, the hills of Malvern. On the branch hard by warbles a little bird, glad in his leafy solitude. A rabbit jumps through the fern. There sounds the laugh of a woodpecker from the copse in yonder ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... possible cause of variation. In one 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 mistletoe, 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 requiring ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... great, noisy woodpecker was the cause of the racket, he rode on toward the hard-wood ridge dominating this plateau where his guests, last season, had shot woodcock—one of the charges in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... bluejay. "Never neglect the bluejay's warning," said Molly; "he is a mischief-maker, a marplot, and a thief all the time, but nothing escapes him. He wouldn't mind harming us, but he cannot, thanks to the briers, and his enemies are ours, so it is well to heed him. If the woodpecker cries a warning you can trust him, he is honest; but he is a fool beside the bluejay, and though the bluejay often tells lies for mischief you are safe to believe him when ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... there were forges that roared from morning till night, chimneys that sent up their smoke and their poisonous vapour from one year's end to another; cannon were cast ... where now there is no harsher voice than the tap of the woodpecker.... One cannot fancy the forests of St. Leonards and Ashdown, the Wolverhampton of their age. But so it was; and not the least remarkable thing ... is the absence of traditions about the life and customs of ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... and taught man the science of medicine. This great Pearl-Feather slew the father of Niko'mis (the grandmother of Hiawatha). Hiawatha all day long fought with the magician without effect; at nightfall the woodpecker told him to strike at the tuft of hair on the magician's head, the only vulnerable place; accordingly, Hiawatha discharged his three remaining arrows at the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... easily yield. I hope so, at any rate. I should have a garden blue with cornflowers, if I were sure that this would entice the seven colours of the goldfinch to make their home in it. Last Saturday, two lesser spotted woodpeckers invaded the garden. One always imagines a woodpecker as a bird of more substantial size, and it is surprising to see this little creature, patterned on the back like something made in the Omega workshop, no bigger than a sparrow, as it hastily visits ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Just as a woodpecker begins at the bottom of a tree and taps his way upward, so a bee begins at the lower and older flowers on a spike and works up to the younger ones; a fact on which this little orchid, like many another ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... silent around, save that a busy woodpecker hammered loudly on the dead top of a chestnut tree close by, looking for a breakfast of grubs. In this fashion, then, they reached the front of the shack that seemed to have been deserted so long that vegetation was trying to claim, or cover ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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 Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... 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 of the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... be heard the measured strokes of the woodpecker. It seemed as if some one kept knock—knocking at a door, and you could even expect that some mysterious ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... hopped down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better to ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the top of an oak, and hear them break it off. They then fly to a suitable limb, and placing the acorn under one foot, hammer away at it busily, making a sound like a woodpecker's tapping, looking round from time to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon reach the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their heads to swallow while they hold the remainder very firmly with their claws. Nevertheless, it often drops to the ground ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... peacefully munching their hay, and the army teamsters were giving us a rest. I listened with delight to the plaintive, mournful tones of a turtle-dove in the woods close by, while on the dead limb of a tall tree right in the camp a woodpecker was sounding his "long roll" just as I had heard it beaten by his Northern brothers a thousand times on the trees in the Otter Creek bottom ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... 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 roof ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... which were introduced shotlike seeds, such as those of the canna. In character it was a rattle, a noise-instrument pure and simple, but of a tone by no means disagreeable to the ear, even as the note produced by a woodpecker drumming on a log is not without its pleasurable ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... 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, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... heads that contrast so strangely with the funereal pall that envelopes all around them. No living thing is seen there, nor bird, nor animal, nor insect, nor verdant plant; even the hardy fire-weed has not yet ventured to intrude on this scene of desolation, and the woodpecker, afraid of the atmosphere which charcoal has deprived of vitality, shrinks back in terror when he approaches it. Poor Dechamps, had you remained to witness this awful conflagration, you would have observed in those impenetrable boulders of granite a type of the hard, cold, unfeeling ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... brightened and the South-west blew, Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar Already, and one was racing straight and high Alone, shouting like a black warrior Challenges and menaces to the wide sky. With loud long laughter then a woodpecker Ridiculed the sadness of the owl's last cry. And through the valley where all the folk astir Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower Over dark trees and white meadows happier Than was Elysium in that happy hour, A train that roared along raised after it ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... confronted the lights, the leering scullions and the grinning maids with their great mantles; his brown, woodpecker-like face was alike crestfallen and thirsty with desire. A lean Dominican, with his brown cowl back and spectacles of horn, gabbled over his missal and took a crown's fee—then asked another by way of penitence for the sin with the maid locked up in another ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the black-and-white Downy Woodpecker, running up a telegraph pole in search of grubs; "dogs have bones to eat and I like to pick bones, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... This reminds 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 before ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... animals passed those lying in wait and came upon them before seeing them and were frightened and rushed wildly away. At times the wind arose and filled the forest with a solemn, rushing sound, and then again silence fell and only the distant notes of the cuckoo and the woodpecker ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 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 so striking and characteristic, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... Australia from the totemistic organisation. {265c} In Italy the ancient custom by which animals were the leaders of the Ver sacrum or armed migration is well known. The Piceni had for their familiar animal or totem (if we may call it so) a woodpecker; the Hirpini were like the 'descendants of the wolf' in Ossory, and practised a wolf-dance in which they imitated the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... sunshine in the cool, green 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
... they had three villages, on the lower Niobrara River, and eight bands, each under a chief. The chiefs were Standing Bear, White Eagle, Big Soldier, Traveling Buffalo, Black Crow, Over-the-land, Woodpecker, and Big-Hoofed Buffalo. ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... solitudes. Upon their ear fell the long low hushing of the wood, broken suddenly 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, wall or hedge ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... 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
... who used to sit by the road breaking stones, hardly spoke a word to Amrei; he would go sulkily from stone-heap to stone-heap, and his knocking was more incessant than the tapping of the woodpecker in Mossbrook Wood, and more regular than the piping and chirping of the grasshoppers in the neighboring ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... 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 ever kindled into more and more ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... 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 get ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... swayed toward me encouragingly, as though offering to help me down. But its top was many feet from the wall. There was an abandoned bird's nest in it; a little below that was a dead limb with a woodpecker's incision at its base. By leaning out I could see, a hundred feet or more below the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... may see the woodpecker hammering with his chisel-like bill, making a home in some dead tree. You can hear his strokes a long way through the woods. The chips fly from beneath ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... 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)
... silence that fell, she continued her caressing of his hair, while she idly watched a great gray squirrel, boisterous and hilarious, as it scampered back and forth in a distant vista of the redwoods. A crimson-crested woodpecker, energetically drilling a fallen trunk, caught and transferred her gaze. The man did not lift his head. Rather, he crushed his face closer against her knee, while his heaving shoulders marked the hardness with which ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... daylight, perched 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... l. 6. Yaffil the Woodpecker (Picus Viridus).] The name Yaffil is provincial, but is so very expressive of the noise it continually makes, that I have preferred it on that account. It is a beautiful bird, and is sometimes called the English parrot; the colour of its plumage, green, yellow, and scarlet, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... 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 ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... the previous day 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 Pud bringing up the rear, puffing and blowing. They then ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... sat 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
... piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I saw ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... 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, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... toll every hour, has a voice which unites the bark of a dog, the caw of a crow, and the croak of a frog: he is rarely seen and even cleverer than 'hair grown.' More familiar sounds are the roucoulement of the pigeon and the tapping of the woodpecker. The only fourfooted beast we saw was the small bush-antelope with black robe, of which a specimen was brought home, and the only accident was the stinging of a Kruboy by a spider more ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... good Saint said this when the little old woman went straight up the chimney, and came out at the top changed into a red-headed woodpecker with ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... persuade of any strange and remarkable event. Neither did he take the least pains to conceal his disbelief; and when you were telling him the living truth this was rather difficult to bear. When we said that a woodpecker had been seen in Walden woods nearly as large as a crow and quite as black, he shook his head and looked up at the pine trees. That was not according to his idea of a woodpecker. Neither did he like to hear anything which tended to prove the depravity of human nature. Stories of fraud ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... The steady tapping was a woodpecker at work upon an old tree. The faint musical note was another little gray bird singing the delight of his soul as he perched himself upon a twig; the light shuffling noise was the tread of a bear hunting ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... book of 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. ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Woodpecker is by far the most sociable representative of the family in the United States, and it is no unusual occurrence to see half a dozen or more in a single tree. It is also a well disposed bird, and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Evander had begun his city so long before. There the waifs were found by one of the king's shepherds, after they had been, strangely enough, taken care of for a while by a she-wolf, which gave them milk, and a woodpecker, which supplied them with other food. Faustulus was the name of this shepherd, and he took them to his wife Laurentia, though she already had twelve others to care for. The brothers, who were named ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Lincoln, Swallow, Hermit-thrush, Cedarbird, Vesper-sparrow, Cowbird, Robin redbreast, Martin, Song-sparrow, Veery, Scarlet tanager, Vireo, Summer redbird, Oriole, Blue heron, Blackbird, Hummingbird, Fifebird, Yellowbird, Wren, Whippoorwill, Linnet, Water-wagtail, Peewee, Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pigeon-woodpecker, Yokebird, Indigo-bird, Lark, Yellowthroat, Sandpiper, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 39, August 5, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various |
