meadow-hen

Updated: May 18, 2025

We need the tonic of wildness to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

Henry David Thoreau - Walden

"Only fired once or twice," said Halicarnassus, "just for fun, and to show her how to do it." "How not to do it, you mean," said the Anakim. "You fired forty times," I said quietly, but firmly, "and the ducks would come out and look at you as interested as could be. You know you didn't scare a little meadow-hen. They knew you couldn't hit."

Gail Hamilton - Gala-days