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Updated: June 17, 2025
But hark to Woodcock's whistle again. Come, and I will teach you all the trick on't as we go on." "I thank you," said Roland Graeme, endeavouring to assume an air of indifference and of superiority; "but I have another path before me, and were it otherwise, I could not tread in yours."
He pulled a feather from a woodcock's wing, and saying hastily, "For thy life, Spitfire, mind my orders I will put thee safe out at the window into the court the yard wall is not high and there will be no sentry there Fly to the Lodge, as thou wouldst win Heaven, and give this feather to Mistress Alice Lee, if possible if not, to Joceline Joliffe say I have won the wages of the young lady.
To be candid, however, I must end with confessing that, after listening to the woodcock's "hymn" a good many times, first and last, I cannot help thinking that it takes an imaginative ear to discover anything properly to be called a song in its monotonous click, click, even at its fastest and loudest.
And to worse it was soon likely to come; for no sooner did Woodcock's ditty reach the ear of the stranger page, than, uplifting his riding-rod, he exclaimed, "He who speaks irreverently of the Holy Father of the church in my presence, is the cub of a heretic wolf-bitch, and I will switch him as I would a mongrel-cur."
The woodcock is interesting as a parent because it is one of the very few birds that carry their young from place to place, and the only British bird that transports them clasped between her legs. A few others, like the swans and grebes, bear the young ones on the back, but the woodcock's method is unique.
"THY ears 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 of an ass?"
Hoping for a repetition of the same programme on the following night, I invited a friend from the city to witness it with me; one who, less fortunate than the "forest seer," had never "heard the woodcock's evening hymn," notwithstanding his knowledge of birds is a thousand-fold more than mine, as all students of American ornithology would unhesitatingly avouch were I to mention his name.
Not, however, with us in the boat to bail out the water. The woodcock's tail sticks up like a sore thumb. We are thus particular to describe the woodcock, so if you ever see one you can go right away from him. Woodcock and mosquitoes are in "cahoots."
A friend of mine had the good-fortune to see an old woodcock, which had evidently bred in his woods, flying, followed by five or six young ones; he said it was one of the prettiest bits of natural history he had ever seen. "If a woodcock had a partridge's breast He'd be the best bird that ever was dressed; If a partridge had a woodcock's thigh He'd be the best bird that ever did fly."
They prefer fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw, swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, in cookery.
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