d thornberry
bushes in autumn, how he knows of many things to eat beside the
thorn-apples, and how plump he gets, and how cunning! How watchful he
is, how knowing of covert, and with what a burst he lifts himself from
his hiding-place and whirls away between the tree-trunks! How quick
the eye and hand to catch him when he rises from the underbrush and is
out of sight in the wood before the untrained sportsman stops him with
what is little more than a snapshot, so instantaneously must all be
done! Yet what a dignified thing is he, and how easy to find by one
who knows his ways and what hold habit has upon his gray-brown majesty.
Should the sudden shot fail, there is the fatal weakness of the bird of
flying, as the bee flies, straight as an arrow goes, and of alighting
high, say about two hundred yards away, and trusting to the trick which
fools all other enemies to fool the man. Following the straight line
of his flight, scanning the tree-tops, will you note at last, upon some
great limb and close to the tree's trunk, an upright thing, slender,
still-hued, silent and motionless. It is so like the wood it well
might miss the tyro. It is not unsportsmanlike, it is in fair chase to
shoot, and then there comes to the ground, with a great thump, the cock
of the northern woods, and you have one of the prizes man gets by
slaying. But this is only in the wood. In the open it is quite
another thing. What a toothsome bird, too, is your ruffed grouse, how
plump and yet gamey to the taste! You must know how to cook him,
though. He must be broiled, split open neatly and well larded with
good butter, for not so juicy even as the quail is the ruffed grouse,
and he must have aid. But, broiled and buttered and seasoned, well,
what a bird he is!

There were woodcock, too, in the lowlands, and Harlson found with them
such buoyant life as we men find in sudden death of those small,
succulent creatures. To stop a woodcock on the wing as it pitches over
the willows is no simple thing, and he who does it handily is, in one
respect, greater than he who ruleth a kingdom. And, at the table--but
why talk of the woodcock? There are other game birds for the eating,
good in their various degrees, but the woodcock is not classed with
them. In him is the flavoring drawn by his long bill from the very
heart of the earth, the very aroma of nature, and all richness. They
ate peacocks' brains in Caesar's time. Later, they found there was