birdnesting

There is no friend like the old one with whom you went birdnesting in your youth, the friend that has plodded along life's road with you shoulder to shoulder.

Dollars and Sense William Crosbie Hunter

The two young Princes, Don Henri and Don Gabriel, retain their fatal habits of stuffing themselves with grape-jelly, of teasing their sisters, of taking their pleasure by going a-birdnesting, and of cutting switches for themselves from the osier-beds, mauger the laws of the realm.

Paras. 500–599 1917

But before he was out of long clothes the cloven foot began to show; he proved to be no Carthew, developed a taste for low pleasures and bad company, went birdnesting with a stable-boy before he was eleven, and when he was near twenty, and might have been expected to display at least some rudiments of the family gravity, rambled the country over with a knapsack, making sketches and keeping company in wayside inns.

The Wrecker 1898

Nothing venture, nothing win; and nobody goes birdnesting without a fall at times.

Great Sea Stories Various 1897

Mrs. Roper's eldest son, Tom -- I daresay you remember Tom, an idle little ruffian, who was always birdnesting -- has managed to get himself run over by a pair of Lord Ellangowan's waggon-horses, and now

Vixen, Volume I. 1875

The love of games among boys is certainly a healthy instinct, and though carried too far in some of our great schools, there can be no question that cricket and football, boating and hockey, bathing and birdnesting, are not only the greatest pleasures, but the best medicines for boys.

The Pleasures of Life John Lubbock 1873

Yet, excepting a few of the elder boys birdnesting, it is the rarest thing to meet a troop of children in the fields; but there they are in the road, the younger ones sprawling in the dust, their naked limbs kicking it up in clouds, and the bigger boys clambering about in the hedge-mound bounding the road, making gaps, splashing in the dirty water of the ditches.

The Toilers of the Field Richard Jefferies 1867

He played about the doors; went birdnesting when he could; and ran errands to the village.

Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson Samuel Smiles 1858

It was spring time, and he forthwith went a birdnesting in the adjoining woods and hedges.

Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson Samuel Smiles 1858

It was light employment, and he had plenty of spare time on his hands, which he spent in birdnesting, making whistles out of reeds and scrannel straws, and erecting Lilliputian mills in the little water-streams that ran into the Dewley bog.

Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson Samuel Smiles 1858