# William Henry Hudson

William Henry Hudson (Spanish: Guillermo Enrique Hudson, 4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922) was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. He is famous for his 1904 novel Green Mansions.

## Quotes

* ... it is impossible for us not to love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made most beautiful.
** "Chapter. Birds in a Village". Birds in a Village. London: Chapman & Hall. 1893. pp. 1–82. (quote from p. 6; 232 pages)
* From the distance at intervals came the piercing cries of the cacholote ... sounding like bursts of hysterical laughter. ... This bird, which is about as large as a missel thrush, selects a low thorny bush with stout wide-spreading branches, and in the center of it builds a domed nest of sticks, perfectly spherical and four or five feet deep. The opening is at the side near the top, and leading to it there is a narrow arched gallery resting on a horizontal branch, and about fourteen inches long. So compactly made is this enormous nest that I have found it hard to break one up. I have also stood upright on the dome and stamped on it with my boots without injuring it at all.
** Idle Days in Patagonia. E. P. Dutton & Company. 1926. pp. 9–11. (1st edition, Chapman & Hall, 1893; illustrated by Alfred Hartley & Joseph Smit)
* The golden-crested wren has the distinction of being the smallest British bird; it is also one of the most widely distributed, being found throughout the United Kingdom. Furthermore, it is a resident throughout the year, is nowhere scarce, and in many places is very abundant. Yet it is well known only to those who are close observers of bird life. The gold crest is not a familiar figure, owing to its smallness and restlessness, which exceed that of all the other members of this restless family of birds, and make it difficult for the observer to see it well. Again, it is nearly always concealed from sight by the foliage, and in winter it keeps mostly among the evergreens, and at all times haunts by preference pine, fir, and yew trees. In the pale light of a winter day, more especially in cloudy weather, it is hard to see the greenish, restless little creature in his deep green bush or tree. Standing under, or close to, a wide-spreading old yew, half a dozen gold crests flitting incessantly about among the foliage in the gloomy interior of the trees look less like what they are than the small flitting shadows of birds.
** British Birds. Longmans, Green, and Company. 1911. p. 73. (1st edition 1895)
* ROLLSTONE July 2nd 1902 DEAR GARNETT Thanks for writing—also for " envying " me. I'm in a cloud of flies by day in the woods, and the result is I smart and burn and tingle and itch all night. Are these the " delights " you would like to have! But I mix myself up in the private affairs of weasels, voles, squirrels, adders, stag-beetles, snipes, peewits, &c. &c. and I get my pleasures that way and it more than compensates me for the pain. ...
** 153 letters from W. H. Hudson. London: The Nonesuch Press. 1923. p. 22. (letter # 12 of 153; edited by Edward Garnett)
* … A friend once confessed to me that he was always profoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the reason was that his sustaining belief in a superintending Power and in immortality left him when he was on that waste of waters, which have no human associations. The feeling, so intense in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of which we may be but vaguely conscious.
** Afoot in England (2nd ed.). Hutchison. 1911. p. 84. (1st edition 1909)
* One can only hope … that the countryman will say to the townsman, Go on making your laws and systems of education for your own children, who will live as you do indoors; while I shall devise a different one for mine, one which will give them hard muscles and teach them to raise the mutton and pork and cultivate the potatoes and cabbages on which we all feed.
** A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 1923. p. 6. (1st edition 1910)
* ... The gardener is usually attended by a friendly robin, and when he turns up the soil the bird will come down close to his feet to pick up the small grubs and worms. Is it not probable that the tameness of the tame young robin so frequently met with is, like that of the robin who keeps company with the gardener or woodman, an acquired habit; that the young bird has made the discovery that when a person is moving about among the plants, picking fruit perhaps, lurking insects are disturbed at the roots and small spiders and caterpillars shaken from the leaves? We are to the robin what the cow is to the wagtail and the sheep to the starling—a food finder.
** "Chapter II. Birds and Man". Birds and Man (2nd ed.). Gerald Duckworth & Company. 1915. pp. 37–57. (quote from p. 49; In the 1st edition, published by Longmans, Green & Company in 1901, the quotation is somewhat different.)
* ... the fruit-growers remind us in each recurring spring that it would be an immense advantage to the country if the village children were given one or two holidays each in March and April, and sent out to hunt and destroy queen wasps, every wasp brought in to be paid for by a bun at the public cost. That the wasp, an eater of ripe fruit, is also for six months every year a greedy devourer of caterpillars and flies injurious to plant live, is a fact the fruit-grower ignores.
** The Book of a Naturalist. Wildside Press LLC. 2007. p. 55. ISBN 1434495698. (1st edition 1919)

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on William Henry Hudson on Wikipedia
* Media related to William Henry Hudson on Wikimedia Commons
* Data related to William Henry Hudson on Wikispecies