snipe-like

Robert, searching like a ferret, came upon a nest made of interwoven roots, and in it a pair of birds destitute of wings and tail, with four toes, a long snipe-like beak, and a covering of white feathers over the whole body, singular creatures, which seemed to connect the oviparous tribes with the mam-mifers.

In Search of the Castaways 2003

With infinite satisfaction he heard Giuseppe's voice, and even an element of grim amusement attended the Italian's shock and his subsequent snipe-like antics as he leaped to safety before an anticipated revolver barrage.

The Red Redmaynes Eden Phillpotts 1911

Robert, searching like a ferret, came upon a nest made of interwoven roots, and in it a pair of birds destitute of wings and tail, with four toes, a long snipe-like beak, and a covering of white feathers over the whole body, singular creatures, which seemed to connect the oviparous tribes with the mammifers.

In Search of the Castaways 1873

The first of Ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by Mr Hawke's sermon was in the direction of ultra-evangelicalism.

The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 1868

Ernest had fought hard against allowing himself to see this, nevertheless any third person who knew the pair would have been able to see that the connection between the two might end at any moment, for when the time for one of Ernest's snipe-like changes of flight came, he was quick in making it; the time, however, was not yet come, and the intimacy between the two was apparently all that it had ever been.

The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 1868