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.    From Wordnik.com.  [Dollars and Sense] Reference

Nothing venture, nothing win; and nobody goes birdnesting without a fall at times.    From Wordnik.com.  [Great Sea Stories] Reference

He played about the doors; went birdnesting when he could; and ran errands to the village.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson] Reference

It was spring time, and he forthwith went a birdnesting in the adjoining woods and hedges.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson] Reference

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.    From Wordnik.com.  [Vixen, Volume I.] Reference

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.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson] Reference

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.    From Wordnik.com.  [Paras. 500–599] Reference

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.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Pleasures of Life] Reference

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.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Wrecker] Reference

When the rain brought the grass out in green and filled the shallow pans on the plateau with water it was no longer simply a sign that the birdnesting season had begun and that the fishing in the Baboon Stroorn would improve now it meant that they could take cattle up from the valley, it meant that there would be fat on the herds they drove into the sale pens at Lady-burg it meant that another winter had ended and again the land was rich with life and the promise of life.    From Wordnik.com.  [When the Lion Feeds]

In summer-time he would go a-birdnesting with his children; and one day he took his little son George to see a blackbird’s nest for the first time.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson] Reference

Though birdnesting boys are not roving about.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life and Remains of John Clare "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet"] Reference