"Kingfisher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pools, dappled and flecked by the mirrored clouds, kissed into "cat's paws" by the faint breeze; on it goes until its farther course is lost in the shadow of the olive-green woods that tower in massive darkness against the soft amber-colored clouds and pale blue sky. The watchful kingfisher, perched on the other side of the stream, eyes me askance but has no great fear at my presence, the splash of a disturbed turtle or the heavier fall of a diving frog calling for his more earnest attention. ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... advised it. On account of the rise of the Penobscot, the water ran up this stream quite to the pond of the same name, one or two miles. The Spencer Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were now in plain sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us, the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... had not spoken, and the first report which awoke the echoes of the forest of the Far West was provoked by the appearance of a beautiful bird, resembling the kingfisher. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... shot the Ancobra River when paddling up, and was not over lucky when coming down. The big kingfisher did not put in an appearance, and the sun-birds equally failed me: the smallest item of my collection measures two and a quarter inches, and is robed in blue, crimson, and sulphur. I was fortunate enough to bring home four specimens of a rare ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... haunts—whence in spring it is pleasant to look up the brook; for the banks sloping down from the bushes to the water are yellow with primroses, and hung over with willow boughs. As the brook is straight, the eye can see under these a long way up; and presently a kingfisher, bright with azure and ruddy hues, comes down the brook, flying but just above the surface on which his reflection travels too. He perches for a moment on a branch close to the bridge, but the next sees that he is not alone, and instantly ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the time he had completed his eighth year he was familiarly acquainted with the animals of that region, and had the most lively admiration for the more interesting specimens. He watched with delight the kingfisher, and loved to distinguish the ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... convention at Guthrie and divided the land into counties. Congress made them wait five months—an age in the new country—before approving the Organic Act. The district, which a short time before had been the Unassigned Lands, became the counties of Logan, Oklahoma, Cleveland, Canadian, Kingfisher and Payne. To these was added Beaver County which in Brick Willock's day had been called "No-Man's Land," and which the law-abiding citizens, uniting against bandits and highwaymen, had sought to organize as ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... a tight-sleeved jacket, of dark red flowered satin, covered with hundreds of butterflies, embroidered in gold, interspersed with flowers. Over all, she had a variegated stiff-silk pelisse, lined with slate-blue ermine; while her nether garments consisted of a jupe of kingfisher-colour foreign ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... KINGFISHER.—This beautiful bird signifies the return of someone for whom you have been longing; if flying, news of a surprising ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... the flood swept to uprear itself in a second into pyramids of force and foam. This seemed to fascinate Clark, and he peered with unwinking eyes till a sharp clatter just over his head caused him to look up. Still he did not move his body, and a kingfisher on a branch, after regarding him for an instant with bright suspicious eyes, flung himself into the air and hovered over a nearby eddy with an irregular flapping of quick, blue wings. Then, like a bullet, he ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... no warning of his visit, and his arrival stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage as the dive of the kingfisher stirs a quiet pool. His father and mother were both in the drawing-room, but neither of his brothers was now at home. Angel entered, and closed the door ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... The kingfisher sits still on the prow of an empty boat, while in the shallow margin of the stream a buffalo lies tranquilly blissful, its eyes half closed to savour the luxury ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... there sat our child, bare-legged, watching the forbidden ground beyond the river. A fresh breeze was moving the trees and making the whole a dazzling mass of shifting light and shadow. He sat so still that a glorious violet and red kingfisher perched quite close, and, dashing into the water, came forth with a fish, and fled like a ray of light along the winding of the river. A colony of little shell parrots, too, crowded on a bough, and twittered and ran to and fro quite busily, as though they said to him, "We ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... duck might dart from the cypresses, speed across the wide green level, and become a swerving, vanishing speck on the sky. The heron might come round the bayou's bend, and suddenly take fright and fly back again. The rattling kingfisher might come up the stream, and the blue crane sail silently through the purple haze that hung between the swamp and the bayou. She would see the gulls, gray and white, on the margin of the lake, the sun setting beyond its western end, and the sky and water turning all beautiful tints; ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... to come with him, and would take nobody else; and hot day as it was, Bessie had never had such a charming walk. She kept herself from making one single fuss; and in return, he gathered wild strawberries for her, showed her a kingfisher, and took her to look in at a very grand aquarium in the fishing-tackle maker's window, where she saw some gold-fish, and a most comical little newt. And going home, they had a real good talk about their father's voyage, and how they should get on ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... er jes' a-not a-keerin':— Kingfisher gittin' up and skootin' out o' hearin'; Snipes on the t'other side, where the County Ditch is, Wadin' up and down the aidge like they'd rolled their britches! Old turkle on the root kindo-sorto drappin' Intoo th' worter like he don't know how it happen! Worter, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... talked much with children myself for I never really cared for people. They used to say that the dead body of a Kingfisher kept them safe in war and they said also that it ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... off, for lo! where, all alarmed, The small birds,[89] from the late resounding perch, Fly various, hushed their early song; and mark, Beneath the darkness of the bramble-bank That overhangs the half-seen brook, where nod The flowing rushes, dew-besprent, with breast Ruddy, and emerald wing, the kingfisher 80 Steals through the dripping sedge away. What shape Of terrors scares the woodland habitants, Marring the music of the dawn? Look round; See, where he creeps, beneath the willowy stump, Cowering and low, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... as the following were ever before him. One day, while sitting near the shore of the lake, where before him the sunlit waters played with the pebbles at his feet, he saw a beautiful kingfisher hover in mid-air for an instant, and then suddenly plunge down in the water and quickly rise up again with a fine fish in his bill. Almost instantly, from the top of an old dead tree near the shore, he observed a fierce hawk, whose ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... deep in places, but before the river came to it, it flowed for a hundred yards and more over a level gravel bottom, so shallow that even as a cub I could walk from shore to shore without the water being above my shoulders. At the edge of the pool the same black and white kingfisher was always sitting on the same branch when we came down, and he disliked our coming, and chirred at us to go away. I used to love to pretend not to understand him, and to walk solemnly through the ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... feet into the heat-palpitating air. Frequently, too, they halted to watch the motions of some tiny humming-bird hovering like a living gem over the cup of a flower, or the flight of a gaudily painted kingfisher or parrot. A great silence pervaded the woods, for the trees were for the most part so lofty that the sough of the wind in their topmost branches was inaudible, and it was the hour when the insect world indulged in its daily ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the brilliant creature for his cabinet at every opportunity, and partly by those who have an inherent love for destroying every living object around them. Gamekeepers, too, are up in arms against him, because of his inordinate love of preying on the finny tribe. Where the Kingfisher now is seen is in the most secluded places, the author adds, where the trout streams murmur through the silent woods, but seldom trod by the foot of man; or in the wooded gullies down which the stream from the mountains far above rushes and tumbles over the huge rocks, or lies in pools ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... isolation of the boat suited his humor. He did not find it true that misery loves company. At least to human beings he preferred his companions of Lone Lake—the beaver building his home among the reeds, the kingfisher, the blue heron, the wild fowl that in their flight north rested for an hour or a day upon the peaceful waters. He looked upon them as his guests, and when they spread their wings and left him again alone he felt he had been ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... the southern parts of Asia and America. The visitor next arrives before two cases (41, 42) of birds of brilliant plumage, suggestive of the regions where the humming birds float in the air "like winged flowers." The kingfisher at times startles the English pedestrian when he is sauntering near a high-banked brook;—its gaudy plumage contrasts so forcibly with the sober tints of our English song birds, that he is at first inclined to take the gay fellow for a truant cage ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... she rested, the beauty of the scene came to her. Over her the wind moved the leaves. A jay screamed far off, as if answering the cries of the boy. A kingfisher crossed and recrossed the stream with dipping sweep of his wings. The river sang with its lips to the pebbles. The vast clouds went by majestically, far above the treetops, and the snap and buzzing and ringing whir ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... kingfisher," said Chaerephon. "I never heard a bird like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kind of a bird ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... hundreds, as this is the commonest Laughing-Thrush about both Mussoorie and Simla, are typically regular and moderately broad ovals. Abnormally elongated, spherical, and pyriform varieties occur; some are nearly round like a Kingfisher's, and I have seen one almost as slender as a Swift's, but, as a rule, the eggs vary but little either in shape or colour. They are perfectly spotless, moderately glossy, and of a delicate pale greenish blue, which ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... A Kingfisher sat on the edge of a boat that a young man had prepared for a fishing expedition. A box of bait and a bucket to hold the fish were on one of the benches, whilst a fishing-rod lay across the boat, and its long line had a float at the end ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of the kingfisher; Saw bonfires of the harlot flies In the lowland, when day dies; Or marked, benighted and forlorn, The first far signal-fire of morn. These syllables that Nature spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in holes or other dark places are white without markings of any kind, as illustrated by those of the Chimney Swift, Belted Kingfisher, and all Woodpeckers. In such instances Nature shows no disposition to be lavish with her colouring matter where it ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... streak, like lightning, flashed before Perrine's eyes. It was not until it had disappeared that she realized that it was a kingfisher which had just crossed the pond. For a long time, standing quite still for fear a movement might betray her presence and cause the birds to fly away, she stood at the opening looking out at them. How pretty it ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... crimson ibises, and solitary, long-legged, contemplative cranes, and gluttonous pelicans; while myriads of screaming curlews scampered along the line of the receding tide to snap up imprudent snails and the numerous minute crustace which drift about in these brackish waters. The familiar kingfisher was also there, coming down with an occasional arrowy dash on some unsuspecting minnow, and then flapping away leisurely for a quiet meal in the shady recesses of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... repeat it, never travel alone, and above all, never go to Venice alone and without love! For young married people in their honeymoon, or a pair of lovers, the gondola is a floating boudoir, a nest upon the waters like a kingfisher's. But for one who is sad, and who stretches himself upon the sombre cushions of the bark, the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the river, and Patricia willed that they walk along its banks that they might see the white mist lift, and the silver flash of fish rising from the water, and the swoop of the kingfisher. Landless agreeing, they went down to the river, and standing upon a rocky spit of ground which ran far out into the stream, they looked down the misty expanse, then turned involuntarily and looked up. At that ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... still on the bank and watch things happening: perhaps a water-rat will swim along suspecting nothing, and then, seeing you make a movement, will dive and disappear, and suddenly come into view ever so far away on the other bank. Perhaps a kingfisher will flash by or settle on a branch overhanging the water. Kingfishers grow more rare every year, owing to the merciless and unthinking zeal with which they are shot; and maybe before long there will be no ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... by the wide mouth of the Green River, as the chart named the brook whose level stream scarce moved into the lake. A streak of blue shot up it between the banks, and a shrill pipe came back as the kingfisher hastened away. By the huge boulder of sarsen, whose shoulder projected but a few inches—in stormy times a dangerous rock to mariners—and then into the unknown narrow seas between the endless osier-beds ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... unmistakably by sharp whistles. Now and then one of them mounted a leaf, and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris. Except for this mark, recognizable almost as far as the bird could be distinguished at all, he looked exactly like our common New England towhee. Somewhere behind me was a kingfisher's rattle, and from a savanna in the same direction came the songs of meadow larks; familiar, but with something unfamiliar about them at the same time, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... brought in, and our prisoner talked and made signs to me and pointed in one direction as he tried hard to make me understand something one day; but I was alone with him, and very dense for a time, as in a crippled way I put the finishing touches to the skin of a brilliant kingfisher. ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... A kingfisher sat on a flagpole slim, And watched for a fish till his eye was dim. "I wonder," said he, "if the fishes know That I, their enemy, love them so! I sit and watch and blink my eye And watch for fish and passers-by; I must occasionally take to wing On account of the stones that past me sing. * "I nearly ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... of both sexes, more especially of the female, [being] more brightly coloured whilst young than when come to maturity and fit to breed? An imaginary instance would be if the female kingfisher (or male) became ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... clusters of blossoms, line the banks, scattering their fragrance far and near. The rancorous cry of the catbird, and the rattling call of the kingfisher, that feathered spirit of the stream, are left behind; the clear flutelike notes of the meadow lark take their place, and the hills, covered with wild flowers, roll back from its margin, as if to make room for ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... of the stream continually shut out the scene behind us and revealed as calm and lovely a one before. We glided from depth to depth, and breathed new seclusion at every turn. The shy kingfisher flew from the withered branch close at hand to another at a distance, uttering a shrill cry of anger or alarm. Ducks that had been floating there since the preceding eve were startled at our approach and skimmed along the ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rats, and singing to the brook, who sang to him again, and taught him a very old tune. By-and-by he came to the hatch, where the brook fell over with a splash, and a constant bubbling, and churning, and gurgling. A kingfisher, who had been perched on the rail of the hatch, flew off when he saw Bevis, whistling: ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... seemed to give me a sense of life. Oh! what walks I had along the grassy banks, where my friends the frogs were dreaming on the leaf of a nenuphar, and where the coquettish and delicate water lilies suddenly opened to me, behind a willow, a leaf of a Japanese album, and when the kingfisher flashed past me like a blue flame! How I loved it all, with the instinctive love of eyes which seemed to be all over my body, and with a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Yet the form of bill most in use is very simple—just a plain pair of forceps, long and sharp-pointed like scissors. This is evidently hard to beat, for birds of many sorts use it, handling it variously. The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from a "pernicious height"; the heron, high on its stilts, darts out a long and serpentine neck; the diver, with similar beak and neck, but different legs, pursues the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... fish-bones and crabs and sand, sea-weed fine and fair, and the old sycamores, the old dead trees, in the tops of whose white branches the halcyon built its nest. Well the children knew the winter days, so bright and mild, when the brave birds were breeding. Well they knew when the young kingfisher would begin to make his royal progress, with such safe dignity descending, branch by branch, until he could no longer resist Nature, but must dash out in a "fine frenzy" for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... aquaticus, Bechstein. French, "Aquassiere," "Cincle plongeur."—The Dipper or Water Ouzel, though not very common, less so, indeed, than the Kingfisher, is nevertheless a resident species, finding food all through the year in the clear pools left by the tide, and also frequenting the few inland ponds, especially the rather large ones, belonging to Mr. De Putron in the Vale, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... knew every big trout in the Teign from Fingle Bridge to the dark pools and rippling steps under Sittaford Tor, near the river's twin birthplaces. He also knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to moor; where the kingfisher's nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... daughter's society, and from illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery circle knew her but little, and were certainly more affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz., a kingfisher, which had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... done, and which will give you wealth and happiness. Ten years ago, the same year that your father died and your mother also left us, I went out one morning before daybreak to surprise the crabs asleep in the sand. As I was stooping down, hidden by a rock, I saw a kingfisher slowly floating toward the beach. The kingfisher is a sacred bird which should always be respected; knowing this, I let it alight and did not stir, for fear of frightening it. At the same moment I saw a beautiful green adder come from a cleft of the mountain ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... personally incline to MALACHI or HABAKKUK. This personal magnetism which Mr. LLOYD GEORGE radiates in the House he radiates no less in 10, Downing Street, where a special radiatorium has been added to the breakfast-room to radiate it. Imagine an April morning, a kingfisher on a woody stream, poplar-leaves in the wind, a shower of sugar shaken suddenly from a sifter, and you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... the solitudes of Red Canyon, a splendid chasm, 25 miles long, 2500 feet deep, and abounding in plunging waters. The name is from the colour of the sandstone walls. Above it are three short canyons, Kingfisher, Horseshoe, and Flaming Gorge, aggregating about 10 miles. There are there no rapids worth mentioning, but the scenic beauty is entrancing. The walls are from 1200 to 1600 feet, in places extremely precipitous. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... courses he took his path, Spied what a nest the kingfisher hath, 290 Marked the fields green to aftermath, Marked where the red-brown field-mouse ran, Loitered a while for a deep-stream ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened To the rush of the pebble-paved river between, Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened, All breathless with awe have ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... came tripping Across the green grass at my feet; A kingfisher poised, and was peering Where current ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hear the young ones chirping within. Having, with great fatigue, cut open one of these eggs, we let out a young one unfeathered, considerably larger than twenty full-grown vultures. Just as we had given this youngster his liberty the old kingfisher lighted, and seizing our captain, who had been active in breaking the egg, in one of her claws, flew with him above a mile high, and then let him drop into the sea, but not till she had beaten all his teeth out of his mouth ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... roused from his bed, half naked, took refuge on the shore, wandering over the island in the night to the old Stuyvesant mansion, whence he was the next day finally removed from America in his Majesty's vessel, the Kingfisher. The royal governor, Tryon, took refuge in the Asia ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... sheering Spring Pond, trout that jumped at sunset, the quick furry shapes of mink and muskrat, the rattling flash of a blue-winged kingfisher, a tall heron ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... paper a singular incident occurred. I heard a strange, wild note, and something brilliant dashed past me to the end of the room, and there, on a white marble bust sat a lovely kingfisher—a bird I had hardly ever seen, even at a distance, and here he had come to pay me a visit in my drawing-room. Would that I could have told him how welcome he was! but, alas! he darted about the room in wild ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... get to this place? But tell me, do the serpents ever appear? when? and where? Tell me all about their habits." "Do you see that beautiful white sandy beach?" said the bird. "Yes!" he answered. "It is there," continued the Kingfisher, "that they bask in the sun. Before they come out, the lake will appear perfectly calm; not even a ripple will appear. After midday (na-wi-qua) you will ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... spent the day; some sketched, some played croquet, some bathed in rocky inlets where the kingfisher screamed above them, some rowed to little craggy isles for wild roses, some fished, and then were taught by the boatmen to cook their fish in novel island ways. The morning grew more and more cloudless, and then in the afternoon a fog came and went again, marching by with its ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... tributary, to proceed towards the heights of the Sierra Erere. As dawn begins to redden the sky, large flocks of ducks and of a small Amazonian goose may be seen flying towards the lake. Here and there we see a cormorant, seated alone on the branch of a dead tree; or a kingfisher poises himself over the water, watching for his prey. Numerous gulls are gathered in large companies on the trees along the river-shore. Alligators lie on its surface, diving with a sudden splash at the approach of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... feet long, and a second rather larger one lay close by. From time to time we caught sight of parties of blacks hidden amongst the rank vegetation of the shores, and we saw some beautiful birds, particularly a brilliant blue kingfisher, flashing about like a jewel in the sunlight. There was another pretty little red-beaked bird; and an enormous black crane, about four feet high, with white tips to his wings, and a red and blue topknot, stalked about ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... on that hot day in the steamy jungle, and the band was refreshed—Mark having hard work to refrain from chasing some gorgeous butterfly of green and gold, or with wings painted in pearl-blue, steel, and burnished silver. At other times some lovely kingfisher, with elongated tail, settled almost within reach. Then it would be a green barbet, with bristle-armed beak and bright blue and scarlet feathers to make it gay. Or again, one of the cuckoo trogons, sitting ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... above the reeds," he went on to say. "I remember noticing that tree leaning over the water. A kingfisher was sitting on it, when we came along, and flew off with a screech. And, according to my mind, the reeds will show up just around ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Medoza the loon swam with his mate, occasionally uttering a cry of joy. Here and there the playful Hogan, the trout, sprang gracefully out of the water, in a shower of falling dew. As the maiden hastened along she scared up Wadawasee, the kingfisher, who screamed loudly. ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... moment high over the other voices, sounded the thrilling, throbbing notes of the cardinal, broken suddenly and drowned by the roll of the flicker, the wild, weird cry of the great-crested flycatcher, or the rapid, hay-rake rattle of the belted kingfisher. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake the animals haunting these places in earlier days? Trapper's Grove tells a story we feel, but need not rehearse. So, descriptive words in vegetation, or person, or characteristic, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... had stayed away, having plenty to occupy him in helping to organise the new district. He was strolling past the saloon the morning after the Secret Meeting, when down into the street, like a kingfisher into a stream, Maudie darted, and held ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... heavens. I had been lying there a full hour wondering vaguely of my last night's adventure, listening to the spring-time chorus of the birds, lazily and listlessly watching a bough that bent and waved its fan of foliage across my face, or the twinkle of the tireless kingfisher flashing down-stream in loops of light, when a blackbird lit on a branch hard by my left hand, and, all unconscious of an audience, began to pour forth his ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... saw-log legs and settling his big shoulders into the soft cushions made by the sacks, his mind went back to the old sawmill,—Baker's Mill,—and the dam backed up alongside the East Branch. An old kingfisher used to sit on a limb over the still water and watch for minnows,—a blue and white fellow with a sharp beak. He had frightened him away many a time. And there was a hole where two big trout lived. He remembered the willows, too, and the bunch of logs piled as high as ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a rule, she gave him an account of her rides and walks, and told him about the cattle and the progress of the farm generally, of how she had seen a kingfisher or noticed that the trout were rising, or that she had startled a covey of partridges in the young wheat; to all of which he seemed scarcely ever to listen, nodding his head now and again and returning often to his book before ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... A kingfisher flashed across the open on his way back to the brook near at hand, fleeing from the still splendor of the sun-fired woods, where he was but a courtier, to the little winding world of gray stones and water, where he was a ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... to lift, and creeping up over the tree-tops gradually dissolves in the sun-light, while between the trees that border the river the deep-blue sky appears, with beautiful small cumulus clouds suspended in the atmosphere. With the exception, perhaps, of a large blue kingfisher sitting in solitary state on a branch extending over the water, or a distant hornbill with its cheerful grandiose laugh, there are no evidences of animal life, nevertheless the exquisite scenery seems to lure the beholder on and on. To pass through this superb and silent realm ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... You must come down to the shore, and we will show you a clam's nest," she said, remembering that only yesterday she had discovered the nest of a kingfisher in an oak tree whose branches nearly touched the shore, and could point this ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... a February day, we may, on very rare occasions, be fortunate enough to hear unexpected sounds, such as the rattle of a belted kingfisher, or the croak of a night heron; for these birds linger until every bit of pond or lake is sealed with ice; and when a thaw comes, a lonely bat may surprise us with a short flight through the frosty air, before it returns to ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... species of kingfisher, which stands flapping its wings and attempting to sing in a ridiculous manner. It never was better described than by one observer who, after watching it through its performance, said it was ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Bien-te-veo—a species of tyrant-bird quite common in the country, with a brown back and sulphur-yellow under parts, a crest on its head, and face barred with black and white. It is a little larger than our butcher-bird and, like it, is partly rapacious in its habits. The barred face and long kingfisher-like beak give it a peculiarly knowing or cunning look, and the effect is heightened by the long trisyllabic call constantly uttered by the bird, from which it derives its name of Bien-te-veo, which means I-can-see-you. He is always letting you know that he is there, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... eyesight. The cool shadows fall Like balm upon me from the boughs o'erhead. My coming strikes a terror on the scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and Little Tim seated himself for his luncheon on a knoll carpeted with thick, tufted grass. A kingfisher, disturbed by his arrival, went rattling on his way upstream. And as the boy drew from his dingy blouse a scrap of brown paper, enclosing a bit of bread and cheese, and laid it down beside him, the stream seemed to be dancing just before him ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... "Betsey Malcolm to thunder!" and then he whistled. "Set a dog to mind a basket of meat when his chops is a-waterin' fer it! Set a kingfisher to take keer of a fish-pond! Set a cat to raisin' your orphan chickens on the bottle! Set a spider to nuss a fly sick with dyspepsy from eatin' too much molasses! I'd ruther trust a hen-hawk with a flock of patridges than to trust Betsey Malcolm with your affairs. I ha'n't walked ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... coloured green; but every mountaineer knows that sheep could not have had a colour more adapted to render them inconspicuous, and that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from the rocks which so constantly crop up on hill sides. Even the brilliant blue of the Kingfisher, which in a museum renders it so conspicuous, in its native haunts, on the contrary, makes it difficult to distinguish from a flash of light upon the water; and the richly-coloured Woodpecker wears the genuine dress of a Forester—the green coat ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... later, the Beaver, commanded by Captain Coffin, and the Elenor, commanded by Captain Bruce, arrived. Tom, once more looking down the harbor, saw the warship Kingfisher drop down below the Castle and anchor in the channel; also the Active. He understood the meaning of the movement—that the governor did not intend the ships should depart with the tea on board. He knew things ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... its beautiful bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to and fro upon a tall weed; and there, at the bend of the brook, sits an old kingfisher on a dead branch, gorged with his morning meal, and regardless of his reflected image in the still pool beneath. The goguelu[1] rises suddenly up from his tuft of grass, and, having sung a few staves of his gurgling song, drops ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... merely a layer of small fish-bones, was placed, and ended horizontally on the side of the bank. I once saw six young kingfishers sitting side by side on a dead branch, close together, evidently just out of the nest. And I was fortunate in seeing a kingfisher dart upon the water, hover for an instant like a hawk-moth over honeysuckle, and, having caught a small gudgeon, fly away with it in its beak. They, like the martin, always perch on leafless wood, so that the leaves ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the swift winged swallows dart from their homes in the steep bank of the stream; the kingfisher sounds his discordant rattle and hangs poised in mid air as he gazes into the waters below; the woodbine like a staunch friend still clings round the oak or hangs out its crimson banner in autumn; ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... kingbird, and one will often see, and more often hear, the clear, strong notes of the Western meadowlark ringing over the hills and meadows. The wise, and rather murderous, magpie goes chattering about. Here and there the quiet bluebird is seen. The kingfisher is in his appointed place. Long-crested jays, Clarke's crows, and pigmy nuthatches are plentiful, and the wild note of the chickadee is heard on every hand. Above the altitude of eight thousand feet you may hear, in June, the marvelous melody ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... silk and bright embroidery At the first call of Spring the fair young bride, On whom as yet Sorrow has laid no scar, Climbs the Kingfisher's Tower. Suddenly She sees the bloom of willows far and wide, And grieves for him she ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... sterility. The broad, flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days only in the season as water-courses, are clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on the branches of the castor- oil plant, and thence darts on grasshoppers and lizards. It is brightly coloured, but not so beautiful as the European species: in its flight, manners, and place of habitation, which is generally in the driest ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Bill large and heavy. Middle and outer toes joined for half their length. Call-note loud and prolonged, like a policeman's rattle. Solitary birds; little inclined to rove from a chosen locality. Migratory. Belted Kingfisher. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... combined to please him. He had a love for nature, and he gratified it in this pursuit. His domain abounded in those bright chalky streams which the trout love. He liked to watch the moor-hens, too, and especially a kingfisher. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to spread its green tresses over the surface. Better still, by and by a couple of stray moorhens make their appearance in the pool—strange birds, coloured glossy olive-brown, slashed with white, with splendid scarlet and yellow beaks! If by some strange chance a shining blue kingfisher were to appear it could not create a greater excitement. So much attention do they receive that the poor strangers have no peace of their lives. It is a happy time for the children, and a good time for the busy housewife, who has all the water she wants for cooking and ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee.... And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a-hidin' it, er jes' a-not a-keerin':— Kingfisher gittin' up an' skootin' out o' hearin'; Snipes on the t'other side, where the County Ditch is, Wadin' up an' down the aidge like they'd rolled their britches! Old turkle on the root kindo-sorto drappin' Intoo ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... II. and his consort, as after Charles I.'s time the leopard gave place to the unicorn for some unexplained reason. Other typical little Stuart animals and birds fill in the extra panels, such as the spotted dog who chases a little hare who is never caught, and the gaily-coloured parroquet and kingfisher, which no respectable Stuart picture would be without. The caterpillar, the ladybird, and the snail are all en evidence; and below is a real pond, covered with talc, and containing fish and ducks, the banks being made ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... same company made their appearance in the Common. Of the flycatchers, I have noted the kingbird, the least flycatcher, and the phoebe. The two former stay to breed. Twice in the fall I have found a kingfisher about the Frog Pond. Once the fellow sprung his watchman's rattle. He was perhaps my most unexpected caller, and for a minute or so I was not entirely sure whether indeed I was in Boston or not. The blue jay and the crow know too much to be caught in such a place, although one may often ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... him to the utmost, but it is long before she gives herself up to him. A mad chase through tree tops ensues, during which she constantly incites him with that mocking call, till the poor fellow is fairly driven crazy. The female kingfisher often torments her devoted lover for half a day, coming and calling him, and then taking to flight. But she never lets him out of her sight the while, looking back as she flies, and measuring her speed, and wheeling back when he suddenly gives ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... heart torn with a hundred inarticulate cries of memory and grief, he sat on beside the water, unconscious of the passing of time, his gray eyes staring sightlessly at the wood-pigeons as they flew past him, at the occasional flash of a kingfisher, at the moving panorama of summer ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... neighbouring river one of my men succeeded, in few minutes, in catching sixty fish of the silurus species the hand alone. A number of birds hovered about stream , such as the white-headed fish-eagle and the kingfisher, enormous, snowy spoonbills, ibis, martins, &c. This river issued from a mountain clump eight miles or so north of the village of Mpokwa, and comes flowing down a narrow thread of water, sinuously winding amongst tall reeds and dense brakes on either side-the home of hundreds ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... a very sociable bird. He likes to watch the Bushman at his work. He watches him as he pitches his tent, and builds his fire and cooks his supper. He is a kingfisher. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... peasants as a money-lender squeezes his victims, but the peasants' redress, the furtive musket and horrible dynamite, that was terrible. God, what a mess!... And had Granya been caught into that evil problem, a kingfisher among cormorants? ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... we are watching him the grosbeak ceases his ringing tones and drops into that dreamy, soft, melodious warble, which is characteristic of this songster as it is of the catbird. But he leaves when a belted kingfisher ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... suddenly broken by the harshest of chattering, and a crested kingfisher descends like a shot from some dead limb high up in the very tree under which you are sitting, and, skimming low over the surface of the water, finally disappears without his prey. Then the pole is almost jerked from your careless hands, and, ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... wheezing, lingered in the vicinity long enough to swallow his "peg" and acquire a disdainful opinion of his shooting from Marion, and then took himself off, leaving the room noisy with his laugh, which resembled the rattle of a startled kingfisher. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers |
