"Mallard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose; having black legs, and a bill or beak, and feathers black and white, spotted in such manner as our magpie, called in some places a Pie-Annet, which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree-goose; which place aforesaid, and all those parts adjacent, do ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... of it; and it was now four hours after noon. Quoth Roger: "The day wears and we shall by no means reach harbour before dark night, even if we do our best: art thou well used to the water, lord?" "Much as a mallard is," said Ralph. Said Roger: "That is well, for though there is a ford some mile and a half down stream, for that same reason it is the way whereby men mostly cross the water into the wildwood; and here again we are more like to ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... skirted the embattled wall, and passed through the great gates into the courtyard. Half-a-dozen soldiers lounged there, and in the shadow cast by the wall, Major Mallard, the Commandant, was slowly pacing. He stopped short at sight of Captain Blood, and saluted him, as was his due, but the smile that lifted the officer's stiff mostachios was grimly sardonic. Peter Blood's attention, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... were telescopic and microscopic; moreover, they had been trained to know such little signs as a marsh from a hen harrier in full flight, by the length of wing and tail, and a widgeon or a coot from a mallard or a teal, by the depth each swam out of the water. Gray and foggy as it was, and high as was the gorse, Rake recognized his ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Merganser Hooded Merganser Mallard Pintail Black Duck Widgeon Green-winged Teal Blue-winged Teal Shoveler Wood Duck Redhead Canvas-back Broadbill Lesser Scaup Duck Whistler Buffle-head Ruddy Duck Old Squaw Harlequin American Eider King Eider Black Coot Sea Coot White-winged Scoter Canada Goose ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... red-deer and the rabbit, Brought the trout from Gitchee Gumee— Brought the mallard from the marshes— Royal feast for boy and mother: Brought the hides of fox and beaver, Brought the skins of mink and otter, Lured the loon and took his blanket, Took his blanket for the Raven. Winter swiftly followed winter, And ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Mallard had gone mad. These were his friends, striving out of the goodness of their hearts to put the best face on what at best was a lamentable situation. Some said he was a traitor to his country. These were his enemies, personal, political ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... on the preceding page you have a pair of mallard ducks with three young ones, which are all able to swim and dive as well as their parents. You all know that, far from standing in need of instruction, young ducks take to the water by instinct, even when they ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... boschas).—The mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... revelation to Billy. This part of the country was too settled for large game, but Billy kept Saxon supplied with squirrels and quail, cottontails and jackrabbits, snipe and wild ducks. And they learned to eat roasted mallard and canvasback in the California style of sixteen minutes in a hot oven. As he became expert with shotgun and rifle, he began to regret the deer and the mountain lion he had missed down below the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in "Hamlet" and the "Iliad," in all the Scriptures and Mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... flight, he goes off smoothly and quietly, company-front. In foraging he is strictly systematic, and never forgets to set sentinels. We cannot fail to respect him while doing him the last honors. Of not inferior claim is his prairie chum and remote cousin the mallard. They are not often in close companionship, though I have seen a dozen and a half of each rise from the border and the bosom of a pond forty yards across,—one loving the open, and the other taking repose, if not food, upon the water. That there should be ponds upon these prairies is as striking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... man who feeds the sparrows in the afternoon, and beats his wife at night, was intent on the former cheerful occupation, and smiled benevolently upon the little children who watched him, open mouthed. The numerous waterfowl — mallard, teal, red-head, and dusky — waddled and dived and fought the big mouse-colored pigeons for a share of ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... trees near the bay. The heron is a frog-catcher, and he will stand very still on his long legs and patiently wait till the frog, thinking him gone, swims near. Then one dart of the long bill captures froggy, and the heron waits for another. You know the red-head, green mallard, canvas-back, and small teal ducks, no doubt, and have seen the flocks of wild geese flying and calling in the sky, or standing like patches of snow as they feed in the marshes ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... sad face compassion begat in the heart of the dark eyed Winona. Oft she came to the teepee and spoke; she brought him the tongue of the bison, Sweet nuts from the hazel and oak, and flesh of the fawn and the mallard. Soft hnpa [b] she made for his feet and leggins of velvety fawn-skin,— A blanket of beaver complete, and a hood of the hide of the otter. And oft at his feet on the mat, deftly braiding the flags and the rushes, Till the sun sought his teepee she sat, enchanted with what he related ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... to play "lame duck," just as the mother mallard does in order to deceive the wandering egg hunter, and lead him away from ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... and myself returned to our blinds. The duck flight during the fore part of the afternoon was exceedingly light. I managed to land, among others, a beautiful canvasback drake. Shortly afterwards I stopped as fine a Mallard drake as I ever saw. This was the only Mallard killed on ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... the mynah, hoopoe, vulture, robin, phoebe bird, bluebird, swallow, barn owl, flicker, oriole, jay, magpie, crow, purple grackle, starling, stork, wood pigeon, Canada goose, mallard, pintail, bob white and a few other species have accepted man at his face value and endeavored to establish with him a modus vivendi. The mallard and the graylag goose are the ancestors of our domestic ducks and geese. The jungle fowls have given us the domestic ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense—the home sense—which operates unerringly. I saw this illustrated one spring in the case of a mallard drake. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the lakes, occasionally on bays of Tahoe itself, and often in the marshy lands and sloughs of the Upper Truckee, near Tallac, ducks, mallard and teal are found. Mud chickens in abundance are also found pretty nearly everywhere all ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... wash out care from a troubled mind and cleanse it in the whipping, reeking, wet east wind—a day for a fox! And I rose in my saddle and shouted aloud as a red fox shot out of the gorse and galloped away across the endless moorland, with the feathers of a mallard still ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... vessels. We returned with our guns, and the interval for refreshments followed. It was just dusk when we sallied out again, crossed a stretch of bog-land, and took up strategic posts round a stagnant pond. Hans had been sent to drive, and the result was a fine mallard and three ducks. It was true that all fell to the pilot's gun, perhaps owing to Hans' filial instinct and his parent's canny egotism in choosing his own lair, or perhaps it was chance; but the shooting-party was none the less a triumphal success. It was celebrated with beer and music as before, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... that at too high a price. Better go back to drunken Mallard,—a great sight better. McClellan would tell us so; so would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various |
