"Ortolan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our shores and open grounds. This last is believed to breed sparingly on the highest mountains of Scotland, but the majority of the examples which visit us come from northern regions, for it is a species which in summer inhabits the whole circumpolar area. The ortolan (E. hortulana), so highly prized for its delicate flavour, occasionally appears in England, but the British Islands seem to lie outside its proper range. On the continent of Europe, in Africa and throughout Asia, many other species are found, while in America the number belonging to the family ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... various kinds, wild-geese, ducks, teals, cranes, herons of many kinds not known in Europe. There are great varieties of eagles and hawks, and great numbers of small birds, particularly the rice-bird, which is very like the ortolan. There are rattlesnakes, but not near so frequent as is generally reported. There are several species of snakes, some of which are not venomous. There are crocodiles, porpoises, sturgeon, mullet, cat-fish, bass, drum, devil-fish; ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... Mere,—and Yarley Fen;—in marshes always, wherever it is; (nothing said of its behavior on ice,) and not generally found farther north than Cumberland. Its food is rather nasty—water-slugs and the like,—but it is itself as fat as an ortolan, "almost melts in the hand." (Gould.) Its own color, brown spotted with white; "the spots on the wing coverts surrounded with black, which gives them a studded or pearly appearance." (Bewick,—he means by 'pearly,' rounded or projecting.) ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin |
