"Starling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it disappeared, and the grasshopper took possession of the island, devouring, withering, scorching with a biting drought all that they did not consume. In North America it has been the same with the starling, the protector of Indian corn. [Footnote: I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am unable to confirm it.] Even the sparrow, which really does attack grain, but which protects it still more, the pilferer, the outlaw, loaded with abuse ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... hidden there in the truck,' said Conrad in conclusion, 'and heard the soldiers coming like the noise of a great hail-storm, I almost gave myself up for lost; and when the cover was dashed back, like a starling falling out of a spout, I thought my last ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said." As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. "Mr. Rushworth is so ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... kindly, half patronising air of one who feels that any genius in man or woman is a kind of disease, and that the person affected by it must be soothingly considered as a sort of "freak" or nondescript creature, like a white crow or a red starling. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... talk. That's no crow nor no starling neither," answered the man. "Better give it to me to kill. I'll pay you a penny ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... neat and cleanly, how eloquent of healthful poverty, how remote from squalid penury, the whitewashed walls, the homely furniture within. Creepers lately trained around the doorway; Christmas holly, with berries red against the window-panes; the bee-hive yonder; a starling, too, outside the threshold, in its wicker cage; in the background (all the rest of the neighbouring hamlet out of sight), the church spire tapering away into the clear blue wintry sky. All has an air of repose, of safety. Close beside you is the Presence of HOME; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hasty and thoughtless, poor fellow, told Clement that he was afraid. 'Fear!' said the French boy, drawing himself up; 'you do not know what you say. If you will be here at six to-morrow morning, when it is only just light, I will take that starling's nest on the top of yonder chimney.' 'But why not now, Clement?' said Urian, putting his arm round Clement's neck. 'Why then, and not now, just when we are in the humour for it?' 'Because we De Crequys are poor, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ravine, on one side are neat little storehouses, and buildings with tightly-closed doors; on the other side are five or six pine-log cottages with board roofs. Over each roof rises a tall pole with a starling house; over each tiny porch is an openwork iron horse's head with a stiff mane.[69] The uneven window-panes sparkle with the hues of the rainbow. Jugs holding bouquets are painted on the shutters. In front of each cottage stands sedately a precise little bench; ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... is shown by grown-up birds to helpless orphans in need of their aid. A redbreast was mentioned lately in Science Gossip as doing a deed of kindness towards a young starling one bitterly cold morning. The starling had left the nest, and was sitting frightened and shivering in a cellar, whither it had crept, too weak and hungry to fly. In vain kindly human hands offered it bread; it refused all food, till a little hungry robin came down ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and he began to get so very sleepy, that at last he replied, 'I shall never be killed except by a Prince called Lionheart; nor by him unless he can find the solitary tree, where a dog and a horse keep sentinel day and night. Even then he must pass these warders unhurt, climb the tree, kill the starling which sits singing in a golden cage on the topmost branch, tear open its crop, and destroy the bumble bee it contains. So I am safe; for it would need a lion's heart, or great wisdom, to reach the tree and overcome ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... of horses, was driving the bus from the Mansion House to the depot. The majestic yellow vehicle with its cushioned, lavishly decorated interior, its thronelike seat above the world, was an exciting affair, even when it rested in the stable yard. When the horses were hitched to it, and Starling Tucker from the high seat with whip and reins directed its swift progress, with rattles and rumbles like a real circus wagon, it was thrilling indeed. This summer marked the first admission of Wilbur to an intimacy with the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... parish had a large superficial area; but his parishioners were not many outside the village, and in that country of wide pastures the whole of his cure did not include half-a-dozen farms. There was no doctor and no squire, unless Will Starling of Rushbrooke Grange could be counted as ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... vowed to be revenged on his sable adversary. He talked of his grievance to old Mr. Parrot, till that worthy felt as indignant as his friend; but, as he could suggest no method of vengeance, Mr. Trunk called to his counsel, the celebrated City conveyancer, Mr. Starling. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... with an orchestra of his own. Years of observation have shown that the weather does control the habits of some birds—birds of distinct and regular methods of life. Two such are common—the nutmeg pigeon and the metallic starling. Both species leave this part of the North during the third week of March, flying in flocks to regions nearer the equator. For several weeks the starlings train themselves for the long Northern flight and its perils, dashing with impetuous speed through the forest and wheeling up ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to turn left along the road. Not a soul, not a single vehicle in sight; it was hard to believe that three Divisions were to make a big attack on the morrow. I halted the waggons on the road, and turned to Wilde. "Let's send Sergeant Starling (the signalling sergeant) to find where this track leads to. We'll walk up the road and find some one who can show it us on the map. There are bound to be dug-outs ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... colour of youth, and all the blue flowers have a "fey" look. Everything seems young too young to work. There is but one thing busy, a starling, fetching grubs for its little family, above my head—it must take that flight at least two hundred times a day. The children ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has flown The chimney, and is watching from the tree. They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone Stops in the middle of the floor to see. Now all you idle things, resume your toil. Hearth, put your ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... of the movement it was announced on July 23 that at the request of Mr. Edison, the American Society of Aeronautic Engineers had been formed with Henry A. Wise Wood as President and Orville Wright, Glenn H. Curtiss, W. Starling Burgess, Peter Cooper Hewitt, Elmer A. Sperry and John Hays ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... like starlings in a cage;" and he looked as if he was smiling at the well-known speech of the starling; but he did not quote it. "My mother is now saying that Mr Hope finds time for everything: and she is right. He will help us. You must see Hope, and you must like him. He is the great boast of the place, next ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... might say, no church is completely perfect. In the tower dwell unmolested a colony of owls, six of whom once attended a "reading-in" service and, seated side by side on a beam, listened with unwavering attention to the Thirty-Nine Articles. They were absent on my visit, but a small starling, swift and elusive as a spirit, flitted hither and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... it is not proper to tell of times when only some of us were naughty, so I will pass lightly over the time when Noel got up the kitchen chimney and brought three bricks and an old starling's nest and about a ton of soot down with him when he fell. They never use the big chimney in the summer, but cook in the wash-house. Nor do I wish to dwell on what H. O. did when he went into the dairy. I do not ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... however, in Demerara is not actuated by selfish motives: this is the cassique. In size he is larger than the starling: he courts the society of man, but disdains to live by his labours. When Nature calls for support he repairs to the neighbouring forest, and there partakes of the store of fruits and seeds which she has produced in abundance ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... an unusually strong blessing, perhaps insuring, on top of freedom from poverty and disease, the prolongation of life until the coming of the Messiah. Yet it is not improbable that all these tales were insecurely based upon a single instance wherein one Starling Driggs, believing himself to stand in urgent need of a blessing, had offered to pay Uncle John for the service in vinegar. It had been unexceptionable vinegar, as Uncle John himself admitted, but being a hundred miles from home, and having ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... THE starling is a trim little bird, measuring from seven to eight inches in length. He goes dressed in black, and his coat glistens like satin in the sunlight. In autumn, however, after moulting, he looks as if ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... life. He walked away from his unhappy home, and, sick not only of his own existence but of everybody else's, turned aside down Gaswork Lane to avoid the town, and, crossing the wooden bridge that goes over the canal to Starling's Cottages, was presently alone in the damp pine woods and out of sight and sound of human habitation. He would stand it no longer. He repeated aloud with blasphemies unusual to him that he would stand ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... speaking a caressing word to little Bijou, who leaped about, and barked, and whined with delight at having her out of doors again. There was a seat in the wall, and her ladies spread cushions and cloaks for her to sit on it, warmed as it was by the sun; and there she rested, watching a starling running about on the turf, his gold-bespangled green plumage glistening. She hardly spoke; she seemed to be making the most of the repose of the fair calm day. Humfrey would not intrude by making her sensible of his presence, but he watched her from his station, wondering ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never marry, nor have children, What takes that from him? Only the bare name Of being a father, or the weak delight To see the little wanton ride a-cock-horse Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter Like a taught starling. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... hero finds himself in the Fleet; and another of his letters will show what enjoyment the writing of it had given to himself. I had sent to ask him where we were to meet for a proposed ride that day. "HERE," was his reply. "I am slippered and jacketed, and, like that same starling who is so very seldom quoted, can't get out. I am getting on, thank Heaven, like 'a house o' fire,' and think the next Pickwick will bang all the others. I shall expect you at one, and we will walk to the stable ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... ever remember it as the most beautiful warbling that I ever heard come out of the throat of bird. All other bird singing is loud, vulgar, and unsympathetic in comparison. The bird itself is about as big as a starling, and is of a dull blue colour. It is easily tamed, and becomes very much attached to its master and mistress, but it is apt to die in confinement before very long. It fights all others of its own species; it is now a rare bird, and is doomed, I fear, ere long to extinction, to ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... exclaimed he, starling up from his kneeling posture, and turning anxiously in the direction whence the disturbance had proceeded, at the same time thoughtlessly relinquishing his grasp of the lid, which fell with a heavy crash upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... supernatural. That nothing natural can possibly conceive what is above nature is indeed so palpably true as to deserve a place among philosophical axioms. Imagination itself, however lofty, wild, or daring its flights, cannot quit the universe—matter is its prison, where, like Sterne's starling, it is 'caged and can't get out.' Fortunately, however, imagination, though a prisoner, has abundance of room to legitimately exercise itself in. But, is it not obvious that if, as Des Cartes and D'Alembert contended, the 'imitations of imagination are imitations entirely confined ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Office of Public Health of the Empire (Reichsgesundheitsamt) and those given in England by Professor Starling and laid before the British Parliament, leave ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... about sixty into a coop, evidently tired out." And two days later, 17th March, "Over fifty of the birds cooped on 15th died, though fed. Sparrows, finches, water-wagtails, two small birds, name unknown, one kind like a linnet, and a large bird like a starling. In all there have been on board over seventy birds, besides some that hovered about us for some time and then fell into the sea exhausted." Easterly winds and severe weather were experienced at the time.[171] The spot where this remarkable flight of birds was met with is ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of cacique—of which there are several—like the blue jay of the northern part of the continent, is celebrated for its imitative powers. It is one of the handsomest in form of the feathered tribe, in size somewhat larger than a starling. On each wing it has a yellow spot; and its rump, belly, and half the tail are of the same colour. All the rest of the body is black; while the beak is ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... entered the sitting-room, his hair white as if he had walked through the snow with his hat off; and William H. Prescott, with his eyesight restored, happened in from Mexico, a cactus in his buttonhole; and Audubon set a cage of birds on the table—Baltimore oriole, chaffinch, starling and bobolink doing their prettiest; and Christopher North thumped his gun down on the hall floor, and hung his 'sporting jacket' on the hat-rack, and shook the carpet brown with Highland heather. As Walter Scott came in his dog scampered in after him, and put ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... and tail of the rosy starling are glossy black, and the remainder of the plumage is pale salmon in the hen and the young cock, and faint rose-colour in ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... titmouse, in October 1821, I observed a young male bird making advances of a most marked character to a young hen, whilst the hen drooped its wings and spread out its tail—in short, these two young birds were behaving exactly as do the full-grown birds before pairing in the spring. The young cock starling conducts itself precisely as if it wished to pair. At the beginning of September, as soon as moulting is completed, this bird returns to its birthplace, apparently in order to take possession of the nest. It perches on the tree-top, just like the full-grown bird in March, and ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... of plaint, Or the starling's courtship quaint, Heart made much of; 'twas a boon Won from silence, and too soon Wasted in the ample air: Building rooks far distant were. Scarce at all would speak the rills, And I saw the idle hills, In their amber hazes deep, Fold ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... speaking lacked dignity and weight; so he loaded himself with the works of Edmund Burke; and now he discusses the smallest subject with a ponderosity suited to the largest. The charm of Alfred Tennyson Starling's early lyrics was unmistakable. But in an evil day a newspaper announced that his poetry smelled of the lamp and was deficient in virility. Alfred took it painfully to heart, and fell into a violent state of Whitmania. Have you seen his patient ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... robin in everything except color. He is familiar, hardy, abundant, thievish, and his habits, manners, and song recall our bird to the life. Our own native blackbirds, the crow blackbird, the rusty grackle, the cowbird, and the red-shouldered starling, are not songsters, even in the latitude allowable to poets; neither are they whistlers, unless we credit them with a "split-whistle," as Thoreau does. The two first named have a sort of musical cackle and gurgle in spring ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... with a smile of gravity and with much candor in his blue eyes, "in China, such a one as you are as safe as a Javanese starling in a nest of hungry yellow snakes. You will travel by daylight, or not at all. You will go from Kowloon to your venerable grandmother by train. You will carry a knife, and you will use it without hesitation. Have ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... on the hedge; the reed pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust through a shield; the eggs of the starling are laid in the knot-hole of the pollard elm—common eggs, but within each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond of two hundred carats—the dot of protoplasm, the atom of life. There was one row of pollards where they always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... goldfinch; on a piping bullfinch; on the object of the nightingale's song; on song-birds; on the pugnacity of male fine-plumaged birds; on the courtship of birds; on the finding of new mates by Peregrine falcons and Kestrels; on the bullfinch and starling; on the cause of birds remaining unpaired; on starlings and parrots living in triplets; on recognition of colour by birds; on hybrid birds; on the selection of a greenfinch by a female canary; on a case of rivalry of female ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... at once You'd be at home—she'd always be at home! Now comes the story of the farm among 25 The cherry orchards, and how April snowed White blossoms on her as she ran. Why, fool, They've rubbed the chalk-mark out, how tall you were, Twisted your starling's neck, broken his cage, Made ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Perceuena of the shippe named Tamisari, for to receiue the rest of all the pilgrimes money, which was in all after the rate of 55. Crownes for euery man for that voyage, after the rate of fiue shillings starling to the crowne: This done, he ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... a parrot," replied the woman, who had not yet descended from her perch; "but a starling, and I am trying to teach it to say 'Have ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... advertisements of so many acres of arable land and a grass meadow with farm-houses and buildings, a river, a garden, a mill and millponds, for sale. And his imagination pictured the garden-paths, flowers and fruit, starling cotes, the carp in the pond, and all that sort of thing, you know. These imaginary pictures were of different kinds according to the advertisements which he came across, but for some reason in every one of them he had always to have gooseberries. He could ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mine own sweet jewel, What I have for my darling: A robin-redbreast and a starling. These I give both in hope to move thee; Yet thou say'st I ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... kinds are extremely abundant on the undulating grassy plains around Maldonado. There are several species of a family allied in structure and manners to our Starling: one of these (Molothrus niger) is remarkable from its habits. Several may often be seen standing together on the back of a cow or horse; and while perched on a hedge, pluming themselves in the sun, they sometimes attempt to sing, or rather to hiss; the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... therefore more properly an inhabitant of the warm valleys. I do not remember seeing it at Mussoorie, which is 6500 to 7000 feet, although at 5200 feet on the same range it is abundant during summer. Its notes and flight are very much those of the Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), and it delights to take a short and rapid flight and return twittering to perch on the very summit of the forest trees. I have never seen it on the ground, and its food ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... answer this question; so we got the Bible Dictionary and read there that a great many of our smaller birds, such as the starling, linnet, goldfinch, blackbird, lark, wagtail, and thrush, are found in Palestine, and that the Tree-sparrow has been seen in great numbers on Mount Olivet; while another kind, the Rock-sparrow, is often found perched upon a large stone, all alone, like the solitary ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... "Student's Flora." Get all the help you can, if you wish to work the subject out, from foreign botanists, both European and American; and I think that, on the whole, you will come to some such theory as this for a general starling platform. We do not owe our flora—I must keep to the flora just now—to so many different regions, or types, as Mr. Watson conceives, but to three, namely, an European or Germanic flora, from the south-east; an Atlantic flora, from ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... become thee to dirty thy hands."—"Very well," said the serpent; "he shall make the boiling water ready!" So they ordered the little Tsar to go and chop wood and get the hot water ready. Then he went and chopped wood, but as he was doing so, a starling flew out and said to him, "Not so fast, not so fast, little Tsar Novishny. Be as slow as thou canst, for thy dogs have gnawed their way ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... Dawn wakes the starling, The sparrow stirs when he sees day break; But all the meadow Is wrapped in shadow, And you must ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... simply. "I should like to see it—just to see it, as one looks through a grating into the king's grapehouses here. But I should not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and the chickens—and what would the garden do without me?—and the children, and the old Annemie? I could not anyhow, anywhere be any happier than I am. There is ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... had a singular appearance. It consisted of four persons, and these were derived from three orders of the animate creation. Two were human. The third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white and tan dog. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... threw himself on his bed. The volume he had chosen was a fine copy of the Sentimental Journey, his favorite reading. The italicised wit and glossy licentiousness of Yorick did not fix attention. Neither the "Dead Ass," nor the "Starling," nor the fair "Fille de chambre," had now a charm to steal the reader from his petty miseries of head and heart. Casting the book aside, he again arose, paced nervously up and down the cramped cabin, and once more sought comfort in the cushioned seat. Prudence bade him seek home before ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... object to undertake At the same high pitch as an altercation. It's not for me, of course, to judge How much a deaf lady ought to begrudge; But half-a-guinea seems no great matter - Letting alone more rational patter - Only to hear a parrot chatter: Not to mention that feathered wit, The starling, who speaks when his tongue is slit; The pies and jays that utter words, And other Dicky Gossips of birds, That talk with as much good sense and decorum As many Beaks who belong to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... ornithologists agreed that the curious starling-like bird known as the spotted-wing (Psaroglossa spiloptera) was a kind of aberrant starling, but systematists have lately relegated it to the Crateropodidae. At Mussoorie the natives call it the Puli. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Mrs. Leaver are pronounced by Mrs. Starling, a widow lady who lost her husband when she was young, and lost herself about the same-time—for by her own count she has never since grown five years older—to be a perfect model of wedded felicity. 'You would suppose,' says the romantic lady, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... you; thinke your self a Baby, [Sidenote: I will] That you haue tane his tenders for true pay, [Sidenote: tane these] Which are not starling. Tender your selfe more dearly; [Sidenote: sterling] Or not to crack the winde of the poore Phrase, [Sidenote: (not ... &c.] Roaming it[3] thus, you'l tender me a foole.[4] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... mouth of the briery aperture in the strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw him take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft of wall-flowers. What was there of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan was not, in our belief, able to perform? We were all several years younger—boys from nine to fifteen—and he had shot up into ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... starling flew to his mother's window stane, It whistled and it sang, And aye, the ower word of the tune Was 'Johnnie tarries lang.' ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was contented to release the king of England of his faith giuen by oth for the contract made with his sister Alice: in consideration of which releasement and deliuerance, the king of England couenanted to giue yearelie to the French king two thousand marks of starling coine for the terme of fiue yeares togither: and at his returne home, it was agreed, that he shuld also deliuer vnto the French king his sister the said ladie Alice, with the towne of Gisors, and all other things which the French king had granted to him with ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... honors away, but Mr. J. M.'s was very taking. Our 'crambo' playing was rather dull, all of us having exhausted ourselves on the sonnets. We seem to have settled ourselves quietly into a tone of resignation in regard to the weather; we know that we cannot 'get out,' any more than Sterne's Starling, and we know that it is best ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... was named the cloud-bird, on account of its starling-like habit of wheeling about over its feeding-ground, the birds throwing themselves into masses, then scattering and gathering again many times, so that when viewed at a distance a large flock had the appearance of a cloud, growing dark and thin ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... years before. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that his works have any connection whatsoever with Richardson's novels. One is tempted to think that Behmer confuses Sterne with Fielding, whose career as a novelist did begin as a parodist of the vain little printer. That the "Starling" in the Sentimental Journey, which is passed on from hand to hand, and the burden of government which wanders similarly in "Der Goldene Spiegel" constitute a parallelism, as Behmer suggests (p.48), seems rather far-fetched. It could also be hardly demonstrated that what Behmer calls "die ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... testimony, affirmed that "no student in England has EVER SEEN PAIN in an animal experiment"—a statement which in one sense everyone can accept, for who can say that he ever SAW a pain anywhere? Professor Starling, of the University College in London, declared that during his seventeen years of experimentation "on no occasion HAVE I EVER SEEN PAIN inflicted in any experiment on dog, cat, or rabbit in a physiological laboratory ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... starling will display the red That lights his wings; The wren will know the sweet things said By him who swings And ducks and dips his crested head ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... from Spain, via Saxony and Australia, is the basis of the flocks. The black swan and magpie represent the birds of New Holland. The Indian minah, after becoming common, is said to be retreating before the English starling. The first red deer came from Germany. And side by side with these strangers and with the trees and plants which colonists call specifically "English"—for the word "British" is almost unknown in the Colony—the native flora is beginning ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... not say more of that meeting. Outside the old woman cursed and reviled Howel and Evan and the captive in turns unceasingly; but I heeded her no more than one heeds a starling chattering on the roof in the early morning. I had all that I sought, and aught else ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... the women's apartments in the palace there hung two cages, in one of which was a parrot and in the other a starling, and these two birds could talk as well as human beings. They were both pets of the princess who always fed them herself, and the next day, as she was walking grandly about with her treasure tied round her ankle, she heard the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... whole tobacco-pipe bowl full, carefully measured out of the old yellow canvas money-bag that did for a shot belt. A starling could be knocked off the chimney with this charge easily, and so could a blackbird roosting in a bush at night. But a woodpigeon nearly thirty yards distant was another matter; for the old folk (and the birdkeepers ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... man of great perceptions," she replied. "I am going to like you, I am sure. Come, there is Mr. Starling standing by the door. What do you ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from a greenish one, the colour of a starling's egg, to a grey ultramarine colour, hard to use because so full of colour, but incomparable when right. In these you must carefully avoid the point at which the green overcomes the blue and turns it rank, or that at which the red overcomes the blue and produces those woeful hues of pale ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... from their having been at some former period under cultivation.—The prevailing trees on the surrounding heights are firs, Pinus pendula and cedroides. No fish are to be seen in the river. The birds are the raven, white-necked starling, bullfinch, crimson and yellow shrikelets, blue tomtits, lesser ditto with two stripes on the head, white-rumped waterchat, red-tailed ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... little Southern bird which haunts the gardens of Greece, sings its "tio, tio, tio, tio, tix" of Aristophanes' comedy on this wind-swept Northern isle; the rose-coloured starling, that rare and beautiful bird of a warmer clime, has been seen here in the spring; the eagle and the golden eagle hover above its crags; the sparrow-hawk and the great gyrfalcon prey upon the small birds and little rodents; even the wild and ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Said the Starling, "conjectur'd 'twas so; It must of necessity follow: For more moss, straw, and feathers, I know, It requires, to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... them from here you wouldn't kill anything. Fine shot won't carry so far; it loses its force. And why should you kill them, anyway? They're birds destructive of the fruit, that's true; still, they're fowls of the air, works of the Lord. The starling sings, you know. . . . And what does it sing, pray? A song of praise. . . . 'All ye fowls of the air, praise ye the Lord.' No. I do believe they have settled in the ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in this respect in the powers which their structure furnishes, can only perform acts of imitation with their vocal organ; this organ, by their habitual efforts to render the sounds, and to vary them, becomes in them very perfect. Thus we know that several birds (the parrot, starling, raven, jay, magpie, canary bird, etc.) ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... freshened her, cleansing her of the last lingering taint of joss-sticks. The cardinal birds were very busy in the scarlet masses of Japanese quince; orioles fluttered among golden Forsythia; here and there an exotic starling preened and peered at the burnished purple grackle, stalking solemnly ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... "the starling! Mind you the starling with the broken wing, which you and I found in the woods and carried home; and you did set his wing, and tamed him, and taught him to say 'Hugh'? Each time I brought him food, you said: 'Hugh! Hugh!' And soon the starling, seeing me coming, also ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... wheat, rie, barley, oates, pease, buckway, psnytha, that in taste is somewhat like to rice. Of all these graines the Countrey yeeldeth very sufficient with an ouerplus quantitie, so that wheate is solde sometime for two alteens or ten pence starling the Chetfird, which maketh ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... not for me, of course, to judge How much a Deaf Lady ought to begrudge; But half-a-guinea seems no great matter— Letting alone more rational patter— Only to hear a parrot chatter: Not to mention that feather'd wit, The Starling, who speaks when his tongue is slit; The Pies and Jays that utter words, And other Dicky Gossips of birds, That talk with as much good sense and decorum, As many Beaks ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... apricots and plums and peaches were ripening on the laden, starling-haunted boughs, she would wander in the orchard belonging to the house, while the heavy drenching rains drummed on the leaves overhead, and sudden furious thunderstorms rent the livid-coloured clouds above with jagged scythes and reaping-hooks ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... when winds unleashed were snarling Behind the frost-bound hours, A snow-bird sturdier than the starling, A storm-bird fledged for showers, That spring might smile to find you, darling, First born of all ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lazy, but his thoughts were always wandering. Learning did not interest him. He had other things to think about: would the last leaves in the garden have fallen when he got home from school at noon? And would the starling, for whom he had nailed the little box high up in the pine-tree, come again next spring? It had picked off all the black berries from the elderberry, and had then gone away screaming; if it did not find any more elderberries, what would it ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... starling rolls his "r's" with unctuous joy And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy, Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl And next the "Be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... even a false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I was ever able to make, would keep ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... Starling, when the connection between the brain and the muscles of an animal is severed by curare, by anesthetics, by the division of the cord and nerves, then the heat-producing power of the animal so modified is on a level with that of cold-blooded animals. With cold the temperature ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... to say that they were never really raised out of idolatry. On getting nearer we saw that the king was standing in front of the temple, with a drawn scimitar of enormous size in his hand. We were hurrying forward, when the starling cry arose. "The queen is dead, the ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... exasperated, denounced the Minister as capable of sleeping while he ruined his country; the latter only complained how cruel it was to be denied a solace which other criminals so often enjoyed, that of having a night's rest before their fate. On Mr. Martin's proposal to have a starling placed near the chair, and taught to repeat the cry of "Infamous coalition!" Lord North coolly suggested, that, as long as the worthy member was preserved to them, it would be a needless waste of the public money, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... as much for another of the much-quoted pieces from the Sentimental Journey—the description of the caged starling. The passage is ingeniously worked into its context; and if we were to consider it as only intended to serve the purpose of a sudden and dramatic discomfiture of the Traveller's somewhat inconsiderate moralizings on captivity, it would be well enough. But, regarded as a ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... town, and has all the characteristics of one. At Homburg or Aix-les-Bains you walk up a street, turn a corner and find yourself among pine-trees, or in a smiling valley with a blue lake blinking at the sun. Here the baths are in the centre of the town, and, like a certain starling, you feel you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... was just climbing above the treetops when the radio boys and Frank Brandon set out over the forest road, to the accompaniment of a full chorus of lusty feathered singers. Robin and starling and thrush combined to make the dewy morning gladsome, and the boys whistled back at them and wished Larry Bartlett were there to ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... still, and Aldonza was of a nature that was slow to take offence, while it was quite true that Dennet had been free from jealousy of the jackdaw, and only triumphant in Stephen's prowess and her own starling. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and jerks out its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquant expression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, but a starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in its habits, being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color also allies it to the true lark. I believe there is no bird in the English or European ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... cousin, the oriole, comes, clad in the richest golden plumage, and sings them a song. If he had dipped his feathers in the gorgeous sunset he could not be more beautiful. The delicate little humming-birds sip nectar from the deep horns of the honeysuckle; and the red-winged starling, in his glossy black coat, and his dashing scarlet epaulette, occasionally comes from his home in the meadow, to make them a call. He does not like Honeysuckleville quite as well as his dwelling in the grass, just above the water. ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... remarkable superabundance of trees, was in summertime famous for its delightful variety of birds: magpies, jackdaws, thrushes and wagtails, in addition to the usual sparrows and tom-tits, were seen frequently; occasionally a lark or a starling would charm the villagers ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... name for a New Zealand bird, like a starling, Heteralocha acutirostris, Gould, of limited occurrence, chiefly found in North Island; having beak straight and short in the male, long and curved in female. The tail feathers are highly prized ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... vampire bat, Rattus Norvegicus, the common rat, Mus Domesticus, the common mouse, The Common Locust, Sylvilagus, the Cottontail Rabbit, Passer Domesticus, the House Sparrow, Sturnus Vulgarus, the European Starling." ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... STARLING (Sturnus vulgaris).—Green bedropped with gold when seen closely, but at a distance looking more like a rusty blackbird, though its gait on the lawn always distinguishes it, being a walk instead of a hop. Though not tuneful, no bird has such a variety of notes, and the clatter on the root ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... wake!' the Starling chattered, 'For the hand of rising day Has gripped one edge of the blanket night And is rolling it ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... as "the old starling," to whom Mrs. Clinton had come to pay an immediate visit upon entering the house, as in duty bound, was putting things away. She was accustomed to say that she spent her life in putting things away after the twins had done with them, and that ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... were a bird When winter comes I'd trust you, mother dear, For a few crumbs, Whether I sang or not, Were lark, thrush, or starling.— ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... beneath the eaves hung a couple of cages, neatly made of bamboo, in one of which was a pair of the little lovebird paroquets side by side upon a perch; and in the other a minah, a starling-like bird, that kept leaping from perch to perch, and repeating with a very clear ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... what can a bull wish for more?" Contentment! Nothing with vitality must, or ever will be contented, save a vegetable, or a toad in the centre of a rock, and he probably is sighing, with Sterne's starling, "I ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... swathed in green baize, stowed away somewhere in his father's house in Manchester. The first time he had ever used fire-arms was on a memorable day when his fingers pulled its trigger in his father's garden under Neal's direction, and a lean starling fell before his shot. After that he had often taken out a fowling-piece of a newer style, and had done pretty ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... hold was borne by her; And now, though far away, My lonely spirit hears the stir Of water round the starling spur Beside ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... examined witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... independence and industry. Birds teach their nestlings to fly as soon as their wings are strong enough, they even oblige them to quit the nest if they seem too unwilling to trust their pinions of their own accord. Do not the swallow and the starling thus give a lesson by which ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... sentimental writers, has put in adequate language something of the feeling that should stir the heart of the sympathetic, at least, on seeing the unjust confinement of innocent birds. The Starling, which is the subject of his elevated sentiment, will appear in an early number of BIRDS. Sterne had just been soliloquizing somewhat favorably of the Bastile, when a voice, which he took to be that of a child, complained "it could not get out." "I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... brush over the skins of things I want to preserve. Don't touch it. You have to wash your hands ever so many times when you've been using it. Look, that's a starling I began to stuff, but it don't look much like ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... landscape as before; but autumn. The BEGGAR is sitting outside a chapel with a lime twig and a bird cage, in which is a starling. The STRANGER enters wearing the same clothes as in ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... 'Pretty Pope of Rome,' with any starling in your Knight's ward," answered the constable, with a facetious air, checked, however, by the due respect to the supreme ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... kind of bird this was, but as he faced the new-comer he had a sort of shiver in his heart that warned him to beware an enemy. Indeed, it was none other than the Blue Jay that had appeared so suddenly, and he had arrived that morning because the starling had told him of the thefts that had taken place, and the Blue Jay is well known as the policeman of the forest and a terror to ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... On some parts of the coast it is called Saca-tu-real (draw out your real), because his song sounds like these words. Some fine Tanagers (Tanagra frugilega, Tsch.; Tanagra analis, Tsch.) visit the fruit gardens round Lima. I saw two birds, of the starling species, the red-bellied Picho (Sturnella militaris, Viell.), and the glossy-black Chivillo (Cassicus palliatus, Tsch.), which are kept in cages on account of their very melodious song. Three kinds of parrots, which abound in ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest French shrug the jest from her own shoulders to those of another: "Oh, madam! was it you who spoke? Surely I thought it was your dead starling that you taught to call you by that name—but whose neck you wrung when it called it once ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... mountain long and broad;' but rather, 'My lady hath a slender waist and a slim shape.'[FN374] Furthermore a little food filleth me and a little water quencheth my thirst; my sport is agile and my habit active; for I am sprightlier than the sparrow and lighter-skipping than the starling. My favours are the longing of the lover and the delight of the desirer; for I am goodly of shape, sweet of smile and graceful as the bending willow-wand or the rattan-cane[FN375] or the stalk of the basil- plant; nor is there any can compare with me ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... her baskets were full, her fowls fed, her goat foddered, her starling's cage cleaned, her hut door locked, and her wooden shoes clattering on the sunny road into the city, Bebee was almost content again, though ever and again, as she trod the familiar ways, the tears dimmed her eyes as she remembered that old Antoine ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... all things that it touches except snow, Whether on mountain side or street of town. The south wall warms me: November has begun, Yet never shone the sun as fair as now While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough With spangles of the morning's storm drop down Because the starling shakes it, whistling what Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot That there is nothing, too, like March's sun, Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's, Or January's, or February's, great days: And August, September, October, and December Have equal ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... his falcon in the blue. How could he hear my song so far,— The song of the blood where the pulses are! Straight through the fields he came to me, (Oh I saw his soul as I saw the dew!) But I hid my joy that he might not see, I hid it deep within my breast, As the starling hides ...
— Songs of Two • Arthur Sherburne Hardy
... of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the Orchard-Starling or Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly and domestic in his ways, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the pioneer of the Thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... to meet the request of a brother-musician, he would contrive to find time amidst the pressure of his own work to compose a concerto for the latter's benefit. To the animal world, also, his affectionate nature went forth in no small degree, and he became deeply attached to a starling, which had learnt to pipe the subject of the Rondo of his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... to be unseen; then suddenly jerk themselves a few yards to recommence hovering. A greenfinch rises with a yellow gleam and a sweet note from the grass, and is off with something for his brood, or a starling, solitary now, for his mate is in the nest, startled from his questing, goes ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... thither on his dusky-mottled noiseless wings, and now this still heavier disappointment was mine. I could not find the wryneck. Those quiet grassy orchards, shut in by straggling hedges, should have had him as a favoured summer guest. Creeper and nuthatch, and starling and gem-like blue tit, found holes enough in the old trunks to breed in. And yet I knew that, albeit not common, he was there; I could not exactly say where, but somewhere on the other side of the next hedge ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... noticed your three last letters, which as usual are rich in facts. Your letters make almost a little volume on my table. I daresay you hardly knew yourself how much curious information was lying in your mind till I began the severe pumping process. The case of the starling married thrice in one day is capital, and beats the case of the magpies of which one was shot seven times consecutively. A gamekeeper here tells me that he has repeatedly shot one of a pair of jays, and it has always been immediately replaced. I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... office, starling the great cat to that extent that he sprang from his red cushion on the window-ledge, and slunk, flattening his long body against the floor, under the table, came the boy Eddy Carroll. The boy stood staring at him rather shamefacedly, though every ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Orioles, Purple Grackle, Bronzed Grackle, Blue Jay, Crow, Fish Crow, Chimney Swift, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, the Woodpeckers, Flicker, the Nuthatches, Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, the Cuckoos, Mourning Dove, Junco, Starling. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the Dragon-Fly. "I have not time to listen to your disagreeable remarks. I must lay some more eggs." But just as it was about to fly off the Starling came. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... 1770, to his sister. Mozart was very fond of animals. In a letter from Vienna to his sister on August 21, 1773, he writes: "How is Miss Bimbes? Please present all manner of compliments to her." "Miss Bimbes" was a dog. At another time he wrote a pathetic little poem on the death of a starling. While in the midst of the composition and rehearsal of "Idomeneo" he wrote to his father: "Give Pimperl (a dog) a pinch of Spanish snuff, a ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... city, That for years with ceaseless din, Hath reverst the starling's ditty, Singing out "I can't ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... face was like ivory, and her lips, instead of being scarlet, had the tender red of apple-blossom, after the unfolding of the bright bud. Her hair was black and smooth and heavy, and lay on either side of her face like a starling's wings. Her eyes too were as black as midnight, and sometimes like midnight they were deep and sightless. But when she was neither working nor spinning she would steal away to the millstones, and stand there watching and listening. And then there were two stars in the midnight. She ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... it's a starling," I said. "Can't you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing alone, it's ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I mourned my darling In his battle-bed at rest; And it's O, to be a starling, With a mate ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... wouldn't like," I remarked. At that moment the sun came out. We were keeping to the side of the road where it is soft going. Suddenly Swallow leaped like a stag into the middle of the road all over the pave. Panic terror. He had seen the shadow of a starling flit across ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... maid came with us, talking and singing incessantly, like a sweet-voiced starling. We rested on the farther side and looked back at the towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires aflame, its long lines of palace and convent clear in the level rays, its ruins softened in the gathering shadows, the lofty bridge hanging transfigured over the glowing river. Before us ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... out—like a boat. Or paid off—like a ship's company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it, you know, for I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody's means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell you. Let us drink to somebody. God ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... vulgaris, Linnaeus. French, "Etourneau vulgaire."—The Starling is sometimes very numerous in the autumn, but those remaining throughout the year and breeding in the Island are certainly very few in number, as I have never seen the Starling in any of my summer visits; and Mr. MacCulloch tells me ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... time an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. Hence Dante's simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, "Bird of God;" and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by the powers of foreshortening, and ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... "Starling Chatter and Oakhill have both dropped back in the betting," said Bertie van Tahn, throwing the morning paper across the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... be found in winter in nearly every neighbourhood, and it is astonishing under what adverse natural conditions one may find them. As I write these lines on a dark February afternoon, here in New York City, I can see through the window a Starling sitting ruffled up on the bare twig of an elm tree. Every minute or two he calls, and as he is looking this way perhaps he is growing impatient for the little girl of the house to give him his daily supply of crumbs. A few minutes ago there was a Downy on the trunk ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... itself—at least, in all save its very highest phases—but the faculty of accurately imitating another? Monkeys for the most part imitate action only, because they haven't very varied or flexible voices. Parrots and many other birds, on the contrary—like the starling and still more markedly the American mocking-bird—being endowed with considerable flexibility of voice, imitate either songs or spoken words with great distinctness. In the parrot the power of attention is also very ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling. I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side toward ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steadily plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes |
