"Bird's nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it became a 'rotating haze,' as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The 'haze' now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of the nest. The eggs all disappeared but one (5), which ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Lawrence' cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife: Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark: I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go; I'll to dinner; hie you to ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... fondled as expressions of love for the absent giver." This is very beautiful and, doubtless, very true, but at the presumable age of the reader—anywhere from eighteen to eighty—one would kiss a miniature rather than a bird's nest or an apple, however rosy the latter may have ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... seen them all. Nibble was up in a tree, of course, picking apple-blossoms, for which he ought to have been whipped. Indeed, the old tree did its best, for it caught him by the leg, and tore a hole in his new trousers, which was shocking to think of. Then he found an old bird's nest; and on the whole, the tree seemed so very "jolly" that he decided to stay there; so that was why Uncle Jack did not see him when he looked round. Brighteyes, after seeing her brother safely up in the tree, flew off like a bird, here and there ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... a little child could see the force in it, and once he was radiant. That day the Swamp Angel was with him. I can't tell you what she was like. I never saw any one who resembled her. He stopped close here to show her a bird's nest. Then they went on to a sort of flower-room he had made, and he sang for her. By the time he left, I had gotten bold enough to come out on the trail, and I met the big Scotchman Freckles lived with. He saw me catching moths and butterflies, so he took me to the flower-room and gave me everything ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... sobs which were bursting from our hearts. We long watched abstractedly the green and slimy water as it was slowly swept beneath the narrow arch of the bridge. It carried along on its surface sometimes the white petals of the lily, and sometimes an empty and downy bird's nest which the wind had blown from a tree. We soon saw the body of a poor little swallow, turned on its back, and with extended wings, floating down. It had, doubtless, been drowned when skimming over the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... roads, whistling as he went, and occasionally tossing his battered cap in the air. He often lingered on his way, now to cut down a particularly tempting switch from the hedge, now to hunt for a possible bird's nest. It was very nearly six o'clock when he reached the back avenue, swung himself over the gate, which was locked, and ran softly on the dewy grass in the direction of the laurel bush. Old Betty had given him most careful instructions, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... element must have felt these angry vibrations: they ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most friendly place, with tables in a rose-garden where hens and chickens ran riot—even flopping upon the disused tables and pecking at the ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... filled with large flies. As Davy took this out of his pocket, the cork came out with a loud "pop!" and the flies flew away in all directions. Then came, one after another, a tart filled with gravel, two chicken-bones, a bird's nest with some pieces of brown soap in it, some mustard in a pill-box, and a cake of beeswax stuck full of caraway seeds. Davy remembered afterward that, as he threw these things away, they arranged themselves in a long row ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... dandelion-balls woven together with horse-hair. In this dainty nest are laid four or five creamy white eggs, speckled with lilac tints and red-browns. The unwelcome egg of the Cow-bird is often found in the Yellow-bird's nest, but this Warbler builds a floor over the egg, repeating the expedient, if the Cow-bird continues her mischief, until sometimes a third story ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... merit. They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." ... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of whether they rule well or ill, but that the position ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... and the afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls, like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a ruined bastion. This interior, the home of studious peace, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... gittin' that claim. He got Shamberson on his side, and if Shamberson's brother-in-law hadn't been removed from the Land Office before it was tried, he'd a got it. I'm going to pre-empt and build the cutest little bird's nest for you. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... shades the wild bird's nest From every prying e'e, With fairy fingers ye invest In woven flowers the lea; Around the lover's blissful hour Ye draw your leafy screen, And shade those in your rosy bower, Who love ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... here and there was a fenced in space in which the Roumanians are wont to unload their hay, with a long pole sticking up in the midst of the hay ricks to prevent the wind from carrying it away, or else the hay was piled up on the branch of a living tree like a bird's nest. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... out to the upper porch with its rush rugs, willow chairs, and table, and its stone wall crowned with blooming plants and trailing vines. She showed her the bird's nest in ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle, and slid into a warm, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... to examine the boys were perched up in a high pulpit so profusely trimmed with evergreen that it looked like a bird's nest; they were remarkably pleasant-looking men, and their eyes twinkled merrily under their Christmas wreaths. Father Anselmus was a little the taller of the two, and Father Ambrose was a little the broader; and that was about all the difference ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?"—Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... was thinkin' 't I'd like to bet you two dollars to a last year's bird's nest,' I says, 'that if all them fellers we seen this afternoon, that air over fifty, c'd be got together, an' some one was suddinly to holler "LOW BRIDGE!" that nineteen out o' twenty 'd duck ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... instances of various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to emigrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... an air of mystery as he replied: "I am not permitted to reveal everything concerning us, dear Leo. Our private life is of no public interest; but I may tell you that our children are bred entirely in the open air. Many an empty bird's nest is used as an elf cradle, for so highly do we esteem pure air, sunshine, and exposure as a means of making our children hardy, that we even accustom them to danger, and let them, like the birds, face ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... creatures; and I am convinced that every spring a large number of those which have survived the Southern campaign return to their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out under his porch, one April day, and showed me a phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The same bird had no doubt returned year after year; and as there was room for only one nest upon her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new superstructure upon the old ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... when detected, he is tempted to lie, to conceal his fault and avoid punishment; and here again we see how one sin leads to another. The temptations to cruelty are many. Sometimes they appear in the form of a bird's nest, placed by a fond and loving mother on the high bough of a tree, to secure ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... walls. They had long strings of buttons and boxes of spools in partnership; and when they would go up the Seine on little excursions on Sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. Then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. That was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up a strip of cloth. And all the things in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... was getting low now, and the shadows she cast out across the corn were long and weird. But the downpour of her light was still mysterious in its clarity, and in its sheen the porcupine, rolled up like a bird's nest, swung himself ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... lead honourable lives—that is to say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... with a distinct sinkage, well laid over with office imperturbability, that she showed Mrs. Blair the note, saw her stab into her greenish-black bird's nest of a hat and depart alone. Then the office boy; the publicity man, whistling; a clerk or two, and finally a sixteen-year-old girl who pasted clippings ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... morning I took my way to the town, after observing, to my great annoyance, that the castle could have been as easily taken as a bird's nest; and seeing a beer-glass painted on a sign-board, I guessed that here was the inn. Truth to say, my heart wanted strengthening sorely, and I entered. There was a pretty wench washing crabs in the kitchen, and as I made up to her, after my manner, to have ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... side overlooking the valley, hung a little camp like a bird's nest. It was hidden there in the densest wood, yet it looked out over the whole land. No bird, indeed no mother of her young, ever chose a deeper or wilder retreat, or a place more utterly apart from the paths ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... as to lightning-stroke is its photographic properties. In this connection Stricker of Frankfort quotes the case of Raspail of a man of twenty-two who, while climbing a tree to a bird's nest, was struck by lightning, and afterward showed upon his breast a picture of the tree, with the nest upon one of its branches. Although in the majority of cases the photographs resembled trees, there was one case in which ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... get out alone," said she; "I have such a prize;" and she held in her hand a bird's nest, with its three little ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Nick-uts, "it's old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give her a ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... beautiful and clever," said Susanna, "I could wish he were as virtuous. This, of course, is sheer play-acting. He 's simply waiting till our backs are turned, to renew his designs upon the bird's nest." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by means of moorings that fasten the object to the adjoining ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... art for instance, especially as manifested in our architecture. A purely native town in Italy, Arabia, or Africa, or Mexico, has its own atmosphere; no one could mistake one for the other any more than he could mistake a beaver dam for an ant hill or a bird's nest for a woodchuck hole. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... other brass ware, weapons, war-coats, and boats, are divided equally among the sons, the eldest perhaps getting a little more than the others. The girls divide the old beads, cloth, bead-boxes, and various trifles. The male slaves go to the sons, the female slaves to the daughters. Bird's nest caves and bee trees might be divided or shared among all ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game—of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest—of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare it to the enthusiasm of a Leverrier finding a planet at the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... us the reason, and it is a reason that shows they were more observant of the habits of plants than we generally give them credit for: "The whole tuft (of flowers) is drawn together when the seed is ripe, resembling a bird's nest; whereupon it hath been named of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... as a boy humane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... in a leafy dell we found, When early Summer wove her crown, A bird's nest on the mossy ground, From blooming ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... be a field-mouse's nest that some birds had stolen. But in the fall I took the nest home and I saw it was a real bird's nest, all woven round of strong grass with finer kinds for a lining; and there were dead leaves on the outside, so that the top looked like all the rest of the ground. I had often heard that loud singing before, but this was ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... him round the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer, almost pitying, look on his face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird's nest and must move softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open and they passed in together, and then Mary stood and waved her hand ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that Mr. Jerome was standing when Sally found him. He had set down the basket of strawberries on the gravel, and had lifted up little Lizzie in his arms to look at a bird's nest. Lizzie peeped, and then looked at her grandpa with round blue eyes, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the very steepest places to slide down. And as he went slipping down the steepest cliff of all he came upon something that gave him a great surprise. For he saw, built right in the crack of a ledge, a big bird's nest made of sticks. It was the biggest bird's nest Cuffy had ever seen; and in it were two great white eggs. They were the greatest white eggs Cuffy had ever ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... were still-life pieces by Hunt. It seems to me impossible to carry pictorial illusion to a higher pitch than he has attained. A sprig of hawthorn flowers, freshly plucked, lies before you, and you are half-tempted to take it up and inhale its fragrance; those speckled eggs in the bird's nest, you are sure you might, if you pleased, take into your hand; that tuft of ivy leaves and buds is so complete an optical deception, that you can hardly believe that it has not been attached by some process to the paper on which you see it. A servant girl, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... transgression of a schoolboy; who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest shows it his companion, and ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... with, I believe that it is all a vulgar error about the cuckoo sucking little birds' eggs. Doubtless cuckoos have been shot with eggs in their mouths, perhaps broken in the fall, but I think the eggs they carried were their own, which, after laying, they were on their way to put in some other bird's nest to be hatched, as it is an established fact they do; and because they are very small eggs people think they are those of some other bird ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... To see an empty bird's nest, denotes gloom and a dull outlook for business. With eggs in the nest, good results will follow all engagements. If young ones are in the nest, it denotes successful journeys and satisfactory dealings. If they are ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whom Elfride was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways a bird's nest, who mastered her and made her weep most bitterly at her own insignificance, thus thankful for a sight of her face. She looked down upon him, her face glistening with rain and tears. He ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... thoughtless cruelty of too many of our youth. It was scarcely two weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had lectured him ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... but that wasn't no snap, you can bet, 'cause he was notionable to a degree. He'd make plans for a little party, an' he'd send one man to Siberia for a fish, an' another to Asia for a fowl, an' another to Chinee for a bird's nest—to make soup of—an' so on. He never give his guests nothin' to eat 'at growed in the same country the feast was to be give in. Then he'd say to his steward, who had the hardest job of all, "Bill"—Bill wasn't his name, but ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... and swung himself up to the cleft. The Indian followed, and with silence and caution they commenced their dangerous journey. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had often rounded the face of frowning white cliffs with the sea breaking in thunder a hundred feet below. Then a bird's nest had been the prize of high daring, death the penalty of dizziness or a misstep. Now, although not two yards below him was the solid earth, a misstep would send him crashing down to a more fearful doom—but the prize! A light was in his eyes as he crept nearer and nearer to the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... at the glass, working with feverish haste, made no reply. The bell rang again, and a third time, Rosa finally answering it in a coiffure that looked like a hastily constructed bird's nest. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... there. It related to a young boy who one day, taking his little brother with him for company, went to look for birds' nests. On reaching the cove they rambled to the top of the cliff, where the elder boy saw a bird's nest, to which he went while his little brother waited for him at a distance, watching him taking the eggs. All at once he saw him stoop down to gather some flowers to bring to him, and then disappear. He waited some time expecting his brother to return, but as he did not come back the little fellow ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the same region there is great diversity in the style, neatness, and finish of the nests, as well as in the materials used. Skeins of silk and hanks of thread have frequently been found in the Baltimore Bird's nest, so woven up and entangled that they could not be withdrawn. As such materials could not be obtained before the introduction of Europeans, it is evident that this bird, with the sagacity of a good architect, knows how to select the strongest and best materials for his work. Many ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay |
