"Bird of prey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or some other bird of prey. Were we, like him, as sure of a dinner That on our stomachs would comfortably stay; Or were the fried ham a shade or two just thinner, That must confront us at closing of the day: Then might you sing like Theocritus or Virgil, Then might we each make a metrical essay; But verse just ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... human usages of living have extinguished these excellences in those who yesterday were children, and that these virtues exist in no aged person. And I would that Jahveh had created me an eagle or a vulture or some other hateful bird of prey that furthers a less grievous slaying and a more intelligible wasting than ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... rich in a full haversack and a dead mule. Having breakfasted, and thereby given head and hand a little strength, he set to work to provide for the future by cutting slices from the carcass and spreading them out to dry, well knowing that this land of desolation could furnish neither wolf nor bird of prey to rob his larder. This work done, he pushed on at his best speed, found and fed his companions, and led them back to the mule, their storehouse. After a day of rest and feasting came a march to the Cactus Pass, where the three were presently picked ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... which Rachel passed her mornings. She glanced round the room at the piano, at the books, at the general mess. In the first place she considered Rachel aesthetically; lying unprotected she looked somehow like a victim dropped from the claws of a bird of prey, but considered as a woman, a young woman of twenty-four, the sight gave rise to reflections. Mrs. Ambrose stood thinking for at least two minutes. She then smiled, turned noiselessly away and went, lest the sleeper should waken, and there ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... year, the rest of his features will have reasserted themselves, and the harmony of lineament which was his when he was an infant, as his mother never tires of regretfully recalling, will be restored. Until that time Philip must be content to carry the suggestion of an attractive and eager young bird of prey. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... to ascend into the upper room where Julie had awaked from her swoon, with her hand on my forehead. I entered as one enters a sanctuary or a sepulchre, and looked around; the wooden beds, the presses, the stools were all gone. The sound of my footsteps frightened a nocturnal bird of prey, that heavily flapped its wings, and after beating against the walls, flew out with a shrill cry through the open window into the orchard. I could scarcely distinguish the place where I had knelt during that ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... where men sojourn; They are forgotten of the foot that passeth by; They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. The atones thereof are the place of sapphires, And it hath dust of gold. That path no bird of prey knoweth, Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it: The proud beasts have not trodden it, Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... produced one with so thin a shell that the birds ate it up. Well, the birds eat me up for the same reason, if I don't look out. I am social but not gregarious. I do not thrive in clubs, I do not smoke, or tell stories, or drink, or dispute, or keep late hours. I am usually as solitary as a bird of prey, though I trust not for the same reason. I love so much to float on the current of my own thoughts. I mix better with farmers, workers, and country people generally than with professional or business men. Birds ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... meantime the mother, with her eyes directed upwards, continued her cries and screaming as before. On looking up in the direction in which she seemed to gaze I discovered a black spot just under the clouds, but was unable at first to determine what it was; however, it soon appeared to be a bird of prey, though at first at too great a distance to be distinguished. I have seen one of those animals continue in this agitated state, and her whole brood pinned down, as it were, to the ground for four hours ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... weak and broken constitution. So a person may have faults and failings, but a want of principle is more serious. It is a radical defect which should prevent friendship. A small thing often shows us whether a person wants principle. The single claw of a bird of prey tells us its nature. According to the familiar saying, "We don't need to eat a leg of mutton to know whether it is tainted; a mouthful is sufficient." So a single expression may tell us whether there is a want of moral principle. A word showing us that a person thinks ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... strong inclination before I leave the world to taste a blessing which we mysterious writers can seldom reach till we have got into our graves, whether it is that fame being a fruit grafted on the body, can hardly grow and much less ripen till the stock is in the earth, or whether she be a bird of prey, and is lured among the rest to pursue after the scent of a carcass, or whether she conceives her trumpet sounds best and farthest when she stands on a tomb, by the advantage of a rising ground and the echo of a ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... her cobwebs lays subtle snares to trap flies, and fall unawares upon them before they can disentangle themselves. Let us also admire the hern, who, they say, puts his head under his wing, in order to hide his bill under his feathers, thereby to stick the breast of the bird of prey that stoops at him. Let us allow the truth of all these wonderful instances of rationality; for all nature is full of such prodigies. But what must we infer from them? In good earnest, if we carefully examine the matter, we shall find that they prove too much. Shall we say that ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... hour Of guilty pride and power Full on the circumcised Thy vengeance fell. Then the fields were heaped with dead, Then the streams with gore were red, And every bird of prey, and every beast, From wood and cavern thronged to Thy ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Bruno of Asti, Saint Isidor and Saint Anselm to represent the Saviour, the Fisher of Men, because he pounces from the highest sky on fish swimming on the surface of the water and carries them up, the eagle, classed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy with the unclean beasts, is transformed, as being a bird of prey, into a personification of the Devil snatching away souls ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... arrangements and building boats on the Rhine; he had propounded riddles which Maurice had spent three of the best campaigning months in idle efforts to guess, and when he at last moved, he had swept to his mark with the swiftness and precision of a bird of prey. Yet the greatest of all qualities in a military commander, that of deriving substantial fruits from victory instead of barren trophies, he had not manifested. If it had been a great stroke of art to seize reach Deventer, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the room, their attention rigidly focused on a figure in the center. Brion wondered how he knew they were men—only their eyes showed, eyes completely empty of expression yet somehow reminding him of a bird of prey. ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... cosy home in the trunk. The cries of the wild animals which prowl about at night seeking their food were heard, and the cat feared one of them might find her and kill her. A mother tiger perhaps would snatch her, and take her to her hungry cubs, hidden away in the deep forest, or a bird of prey might swoop down on her and grip her in his terrible claws. Again and again she entreated the mouse to be quick, promising that, if only he would set her at liberty, she would never, never, never forget it or do any harm to her ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... forms of organic life have been remoulded. A little obscure plant, the food of an insect, dies out; the insect itself, deprived of its food, dies out or migrates; the bird which fed upon it dies out or migrates; the bird of prey follows the like course. Migration introduces them to an entirely new state of existence, temperature, food, and antagonists. The migrating animals are replaced by others, which likewise experience new surroundings; and thus the extirpation of a single plant may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... dinornis may have been from twelve to fourteen feet, or even more; it is supposed the birds were numerous at one time, and lived to a great age. What their food was is only to be guessed, probably vegetable, for the dinornis does not seem to have been a bird of prey. The natives described them as running or striding over the ground with tremendous speed, but nothing was said about ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the dim and desolate forest, dead by the death of a thief, while the vulture shrieked upon his head. I sat bewildered and horror-stricken, and as I sat I remembered the proud sign of Aztec royalty, a bird of prey clasping an adder in its claw. There before me was the last of the stock, and behold! a bird of prey gripped his hair in its talons, a fitting emblem indeed of the fall of Anahuac and the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the downward plunge of a bird of prey, RD. (Originally the same as Sours, used ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... devil it may be Under yon mute, grim bird that looks our way?— Yon silent bird of evil omen,—he That, wanting peace, breathes discord and dismay. Quick, quick, and change his egg, my Italy, Before there hatch from it some bird of prey,— ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... half-unconsciously put his glass to his lips with increasing frequency, his companions grew cooler and more wary. Their eyes no longer beamed good-naturedly upon their victim, but began to emit the eager, cruel gleams of some bird of prey. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... but not without its evil implication; and I felt his eyes intently fixed upon me as he sat hunched up on the rail in his sodden sleeping-suit, like some huge, ill-omened bird of prey. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Broncho strolled up. As I said, he was a queer-looking guy; his skin was copper-colored and he had piercing black eyes and long, fuzzy black hair which fell down to his shoulders. His nose was hooked and something about his face always reminded me of a bird of prey. He was only a half-breed, but when I told him what had occurred he was all Indian and he drew a long knife and started for the Cockney, who gave only one look at the expression on Broncho's face and then ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... and radiant face to meet her embrace. But it seemed, just as her left arm flashed up toward his neck, that he saw her bloody hand and wrist. Strange how that checked his ardor—threw up his lean head like that striking bird of prey. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... basalt, girdled with snow. On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had a strange look,—one would say the cliff was bleeding;—perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen object.—And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller's "Holy War," in which I recognized without difficulty every boarder at our ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stadtholder of Holland. Colonel Rutler was robust and tall; his face wore an expression of audacity, bordering on cruelty; his hair, lying in close, damp meshes, was of a deep red; his mustache of the same color hid a large mouth overshadowed by a hooked nose, resembling the beak of a bird of prey. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... primeval bird of prey the biplane began to rise, as if disappointed of a victim, and winding upward was soon above the trees. Then John heard ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his pink cheeks contracted and expanded like little bellows as he alternately drew in the sweet juice and took breath. Gambardella could not have sucked an orange to save his life, because his long nose was directly in the way; he ate cherries slowly, and looked like a large brown bird of prey pecking at ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... I've ever been compared to that particular bird of prey," he said. "No, that has not been my occupation—in fact I am only very rarely conscious that one effect of my occupation has been that. Of course, it must have been if one comes to think of it. It is not very important. Quite true my body has become young. But that is very ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... mart and busy traffic, by the winding river that divided the little city into North and South X—, it crested an eminence on the north; and the single lower story flanking the main edifice east and west, resembled the trailing wings of some vast bird of prey, an exaggerated simulacrum of a monstrous gray condor perched on a "coigne of vantage," waiting to swoop upon its victims. Encircled by a tall brick wall, which was surmounted by iron spikes sharp as bayonets, that defied escalade, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Bretons, had accomplished against a whole army. He had seen, spread on the neighboring heath, the human remains which had stained with clouted blood the scattered stones among the flowering broom. He learned also that a bark had been seen far out at sea, and that, like a bird of prey, a royal vessel had pursued, overtaken, and devoured the poor little bird that was flying with such palpitating wings. But there D'Artagnan's certainties ended. The field of supposition was thrown open. Now, what could he conjecture? The vessel had not returned. It is true that a ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine. His face was strong and merciless, evil, crafty, and vindictive, with a sensual mouth, hooked nose of ruddy colour, and shaped like the beak of a bird of prey. The rest of the face was of a cadaverous colour. The eyes were of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression. As he looked at them, Malcolmson grew cold, for he saw there the very counterpart ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... the old hag in a half-threatening, half-coaxing whisper, as she came up quite close, and fastened on her victim like a bird of prey. ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... understand, too," said Therese, "what you want. As often as my unlucky star brings you here, you appear like a bird of prey, and I may be sure you have some malicious scheme against me. You know that you will not find any money with me, but you help yourself. Once before you came with a boat and carried off what we had saved for our own use, and turned it into money. Now you are no longer satisfied ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... could not survive without wing-power or great speed, but the crow survives without this power, because he is an omnivorous feeder and can thrive where the hawk would starve, and also because no bird of prey wants him, and, more than that, because he is dependent upon nothing that requires speed to secure. He is cunning and suspicious for reasons that are not obvious. The fox in this country requires both speed and cunning, but in South America Darwin saw a fox ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... master, and soon became such an expert that he could give points to all the huntsmen of the canton. None could equal him in tracing a dog; he knew all the passes, by-paths, and enclosures of the forest; swooped down upon the game with the keen scent and the velocity of a bird of prey, and never was known to miss his mark. Thus it was that the country people surnamed him the 'grand chasserot', the term which we here apply to the sparrow-hawk. Besides all these advantages, he was handsome, alert, straight, and well made, dark-haired and olive-skinned, like all the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... at night she could hear him throw down his glazed hat, which fell with a dull thud, like a shovelful of clay, on the table. The black cloak hung against the wall rustled like the wings of some huge bird of prey. She could hear his every movement, and she spent most of her time listening to him with morbid horror, while he—all unconscious—hummed his vulgar songs and tipsily staggered to his bed, under which the poor woman's sick fancy ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... glazed as hard and passionlessly as his eyes. Something came to her of her wonderful mother's tales of the ancient Saxons, and he seemed to her one of those Saxons, and she caught a glimpse, on the well of her consciousness, of a long, dark boat, with a prow like the beak of a bird of prey, and of huge, half-naked men, wing-helmeted, and one of their faces, it seemed to her, was his face. She did not reason this. She felt it, and visioned it as by an unthinkable clairvoyance, and gasped, for the flurry ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... returning, when, borne on the blast as if some spirit-cry—for it seemed to come rather down from the skies than from any creature standing on earth's level—she heard a voice of agony; she could not distinguish words; it seemed rather as if some bird of prey was being caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and tortured by its violence. Again up high above! Susan put down her lantern, and shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were not human, which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could her ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... disease without hope, which growing more envenomed from year to year, took him, while yet young, from those who loved him, and laid him in his still grave. As in the fair form of some beautiful victim, the marks of the grasping claws of the fierce bird of prey which has destroyed it, may be found; so, in the productions of which we have just spoken, the traces of the bitter sufferings which devoured ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... shiny copper kettle reflected the gaslight. His head had fallen slightly forward, so that his bearded chin was out of sight below the collar of his overcoat, leaving his eagle nose and piercing eyes above it. He was like a bird of prey looking down over the edge of its nest. He had not taken off his hat for Mr. Feist, and it was pushed back from his bony forehead now, giving his face a look that would have been half comic if it had not been almost terrifying: a tall hat set on a skull, a little ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... ye thus reflect? In this same grave (who does me right, Must own the work is strong and tight) The squire that yon fair hall possessed, Tonight shall lay his bones at rest. Whence could the gross mistake proceed? The squire was somewhat fat indeed. What then? The meanest bird of prey Such want of sense could ne'er betray; 100 For sure some difference must be found (Suppose the smelling organ sound) In carcases (say what we can) Or where's the dignity of man?' With due respect to human race, The ravens undertook the case. In such ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... they turned and saw the man hurrying toward them. He was tall, gray, and seventy, of massive frame and gaunt, still straight and vigorous, with the hooked nose and piercing eyes of a hawk. At first glance he looked always the bird of prey, but at the next as invariably the wolf, an effect produced by the salient reaching jaw and the glint of white teeth bared for a lip smile. Just now he was touched to a rare emotion. His hands trembled and an expression of shaken ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... enormous zygomatic arches, are covered with scars on the head and trunk, and are often tatooed. Habitual homicides have a glassy, cold, immobile, sometimes sanguinary and dejected look; often an aquiline nose, or, in other words, a hooked one like a bird of prey, always large; the jaws are large, ears long, hair woolly, abundant and rich (dark); beard rare, canine teeth, very large; the lips are thin. A large number of swindlers and forgers have an artlessness, and something clerical in their manner, which gives confidence to their victims. Some have ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... made Marguerite shudder: her thoughts flew back to the episodes of this night and to Chauvelin, the dark bird of prey with his mysterious death-dealing plans, his subtle intrigues which all tended towards the destruction of one man: his enemy, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the moment engaged in the pleasing pastime of hectoring a scared little five-year-old who ought still to have been in the kindergarten, pricked up his ears at the cry and, like a hungry bird of prey leaving a mouse for a lamb, promptly swooped down upon the new game. His movement was the signal for the gathering of a crowd, and, before Bob was fairly aware that he was the object of attention, he had become the center of a curious group whose interest, if not wholly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... boldly attack the birds of prey. "To see them attacking a buzzard, a kite, a crow, or an eagle, is one of the most amusing spectacles. One feels that they are sure of victory, and one sees the anger of the bird of prey. In such circumstances they perfectly support one another, and their courage grows with their numbers."(19) The lapwing has well merited the name of a "good mother" which the Greeks gave to it, for it never fails to protect other aquatic ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... scattered around. A peach tree grew at the side of the cottage, and its branches, heavy with the luscious fruit, drooped upon the low roof. A grapevine grew in front, and its graceful tendrils twined in and out through the sashless windows and the broken door. A bird of prey was perched upon the house, and, as we approached, with a fearful ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... the bosom of society, an adept in the science of polished depredation. Translate this into the language of the Old Bailey, and I became a swindler by profession. Like the eagle, however, I was a bird of prey that soared into the highest regions, and rarely stooped to strike the meaner tribes of my species. I had not lost, with the trappings of my birth, the manners and address of the sphere in which I had moved; and these were now my stock ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... They made great wars, they rode like heroes forth, And, worthy, won broad lands and towers and towns, So firmly won that thirty years of strife Made of their followers dukes, their leaders kings! While you! like jackal and the bird of prey, Who lurk in copses or 'mid muddy beds— Crouching and hushed, with dagger ready drawn, Hide in the noisome marsh that skirts the way, Trembling lest passing hounds snuff out your lair! Listen at eventide on lonesome path For traveller's footfall, or the mule-bell's chime, Pouncing ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... close to my face, and flew screaming away, as I pulled myself up into shelter, but the other stood on its jut of rock, almost within arm's length, and looked at me. I saw its ugly long head as it turned, its great beak and its neck of a bird of prey, and then it flew off; and though I sat very still for a long time, hoping they might return, they only flew round me and past me, showing me the great black sweep of their wings as they went. But as I sat there, on that wild crag and that wild morning, I ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... had studied this visage, he would have found the vulture mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey and the pettifogger rendering each other mutually hideous and complementing each other; the pettifogger making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey making the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... folds,—while Theos, withdrawing slightly into the background, stood leaning against a piece of tapestry on which the dead figure of a man was depicted lying prone on the sward with a great wound in his heart, and a bird of prey hovering above him expectant of its grim repast. Kneeling on one knee close to Sah-luma, the harp- bearer put the harp in tune, and swept his fingers lightly over the strings,—then came a pause. A clear, small bell chimed sweetly on the stillness, and the King, raising ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... one night at Longfellow's table, when one of the guests happened to speak of the photograph of Hawthorne which hung in a corner of the room, Lowell said, after a glance at it, "Yes, it's good; but it hasn't his fine 'accipitral' [pertaining to the look of a bird of prey; hawklike. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bombardment from many directions. Searchlights mounted at advantageous points threw their narrow pencils of light into the skies. The people in different sections of the city caught a fleeting glance of a huge airship that floated sullenly along, like some bird of prey from out of the past—a new pterodactyl that instead of seizing its victims ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... I'm a bird of prey, smelling the feast from afar off, and hurrying at the dead man's carcase as soon as the breath is out of ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... Othello, if he had come across him. Never did any African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready suspicion, the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moor, and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a vulture's, by a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the yoke of some single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of my nature to fling myself into the asylum, to cast myself into God's arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Courson well blamed; that he merited worse, and, but for his father, would have received it. As we were about to rise, I said it would be as well to draw up the decree at once, and M. le Duc d'Orleans approved. Noailles pounced, like a bird of prey, upon paper and ink, and commenced writing. I bent down and read as he wrote. He stopped and boggled at the annulling of the ordonnance, and the prohibition against issuing one again without authorisation by edict or decree of council. I dictated the clause to him; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... by rolling and tumbling about, drew off his attention from her young, and thus preserved her brood a second time. I have also seen, when a kite has been hovering over a covey of young partridges, the old birds fly up at the bird of prey, screaming and fighting with all their might to preserve their brood." Partridges should be chosen young; if old, they are valueless. The young ones are generally known by their yellow legs ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... bisect mine at right angles, he raised his head, and, giving vent to one of those musical neighs (?) for which the animal is somewhat famous, rushed on in his mad career. Poor brute! the noose hovered over him a moment, like some bird of prey about to swoop down on its quarry, and then settled ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... bird of prey, All tense the muscles of her seemly flanks; She, the coy creature that the idle day Sees idly riding in the ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... by it, or whether you do not, keep it to yourself. I know the bird better than you do, and I strongly caution you to beware of the bird. The bird is a bird of prey, and altogether an unclean bird. The bird wants a mate, and doesn't much care how she finds one. And the bird wants money, and doesn't much care how she gets it. The bird is a decidedly bad bird, and not at all fit to take the place of domestic hen in a decent farmyard. In plain English, Johnny, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... woman's small, pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low, cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face would have said that artists had failed in their ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the French shore rising in purple and green tints, dotted with white towns and villages. Suddenly three light, white-sailed ships appeared in the offing, and the captain's practiced eye detected that the wings that bore them were those of a bird of prey. He knew them for African brigantines, and though he made all sail, it was impossible to run into a French port, as on, on they came, not entirely depending on the wind, but, like steamers, impelled by unseen ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the front in order to win a battle. The woman of fashion ceases to be a woman; she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex in the brain. And your Marquise, too, has all the characteristics of her monstrosity, the beak of a bird of prey, the clear, cold eye, the gentle voice—she is as polished as the steel of a machine, she touches everything ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... of the iris rather than the size of the ball. These eyes are not soft like the mother's, after all; they are ungentle, beautiful as they are; they have the dark and splendid flame of the eyes of a great bird—a bird of prey. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... matted with woodbine and brambles. Out of these would sometimes start a sharp pinnacle, or fantastically-formed crag, adding greatly to the picturesque beauty of the scene. On such points were not unfrequently found perched a hawk, a falcon, or some large bird of prey; for the gully, with its brakes and thickets, was a favourite haunt of the feathered tribe. The hollies, of which there were plenty, with their green prickly leaves and scarlet berries, afforded shelter and support to the blackbird; the thorns were frequented by the thrush; and numberless ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... booming of the main motor stopped. Only a quiet purring from the wings took its place. The helicopter-plane hovered almost motionless, quiet and deadly like a sinister bird of prey. It began to drop straight down through the dark. Chris Travers ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... the pistol unguarded, and the woman swooped down upon it like a bird of prey; but before she could get her fingers on its grip, Labertouche stepped between them, fended her off, and quietly possessed ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... thuttering roar of its machinery came dully to our ears in waves and sharp gusts of sound. And we cried "Oh!" involuntarily, for we could see the dark spread of the vans plunging frantically in the air. I remember I stretched out my arms in an impotent gesture of aid, for with the speed of a bird of prey the dark mass lurched in a flat swaying parabola towards the earth, spinning the while upon itself, and striking the deep bed of snow, burst into a mass ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... over the Western world, the shadow of a fierce bird of prey hovering over its victim. Ever since Ferdinand expelled the Moors out of Granada, Spain had been nursing insensate dreams of universal empire. She was endeavouring to destroy the infant system of European civilisation by every means of brutality and intrigue which the activity of her arrogance ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... sealed and hidden silence, a voice crying from an upper room, suddenly fell—a woman in the abandonment of utter pain, pain beyond all control, was screaming. Somewhere, above that dark forest that pressed in upon the house, a bird of prey hovered. It hung for a moment; it descended—its talons were fixed upon her flesh... then again it ascended. Shriek after shriek, bursting the silence, chasing the shadows, flooding the secrecy with horrible light, beat like blows upon the walls of the house—rose, fell, rose again. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... cowered at the foot of the House in terror of what its lord might bring down upon it—as a brood of chickens might cower if they had been hatched by a kite, and saw, instead of the matronly head and beak of the hen of their instinct, those of the bird of prey projected over them. Scarce one of them dared even look from the door when the thunder was rolling over their heads, the lightnings flashing about the roofs and turrets of the House, the wind raving in fits between as ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of domestic fowls can see. What is more familiar than the old hen's cry to her chickens when she has found something eatable? and then there is the curious call uttered by all fowls when any large bird that they think is a bird of prey flies over them." ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... unwearyingly watched every movement of his hard, noble old face. The anthropologist and the newly awakened sculptor in him were equally stirred. When comparing the "freebooters" to birds of prey, Garry himself had resembled a bird of prey. His expression was like an eagle's. He stood with his back to the windows, but with his head turned slightly to one side, and when he spoke of the birds filling their crops, it seemed to Frederick that his light-blue eyes paled to ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... disposed to indulge his selfishness, and summons his flock only to see him devour the morsel. Even in old age, however, the males of the varieties which are nearest the parent stock maintain their helpful motives and will struggle with infirmity to beat off a bird of prey. ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... proportion to the size of its body, than that of Shakspeare even! Does it mean nothing? You may observe that a warbler has a much larger brain and a much finer cerebral organization throughout than a bird of prey, or any of the Picus family even. Does it signify nothing? I gaze into the eyes of the Gazelle,—eyes that will admit of no epithet or comparison,—and the old question of preexistence and transmigration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... a large number of fishing craft congregated in a comparatively small area of sea, the destroyer dived to the attack like some giant bird of prey, unable in the gloom which shrouded the earth to distinguish the presence of an ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... begun to be in earnest, and having betaken himself to his shields, swords, and horses. Lucullus, on the other side, to be even with him, replied, that Pompey came to fight with the mere image and shadow of war, it being his usual practice, like a lazy bird of prey, to come upon the carcass, when others had slain the dead, and to tear in pieces the relics of a war. Thus he had appropriated to himself the victories over Sertorius, over Lepidus, and over the insurgents under Spartacus; whereas this last had been achieved by Crassus, that obtained ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's passion—who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast, hurried off by a demon to a hideous death—bear her limbs aloft wherever there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercer and more furious than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in blood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wing would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her child ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... opened, and a thin, lank old man, with a fierce peaked face like a bird of prey, came out upon the steps. His face softened, however, into friendliness when he saw Feversham, and a smile played upon his lips. A stranger might have thought that he winked. But his left eyelid continually drooped ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... coffers of the Transvaal; a certain proportion of which has stuck to the fingers of Mr. Krueger, his family and intimates. The "vultures" have brought riches, industry, and civilisation into a wild and uncivilised country. The simile of the bird of prey is more applicable to the Boer ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... by the side of the river, and he saw a large bird of prey rise from the waters, and give chase to a hawk that had not yet gained the full strength of its wings. From his youth the solitary Morven had loved to watch, in the great forests and by the banks of the mighty stream, the habits of the things ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And Oh! ye fair! This black ENCHANTER's wicked arts beware! His subtle poison dims the brightest eyes, And at his touch, each grace and beauty dies: Love, gentleness and joy to rage give way, And the soft dove becomes a bird of prey. May this our bold advent'rer break the spell, And drive the demon to his native hell. Ye slaves of passion, and ye dupes of chance, Wake all your pow'rs from this destructive trance! Shake off the shackles ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... one end, near a chapel, the men were huddled together; one could see nothing but swollen, stupid faces, inflamed nostrils, and twisted mouths; old women as fat and clumsy as melancholy whales; little wizened, cadaverous hags with sunken mouths and noses like the beak of a bird of prey; shamefaced female mendicants, their wrinkled chins bristling with hair, their gaze half ironical and half shy; young women, thin and emaciated, slatternly and filthy; and all, young and old alike, clad in threadbare garments that had been mended, patched ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... and understood at once that this was a man of worth, and no La Jonquiere. The mouth was benevolent and the eyes large, bold, and firm, like those of a king or a bird of prey; deep thought was written on his brow, prudence and some degree of firmness in the lower part of the face; all this, however, in the half-darkness, and in spite ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the mountain. I liked his face less than ever. It wore an angry scowl now; his dark eyes glittered balefully under the close-knit eyebrows, his lips were drawn down, and the curved nose was like the aggressive beak of a bird of prey. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... words about the different kinds of birds, and then we will see how birds manage to fly. Naturalists have divided the class, birds, into several smaller groups which are called orders. One of these includes the birds of prey, such as the hawks, eagles, and owls. In the picture of a bird of prey you can see the strong, hooked bill and powerful claws, which are well fitted for seizing ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... sound over the adjacent hills, and waking the forests from their repose, came rushing over the village, whirring and fluttering aloft like flights of the boding night-raven, or the more powerful bird of prey that had given its name to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... motionless on the grass as if listening to the secrets it told to the autumnal wind. The wild passion and excitement which flashed from his eyes when he spoke of the bird of prey had all vanished. Now the eyes which looked into the heavens above were sad and dreamy, and there rested in them an expression of ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... consumed by scarcely any beast or bird of prey except the stork, and they have few dangerous enemies but man, though in the tropics other animals prey upon them. [Footnote: It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the popular ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... closely now, and he came to the conclusion, that there were qualities in that tall, thin, somewhat effeminate personality which he had not detected during their brief meeting of the morning. Von Kerber was good-looking, with something of the dignity and a good deal of the aspect of a bird of prey. His slender frame was well-knit. His sinuous hands hinted at unexpected strength. Were Royson told that his possible employer was a master of the rapier he would have credited it. And the Baron, for his part, was rapidly changing the first-formed ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... curve, we hoped that some of our obstructions had been effective in throwing him from the track, and that we would see him no more; but at each long reach backward the smoke was again seen, and the shrill whistle was like the scream of a bird of prey. The time could not have been so very long, for the terrible speed was rapidly devouring the distance, but with our nerves strained to the highest tension, each minute seemed an hour. On several occasions the escape of the enemy from wreck seemed little less than miraculous. At one ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... every turn; the vultures flapped round him; and there was no strong, wise man to give the booby counsel or to drag him by main force from his fate. There was no pity for the boy's youth; he was a mark for every obscene bird of prey that haunts the Turf; respectable betting men gave him fair play, though they exacted their pound of flesh; the birds of Night gave him no fair play at all. In a few short months he had poured a quarter of a million into the bursting pockets of the Ring, and he was ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... kettle sent forth savoury smells and clouds of steam. The tired steeds munched the surrounding herbage in quiet felicity, and the travellers lay stretched upon a soft pile of brushwood, loading their pipes and enjoying supper by anticipation. The howling of a wolf, and the croaking of some bird of prey, formed an appropriate duet, to which the trickling of a clear rill of ice-cold water, near by, constituted a sweet accompaniment, while through the stems of the trees they could scan—as an eagle does from ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... old lady, with an eye like a hawk's, and a certain suspicious turn of the head to this side and that which reminded one of the same bird of prey, was discussing ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... considered a moustache incompatible with effective speaking—"Why should a man hide one of the most expressive features of his face?" With regard to the still more expressive eyes, Lecky ruefully remarked that Gladstone's glance was that of a bird of prey swooping on ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that the Pike is a fish that breeds but once a year, and that other fish (as namely Loaches) do breed oftner; as we are certaine Pigeons do almost every month, and yet the Hawk, a bird of prey (as the Pike is of fish) breeds but once in twelve months: and you are to note, that his time of breeding or Spawning is usually about the end of February; or somewhat later, in March, as the weather ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... stream only the man who possesseth the proper fare, whose integrity is well attested (?). Observe! Thou art like the overseer of a granary who doth not at once permit to pass him that cometh empty. Observe! Thou art among men like a bird of prey that liveth upon weak little birds. Observe! Thou art like the cook whose sole joy is to kill, whom no creature escapeth. Observe! Thou art like a shepherd who is careless about the loss of his sheep through the rapacious crocodile; thou never countest [thy sheep]. Would that thou wouldst ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... does work for fashionable novels and social satires, and who is a truly awful personage. To her alone of mortals is it given to inspire, like the Harpies, at once contempt and fear. Keen-eyed and hook-nosed, like a bird of prey, she glowers from the corner of crowded ball-rooms upon the unconscious heir, hunts him untiringly from house to house, marries him remorselessly to her eldest daughter, and then never loses sight of him ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... in her chair smiling and satisfied. Then she sat up rigid. A change passed over her such as comes over a bird of prey when it draws its feathers in flat against its body to lessen friction in the swoop. She unconsciously closed the little fan, the little ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... upward to the darkness. Like some black bird of prey the airship was already lost to sight, though it would have seemed as if her white planes might render her visible. But she had moved so swiftly that, during the short search, she had ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... Like some huge bird of prey he ran swiftly back across the flags and disappeared behind the mass of stones, and Cuxson, not daring to move for fear of tightening the thongs, sat almost numb with anxiety as he wondered if his luck would hold ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... dead horse lay by the road-side, or in the fields, unburied, not grateful to gods or men, I saw no bird of prey, no ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place where it was held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but no black wing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Landgrave arose, and the whole of the immense audience, who now resumed their masques, and prepared to follow whither his highness should lead. With the haste of one who fears he may be anticipated in his purpose, and the fury of some bird of prey, apprehending that his struggling victim may be yet torn from his talons, the prince hurried onwards to the ante-chapel. Innumerable torches now illuminated its darkness; in other respects it remained as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... marauders are too well known to need description, suffice it to say that they are the most beautiful of North American Jays; but beneath their handsome plumage beats a heart as cruel and cunning as that in any bird of prey. In the fall, winter and spring, their food consists largely of acorns, chestnuts, berries, seeds, grain, insects, lizards, etc., but during the summer months they destroy and devour a great many eggs and young of the smaller birds, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... hung loose, her shoulders were bare, her clothing was disordered, her eyes were bathed in tears, her face was flushed and drawn with the horror of despair; yet as her exceeding beauty met Raphael's intoxicated eyes, his delirium grew. He sprang towards her like a bird of prey, tore away the shawl, and tried to take ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... the Australian crow. It is a bird of prey and perhaps the best-hated bird in the world. An Australian bushman will travel a whole day to kill a crow. For he has, at the time when the sheep were lambing, or when, owing to drought, they were weak, seen the horrible cruelties ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... Eater, who shortly arose and approached him with his battle-ax. The man saw clearly now what was to happen and buried his face in his hands. Too often had the hunter-warrior stood over his fallen quarry to feel pity; he knew no more of this than a bird of prey, and he sank his three-pronged battle-ax into the soldier's skull and wiped it on his pony's shoulder saying: "Another dog's head; I will leave him for the women and the boys. If he had thrown away his iron moccasins ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... whole apartment which I could attack, but unfortunately my eyes fell upon some shining brass nails which served as ornaments round the edge of a table. To my heated imagination each nail seemed glaring directly at me, menacing me like the evil eye of a bird of prey. I rushed madly toward the table, and climbing up one of its legs, I seized a nail in my beak. To my great delight I found I could easily pull it out, which I immediately did, and threw it spitefully away. With yells of triumph I crept all around the table, clinging with my claws, and ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the bed, Dangerfield, with his flashing spectacles and snowy aspect, and a sort of pant, rose up straight, and looked into her eyes, like a white bird of prey disturbed ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to be absent from his fort in 1645. Like a bird of prey Charnisay swooped on St. John River; but he had not reckoned on Madame La Tour—Frances Marie Jacqueline. With the courage and agility of a trained soldier, she commanded her little garrison of fifty ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... relief, but here attitude, figure, and clothing are quite un-Egyptian. The hero wears a sort of turban on his abundant hair, and a full and rounded beard descends upon his breast. A long garment clothes him from the waist and falls below the knees, his muscular calves ending in the claws of a bird of prey. There is nothing like ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... is of great usefulness to gardener, agriculturist, and landowner alike, for there is not another bird of prey which is so great a destroyer of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... At the apex, which is very acute, the iron is filed as sharp as a knife, and pork is hung on each of the sides. When this is thrown in the wake of the ship, the bird settles on the water to feed. The upper part of its beak is hooked like that of a bird of prey, and as the albatross opens its beak and bites at the pork, you give a jerk, so that the triangle catches the upper part of the beak by two small notches, and the bird is left hanging. If the line should break, the whole thing simply falls off and the bird ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... snow-white hair curled downwards to his shoulders. With his long beak-like nose and his single gleaming eye, which shone brightly from under a thick tuft of grizzled brow, he seemed to Alleyne to have something of the look of some fierce old bird of prey. For a moment he smiled, as his eye lit upon the banner of the five roses waving from the hamlet; but his course lay for Pampeluna, and he rode on after ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... others the sounds which I conjured up appeared to be uttered by Bartle or Gideon. I would stop to listen, but only the roar of some distant waterfall or the murmur of a nearer rapid struck my ear. Or now and again I heard the cry of some bird of prey, as it swooped down from its lofty eyrie towards the carcass which it had espied far ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... of his class,—the folded, torn yellow paper, ready to fall to pieces as you open it,—in short, the respectable beggar's certificate of character. With another bow (which gave his nose the aspect of the beak of a bird of prey making a pick at me) he handed the document. I found that it was dated in Milwaukee, and signed by the mayor of that city, two physicians, three clergymen, and an editor, who bore united testimony to the fact that Jacob Menzel—I think that was his name—the bearer, any way,—was ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... promise you, the ancient freedom come down, O happiness, upon the smallest city, and love alone bind the races together; and if ever the black talon of the tyrant is seen, all the races will bound up to drive out the bird of prey!" ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... melancholy or languor.[6] He had a broad forehead furrowed with wrinkles by the time he was thirty, and a thick mane of hair, or, as E. Legouve puts it, "a large umbrella of hair, projecting like a movable awning over the beak of a bird of prey."[7] ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... naturally to fall into that class. Instinctively Bert felt that in some way he was to be ranked with the outcasts that war upon society. A cruel mouth showed beneath a hawk-like nose that gave him the appearance of a bird of prey. To Bert he seemed a living embodiment of all that he had ever heard or read of the "bad ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... ugly with his purple skin and bristles for whiskers; he looks like a wild boar with the eyes of a bird of prey. But he'll make the finest chief-justice of a provincial court. Now don't be uneasy! in ten minutes he shall be singing to you Isabelle's air in the fourth act of Robert le Diable: 'At thy feet I kneel'—you promise, don't you? to send Arthur back ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... sky, in the infinity of the horizon, his eyes sought nothing but that, and his ears admitted no other sound than the hum of the invisible car. His were the mighty and brutal sensations of the hunter chasing his game. He was the bird of prey whom the distraught quarry has ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the sake of the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew more barbed and less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a moment, like a bird of prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down in the words of that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... nations. German statesmen continue the methods of Bismarck without having his genius. German politicians delight in shaking the mailed fist, in waving the national banner with the Imperial black eagle, the ominous and symbolical bird of prey. Wherever they meet with opposition they at once resort to comminatory messages. Compare the methods of the Emperor William with those of Edward VII. Nothing illustrates better the differences between the characteristics of English and German diplomacy ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... continued her descent, slowing her suspensory screws and moderating her speed so as not to leave the train behind. She flew about it like an enormous beetle or a gigantic bird of prey. She headed off, to the right and left, and swept on in front, and hung behind, and proudly displayed her flag with the golden sun, to which the conductor of the train replied by waving the Stars ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... gas which served to buoy-up the misshapen and semi-solid mass in the rarefied air. The creature moved swiftly along, keeping pace easily with the monoplane, and for twenty miles or more it formed my horrible escort, hovering over me like a bird of prey which is waiting to pounce. Its method of progression—done so swiftly that it was not easy to follow—was to throw out a long, glutinous streamer in front of it, which in turn seemed to draw forward the rest of the writhing body. So elastic and gelatinous was it that ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hunt, and as he entered it he heard a sound of screaming as if a little child were there. He followed the sound, and at last came to a high tree, and at the top of this a little child was sitting, for the mother had fallen asleep under the tree with the child, and a bird of prey had seen it in her arms, had flown down, snatched it away, and set it on ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... looks mountainous. A common rowboat looms up like a three master, and Zaidos, looking in the direction of the Red Cross ship, saw a couple of battleships approaching, while a huge Zeppelin like a great bird of prey floated overhead. How many submarines were playing around beneath him, he could not guess. One thing was clear. They were in a position stranger than any story, madder than any dream. Floating there, almost exhausted in the sea, they were to be in the center ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... mind's eye the fine small head and large eyes so far above me, as we sit beside each other at the deal table. He looked down on me like a bird of prey. His hair—gray, Martha told me, before he was thirty—was tufted out a little, like ruffled feathers, on each side. But the eyes were not those of an eagle; ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... day but that bird of prey did not appear. "A watched pot never boils," said Henry at last, trying to conquer his impatience; and he turned his mind from the task of following the automobile driver to the even more difficult ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... at all, but another kind of bird, similarly marked in winter, namely, fjellugglan, the walrus-hunter's isoern, the snowy owl (Strix nyctea, L.). It evidently breeds and winters at the ptarmigan-fell, which it appears to consider as its own poultry-yard. In fact, the marking of this bird of prey is so similar to that of its victim that the latter can scarcely perhaps know how to take care of itself. On Spitzbergen the snowy owl is very rare; but on Novaya Zemlya and the North coast of Asia—where the lemming, which is ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... a marvellous ring!" he said, And pointed to the sexton's gnarled old hand Spread on the black oak-table like the claw Of some great bird of prey. "A ruby worth The ransom of a queen!" The fire leapt up! The sexton stared at him; Then stretched his hand out, with its blue-black nails, Full in the light, a grim earth-coloured hand, But bare ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... were opened, and a man between thirty and forty came in. He was about the medium height; a dark olive skin, black curly hair, picturesque and disreputable, like a bird of prey in his blue Melton jacket ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... running down her face. Something startled him, and he was looking up at her with his hateful, hard, bright eyes, hard and unchanging as a bird of prey. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... as a task—the task, I mean, of subsisting at all, gagner sa vie. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won—of warding off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... enemy the birds at large have, after man himself, is the bird of prey. Hawks and owls capture a large quantity of our smaller birds. Now the hawks and owls are for the most part shy of man. They have gotten a bad reputation, especially if they are of any size, because of their more or less pronounced proclivities for seizing our domestic poultry, and consequently ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... near Fort William; the dying twilight, the fading red rays on the horizon enable us to get a glimpse of a desolate country; acres of peat-bog, eminences rising from the valley between two ranges of huge mountains. A bird of prey screams amid the stillness. Here and there we see some wretched hovels; I am told that those on the heights are dens without windows, and from which the smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. Many of the old men are blind. What an unpropitious ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... they discovered the bird by the noise of its wings, so the noise they should make would betray them to the Trojans. Pallas does not send the bird sacred to herself, but the heron, because that is a bird of prey, and denoted that they should ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... I receive; much less do images which compare man to a puny creature helpless in the claws of a bird of prey. The reader should examine himself closely on ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... This time their leading spirit was no longer Staupitz, disagreeably conscious of the difficulties of the enterprise, but the hunchback AEsop, who seemed to burn with a passion for slaughter. Lagardere likened him in his mind to some ungainly, obscene bird of prey, as he loomed out of the mirk waving his gaunt arms and shrieking in his rage and hate. "Kill them! kill them!" he screamed, as he rushed across the intervening space, and the bravos, heartened by his frenzy of fight, streamed after him, flinging themselves ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... edge of the roof spell (2) liable to taxation; those of the ridge-pole mean (3) calls for; those of the left-hand corner-post denote (4) the cry of a domestic animal; those of the middle corner-post, (5) a free entertainment; those of the right-hand corner-post, (6) a large bird of prey; those of the left-hand sloping roof-edge, (7) an officer in an English university; those of the middle sloping roof-edge, (8) a regulated course of food; and those of the right-hand sloping roof-edge, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... the floor; one had lost her tail; a traveller, who wished to be a hunter, had shot it off, because the creature had taken the hen for a bird of prey! ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen |
