The Bird BookHeath, 1901 - 281 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
ANCIENT MURRELET barn bill bird's black-billed cuckoo blackbird body Bonaparte's gull bones Book breast brown called cents coast color cormorants cow-bird cuckoo dark diving ducks eaves eaves-swallow eggs eyes feathers feed feet fish flock flycatchers foot fulmars gannet grebe green grosbeak ground gulls habits hawk head Heart of Oak heron insects kind Latin name legs light live look loon male martin migrate mountain nearly neck nest never night North northern notice observe pelican perhaps petrels pine grosbeak purple martin robin ruffed grouse S. S. McClure sandpipers seen sharp-shinned hawk shrike side snow sometimes sooty grouse sparrows species SPOON-BILLED SANDPIPER spring stroke strong summer surface swallows swim tail tell terns toes tree usually vireo webbed Western gull white pelican wind wings winter woodpecker worm yellow young
Popular passages
Page 13 - And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
Page 193 - THE NORTH WIND DOTH BLOW he north wind doth blow, And we shall have snow, And what will poor Robin do then, Poor thing? He'll sit in a barn, And keep himself warm, And hide his head under his wing, Poor thing.
Page 47 - Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in midair Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals.
Page 38 - Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him, And 'stablished his borders unto all eternity, That such as have no pleasure For to praise the Lord by measure, They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea. Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it, Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free; And the ships shall go abroad To the Glory of the Lord Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea...
Page xiv - His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was connected with Nature, — and the meaning of Nature was never attempted to be defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his observations to the Natural History Society. "Why should I? To detach the description from its connections in my mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me; and they do not wish what belongs to it.
Page 105 - The general proportion of the length of our swiftest hawks and swallows to their breadth, is as one to two ; but in the present case, as there is not only the resistance of the air, but also that of the water, to overcome, a still greater...