"Bobolink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... song will match the nightingale's in compass, none whose note is so rich as that of the European blackbird; but for mere rapture I have never heard the bobolink's rival. But his opera-season is a short one. The ground and tree sparrows are our most constant performers. It is now late in August, and one of the latter sings every day and all day long in the garden. Till within a fortnight, ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... white patch which is both a diagnostic marking and a real ornament. In flight this patch imparts to the wing a filmy, almost semi-transparent, aspect. The bunting is about the size of the eastern bobolink, and bears some resemblance to that bird; but bobolink he is not, although sometimes mistaken for one, and even called by that name in Colorado. The fact is, those wise men, the systematists, have decided that the bobolink belongs to the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... telling what it did. To draw upon your imagination for your facts is one thing; to draw upon your imagination in describing what you see is quite another. The new school of nature writers will afford many samples of the former method; read Thoreau's description of the wood thrush's song or the bobolink's song, or his account of wild apples, or of his life at Walden Pond, or almost any other bit of his writing, for a sample of the latter. In his best work he uses language in the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... with the neatly covered book, and Mamma loved him for the little sacrifice more than if he had won a prize at school. He did get a reward, for, in five minutes from the time he decided, Jill was singing like a bobolink, and such a medley of merry music came from behind the screen, that it was a regular morning concert. She did not know then that he stayed for her sake, but she found it out soon after, and when the time came did as much for him, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... see the fairies. He knew how to coax the flower fairies to speak to him, and how to find the wood fairies when they hid among the ferns, and how to laugh back when the wymps made fun of him; and, above all, he knew how to find his way to Bobolink, the Purple Enchanter, who knows everything. And he found his way to Bobolink, on the evening of that ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... that he had seen a piano somewhere in New England with pantalets on; also, an old foreign paper was brought forward, in which there was an advertisement headed "Soiree," which informed the "citizens, generally," that Mr. Bobolink would ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Rose-breasted Grosbeak Sparrow Hawk Bobolink White-headed Eagle Meadow Lark Great Horned Owl Bluejay Snowy Owl Ruffed Grouse Red-headed Woodpecker Great Blue Heron Golden-winged Woodpecker Bittern Barn-swallow Wilson's Snipe Whip-poor-will ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Robin and Jenny Are planning together to build them a nest; How Bobolink left Mrs. Bobolink moping At home, and went off on a ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... hop-pole took the likeness of a tall figure she had seen in the porch, the sage-bed, curiously enough, suggested a strawberry ditto, the lettuce vividly reminded her of certain vegetable productions a basket had brought, and the bobolink only sung in his cheeriest voice, "Go home, go ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... digits. While I was on it, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he said that the spire did really swing back and forward,—I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pa'tridge, with nice brown hair and eyes and a clean-lookin' skin. But it was her smile in particular that took me; and when she set in to laugh you couldn't no more' help laughin' along with her than one bobolink can help laughin' back when he hears another. She was the tenderest-hearted woman that ever breathed the breath of life: she couldn't bear to hurt the feelin's of a cat, and she'd go 'ithout a chicken-dinner any day sooner'n kill a chicken. As time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... then rise up so far away from their nests that we would not know where to look for them. We were not after their eggs, however, for we had all the bobolinks' eggs we wanted, carefully blown and laid away in our collection. Sharp as Mr. Bobolink was, we knew all his tricks, and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... meadows and across the river. He would make it very plain to her and her friends that he had not come, ahead of his business appointment, to thrust himself upon her, but to get a breath of heaven's own air—being very tired of walls and pavements—and to—to discover the bobolink! ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Europe, we have another very common bird which is hatched and brought up by strangers. Every boy who lives in the country knows the cow-bird, cow-blackbird, or cow-bunting, for it is called by all these names. It is a small bird, a little larger than the bobolink and of much the same shape. The male has a dark-brown head and a bright greenish-black back and wings, but the female is so much lighter in color that you would hardly believe that they belong to the same species. These birds are very abundant in the spring and summer, and may be ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... the snow with his hat off; and William H. Prescott, with his eyesight restored, happened in from Mexico, a cactus in his buttonhole; and Audubon set a cage of birds on the table—Baltimore oriole, chaffinch, starling and bobolink doing their prettiest; and Christopher North thumped his gun down on the hall floor, and hung his 'sporting jacket' on the hat-rack, and shook the carpet brown with Highland heather. As Walter Scott came ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... said Peter. "I'd like to send the whole field, larks and all, to a little sick girl. I'd like especial to send her some of these clowny bobolink fellows to puff up and spill music by the quart for her; I guess nothing else runs ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... married next day, in the land o' the hay, the lady bird an' he. The bobolink came an' the wife o' the same An' the lark an' the fiddle de dee. An' the crow came down in a minister gown—there was nothing ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the gate-way, and clustered along the homely country stone wall. June blossomed in the yellow barberry by the road-side, and in the bright rhodora and the pale orchis in the dark woods. June sang in the whistle of the robin swinging on the elm and the cherry, and the gushing warble of the bobolink tumbling, and darting, and fluttering in the warm meadow. June twinkled in the keen brightness of the fresh green of leaves, and swelled in the fruit buds. June clucked and crowed in the cocks and hens that stepped about the yard, followed ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... prince and chief in the Senate, or in foreign lands, the kingliest man of his time in the presence of kings, his heart was in New England. When the spring came, he heard far off the fife bird and the bobolink calling him to his New Hampshire mountains, or of the waves on the shore at Marshfield alluring him with a sweeter than siren's voice to his ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the sentiment expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness. Indeed, the songs of most birds have some human significance, which, I think, is the source of the delight we take in them. The song of the bobolink to me expresses hilarity; the song sparrow's, faith; the bluebird's, love; the catbird's, pride; the white-eyed flycatcher's, self-consciousness; that of the hermit thrush, spiritual serenity: while there is something military in ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... before Jasper Jay had four callers. There was Bobbie Bobolink, Jolly Robin, Miss Kitty Catbird and ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Song's excess, Sings the blackbird late and early: Nor the bobolink's trill the less Laughs for very happiness, Gurgling through ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... across broad Gitchee Gumee, Sent his warning of the winter, Sent the white frost and Kewaydin,[10] Sent the swift and hungry North-wind. Homeward to the South the Summer Turned and fled the naked forests. With the Summer flew the robin, Flew the bobolink and blue-bird. Flock-wise following chosen leaders, Like the shaftless heads of arrows Southward cleaving through the ether, Soon the wild-geese followed after. One long moon the Sea-Gull waited, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink,)— This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May, Which 't ain't, for all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... can't. You are mistaken if you believe that," was the reply. "I could change YOU into a fly, or a crocodile, or a bobolink, if I wanted to; but fairies can't ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... all about. The bubbling ecstasy of a bobolink floated above the grasses of a meadow, and near at hand a wren hopped about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the water and then rose and shook the drops from his ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... several people sang, "The Creation." Nilsson was Gabriel. Gabriel has a beautiful voice cut low in the neck, and sings like a joyous bobolink in the dew-saturated mead. How's that? Nilsson is proud and haughty in her demeanor, and I had a good notion to send a note up to her, stating that she needn't feel so lofty, and if she could sit up in the peanut ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... assent with stately compliance. Undulating across the studio, she returned with a mandolin—not the one I remembered, but a pretty bit of workmanship in inlaid wood. Bending above this, she relieved the wait by merry, lilting tunes like the music of a bobolink, while Kitty fidgetted in and out, the puckers in her forehead every ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... motion, or a perch flashed its red fin from one hollow to another. The shadow lifted a degree, the eye penetrated to farther regions; a bird piped warily, then freely, a second and a third answered, a fourth took up the tale, blue-jay and thrush, catbird and bobolink; wings began to dart about them, the world to rustle overhead, near and far the dark prime grew instinct with sound, the shores and heavens blew out gales of melody, the air broke up in music. He lifted ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to live, so sweet To hear the ripple of the bobolink, To smell the clover blossoms white and pink, To feel oneself far from the dusty street, From dusty souls, from all the flare and fret Of living, ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... bird, in building my nest I should follow the example of the bobolink, placing it in the midst of a broad meadow, where there was no spear of grass, or flower or growth unlike another to mark its site. I judge that the bobolink escapes the dangers to which I have adverted as few or no other birds do. Unless the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the quarter whence it came, for it was as unexpected and pleasant a sound as a bobolink's song in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to the ear. When I was a lad, and went afield with my hoe or with the cows, during the strawberry season, I was sure to return at meal-time with a lining of berries in the top of my straw hat. They were my daily food, and I could taste the liquid and gurgling notes of the bobolink in every spoonful of them; and to this day, to make a dinner or supper off a bowl of milk with bread and strawberries,—plenty of strawberries,—well, is as near to being a boy again as I ever expect to come. The golden age draws ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... rapid smackering and chippering notes unburdens his soul. The song of ecstasy with our meadowlark is delivered in a level flight and is sharp and hurried, both flight and song differing radically from its everyday performance. One thinks of the bobolink as singing almost habitually on the wing. He is the most rollicking and song-drunk of all our singing birds. His season is brief but hilarious. In his level flight he seems to use only the tips of his wings, and we see them always ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... BIRDS. Handsomely, illustrated and containing full instructions for the management and training of the canary, mocking-bird, bobolink, blackbird, paroquet, parrot, ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... repeated like a Maeterlinck or a bobolink, holding up a shaking small hand whose nails Aunt Anne had ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... right down and enjoy it!" she exclaimed, dropping among the blossoms. "Hear that bird! It's a bobolink—it is! Oh, me! Oh, my! I haven't heard a bobolink for—I'm not going to bother to think how long. It ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... bobolink. Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 130 A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... self-appointed industry. The hum of cheerful conversation mingled with the murmurs of the brook; and now and then the snatch of some sweet song would break from tuneful lips, brief, spirited, melodious as a bobolink's, dashing upward from the clover-heads. And before the mighty shadow lying gloomily on the great prairie plain, which stretched eastward for a thousand miles, had grown to darkness, the active, happy workers had given to the bivouac that look of designed orderliness which a trained party always ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... flutter, on bustling-wings, All the plump little feathered things: Thrush and bobolink, finch and jay, Follow ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... farmer boy, tramp the meadows through, Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew. Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee, Farmer boy in gay ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm-braced, like a bobolink ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... they walked, she chattered her best to amuse the sombre mind, so lately uprooted from old habits and ways of life into a mode of existence more or less distasteful. The birds aided her effort with a variety of foreign music. Woodpigeon, bobolink, bluebird, oriole, cooed and trilled and warbled from the bush all around. The black squirrel, fat, sleek, jolly with good living of summer fruits, scampered about the boughs with erect shaggy tail, looking a very caricature upon care, as he stowed ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... his azure plumes, the thrush clad all in brown, the robin jerking his spasmodic throat, the oriole drifting like a flake of fire, the jolly bobolink and his happy mate, the mocking-bird imitating the notes of all, the red-bird with his one sweet trill, and the busy little wren, are all making the trees in our front yard ring ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Bobolink, that in the meadow Or beneath the orchard's shadow Keepest up a constant rattle, Joyous as my children's prattle, Welcome to ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... along the prairie footpath towards a little settlement, they heard at some distance over the plain, a girl singing. The song was exquisitely worded and touching, and the singer's voice was sweet and limpid as the notes of a bobolink. M. Riel, like Mohammed, El Mahdi, and other great patrons of race and religion, is strong of will; but he is weaker than a shorn Samson when a lovely woman chooses to essay a conquest. So he marvelled much to his companion ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... with mossy brink, Where the cattle came to drink, They trilled and piped and whistled With the thrush and bobolink, Till the kine, in listless pause, Switched their tails in mute applause, With lifted heads, and dreamy ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... not see him, for her eyes were lifted to a little bobolink that had come flying down the wind. One does not hear the bobolink at his best unless one goes to hear him; for sheer glorified happiness there is in all our land no bird like him at the hour of sunrise, when he is drunk with the ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... AT CAMP COMALONG or Peg of Tamarack Hills The girls of Bobolink Troop spend their summer on the shores of Lake Hocomo. Their discovery of Peg, the mysterious rider, and the clearing up of her remarkable adventures afford a ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... was three years old she could prattle like a bobolink, and thought herself quite as old and wise as either of her sisters. Every Sunday morning it made her very wretched to see Susy and Prudy set out, with bright ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... one required no little scrutiny to determine what manner of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung cages of different kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in another an oriole; in a third the impudent bobolink—while three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... pewit bushes are budding and on yonder aspen we can hear a forsythia bursting into song. It is spring, when the feet of the floorwalker pain him and smoking-car windows have to be pried open with chisels. We skip lightheartedly round the house to see if those bobolink bulbs we planted are showing any signs yet, and discover the whisk brush that fell out of the window last November. And then the newsboy comes along the street and sees us prancing about and we feel sheepish and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley |
