"Curlew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew him, was already "the oldest herd on the Pentlands," and had been all his days faithful to that curlew- scattering, sheep-collecting life. He remembered the droving days, when the drove roads, that now lie green and solitary through the heather, were thronged thoroughfares. He had himself often marched flocks into England, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one another, and perform many strange courting parades. A careful observer of birds, Mr. E. Selous, who is quoted by Havelock Ellis,[63] has found that all bird dances are not nuptial, but that some birds—the stone-curlew (or great plover), for example—have different kinds of dancing. The nuptial dances are taken part in by both the male and female, and are immediately followed by conjugation; but there are as well other dances or antics of a non-sexual character, which may ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the marshes and out upon the sands was a favorite sport, and when not with the fishermen Grenfell was usually to be found with his gun stalking curlew, oyster diggers, or some other of the numerous birds that frequented the marshes and shores. Barefooted, until the weather grew too cold in autumn, and wearing barely enough clothing to cover his nakedness, he would set out in early morning ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... and legs. The very birds seemed to shun these wastes, and no wonder, since they had an easy method of escaping from them;—at least I only heard the monotonous and plaintive cries of the lapwing and curlew, which my companions denominated the peasweep ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... glens and shelvings and variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and sweetly off the hills, pure from the elevation, and rustically scented by the upland plants; and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy forelands, the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream together in the same field by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix their wheelings, the sea-birds skim the tree-tops and fish among ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not prevent them from making another desperate attempt to land their wares, and also to have their revenge by destroying a few of her Majesty's servants. On dark nights the horn lanterns were seen about the links, the flare-light flashed across the sea, and the curlew's shrill call was heard. These signs were now known to the Preventive staff; but they also had their signs and their means of conveying news, so that when the low, sneaking black lugger again appeared, they were ready for ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... where the conditions seem suited to their requirements. Nevertheless, in September, and even as early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, the golden plover often still wearing his black nuptial dress; singly and in pairs, in small flocks, and in clouds they come—curlew, godwit, plover, tatler, tringa—piping the wild notes to which the Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, then to the wild Indian in his remote village; and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake the animals haunting these places in earlier days? Trapper's Grove tells a story we feel, but ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... ourselves down beneath the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or the shade of a venerable oak, in such a scene, and listen to the summer sounds of bees, grasshoppers, and ten thousand other insects, mingled with the more remote and solitary cries of the pewit and the curlew! Then, to think of the coach-horse, urged on his sultry stage, or the plough-boy and his teem, plunging in the depths of a burning fallow, or of our ancestors, in times of national famine, plucking up the wild fern-roots for bread, and what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... up by great masses of limestone rock and occasional clumps and coverts of fir and pine; nothing but the blue line of the hills in the west; nothing but the grey northern skies overhead; nothing but the cry of the curlew and the bleating of the mountain sheep. It was in the midst of this that he met his senior employer—at the corner of a thin spinney which ran along the edge of a disused quarry. Mallalieu, as Stoner well knew, was a great man for walking on these moors, and he always walked alone. He took these ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... thee I yield, And that which Vishnu wont to wield. I give to thee the arm of Fire, Desired by all and named the Spire. To thee I grant the Wind-God's dart, Named Crusher, O thou pure of heart. This arm, the Horse's Head, accept, And this, the Curlew's Bill yclept, And these two spears, the best e'er flew, Named the Invincible and True. And arms of fiends I make thine own, Skull-wreath and mace that smashes bone. And Joyous, which the spirits bear, Great weapon of the sons of air. Brave offspring of ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... an owner calls her the Petrel. It's not that I'm superstitious, but to give a boat a name of bad augury to sailors appears to me . . . however, I 've argued it with him and I will have her called the Curlew. Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, Petrel would be thought the proper title for her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cried, "what is the matter?" "That," said the Kangaroo, as she laid herself down to rest, "is the sound of the Curlew enjoying itself. They are sociable birds, and entertain a great deal. There is a party to-night, I suppose, and that is the expression of their enjoyment. I believe," she continued, with a suppressed yawn, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... three weeks goes by, an' since a dead Mexican more or less ain't calc'lated to leave no onefface'ble scars the incident is all but forgot, when a second uprisin' takes place in the Votes For Women S'loon. This time it's that sickly curlew-voiced Oscar who's the shriekin' center of eevents. Most of us is jest filin' out of the O. K. Restauraw, pickin' our teeth after our matootinal reepast, when we beholds this yere Oscar boilin' fo'th from the Votes For Women ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers (p. 101) in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Cool Seedasha. Copper Acoogannee. Coral Ooroo Cover, to, over with sand Sinna sheeostang. Cough, to Sack-quee. Count, to Oohaw'koo-oong[39]. Country A'whfee. Cow Mee Ooshee. Crab Gaannee. Crab, to crawl as a Hoyoong. Creep, to Haw'yoong. Crow, to O'tayoong. Crow Garrasee. Cry, to Nachoong. Curlew U'nguainan. Cut, to Cheeoong, or feeoong, or feejoong. Dance Oodooee, or Makatta. Dark Coorasing. Daughter Innago oongua, or ungua. Day (at Napakiang) Nit'chee[40]. —— (in the north of the island) I'sheeree. —— after to-morrow Asattee. —— the following ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... something to eat, anyhow," replied Dick, as he dropped a curlew that was flying over them. After broiling and eating the bird, together with some hoe-cake which they had in their pockets, the boys resumed their hunt for deer. They saw several more during the afternoon, but ill luck ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... saw him returning with a brace and a half of birds that looked very much like large snipe. So he thought them, but that question was set at rest by the zoologist, who pronounced them at once to be the American "Curlew" of Wilson (Numenius longirostris). Curlew or snipe, they were soon divested of the feathery coat, and placed in Lanty's frying-pan. Excellent eating they proved, having only the fault that there was not enough ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths—that was her fate—with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the pool of fresh water, as there was no holding-ground for the tent-pegs. I quickly instructed them in making faggots of tamarisk-boughs which, tied to the ropes and buried in the sand, were much more secure than pegs in the hardest soil; and the tent was at length arranged. A small species of curlew tempted its fate by visiting the fresh-water margin just before our dinner-hour; I bagged it; and as the cook was in a bad humour, I made a fire of driftwood, with which the beach was strewed, and when ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... slaughtered bird, And all his heart with ruth was stirred. The fowler's impious deed distressed His gentle sympathetic breast, And while the curlew's sad cries rang Within his ears, the hermit sang: "No fame be thine for endless time, Because, base outcast, of thy crime, Whose cruel hand was fain to slay One of this gentle pair at play!" E'en as he spoke his bosom wrought And laboured ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... shrill, And he was answered from the hill; Wild as the scream of the curlew, From crag to crag ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Donia or Clianthus, in Don's System of Gardening and Botany, vol. 2. p. 468, in which a third species of the genus is introduced, founded on a specimen in Mr. Lambert's Herbarium, said to have been discovered at Curlew River, by Captain King. This species, named Clianthus Dampieri by Cunningham, he characterises as having leaves of a slightly different form, but its principal distinction is in its having racemes instead of umbels; at the same time he confidently refers to Dampier's figure and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... sign-board over the door. "There it is,—'Curlew's Nest.' There's something about the name that fascinates me. Don't you feel so too, Aunt Marcia? I can imagine all sorts of curious and wonderful things about a closed-up house called 'Curlew's Nest'! It just fairly bristles ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... twice its width. On the largest of the islands is an extensive orange-grove. As there were no difficulties in the navigation of the lake, Cornwood called Buck to the wheel, and joined the party on the outer deck. He pointed out the herons, curlew, cranes, paroquets, and other birds. When he said it was fine fishing in the lake, our sportsmen had their trolling lines overboard. Ten fine black bass were taken; and at "seven bells," a portion of them were on the breakfast table. We all took our meals at the same table on ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... melancholy hoot of the barn owl, while nearer some bird is singing very softly—either a blackcap or a sedge-warbler. The curlew is saying good-night to the lapwing on the hill. By the edge of the growing corn is heard, iterative and wearisome, the "crake," ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the earth again and she was alone, but for the breeze on the solitary plain. The level distance glittered in the sharp light, a few crows with slant wings dipped and ran down the wind before her, and a passing gleam on the marsh was explained by the far-off cry of a curlew. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... reanimated her spirits, and imagination again became pleasant unto her. She heard the wild swans winging their way above her, and she thought of the wild hunters and the spectre-horseman:[41] the short wail of the curlew, the call of the moor-cock and plover, was the voice of her beloved. To her all nature wore a charmed life: earth and sky were but creatures formed for her use, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... sign of rain. As I watched it steadily increasing the first voices of the night began to call—a 'possum squealed from the branches of a blue gum in the creek, and was answered by another somewhere near; and then the long, long mournful wail of a curlew cried out from the sunbaked plain beyond. Oh, the unutterable sense of loneliness that at times the long-drawn, penetrating cry of the curlew, resounding through the silence of the night amid the solitude of vast Australian plains, causes the solitary bushman or traveller to feel! I well remember ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ship Curlew had boarded the Columbine about the 20th April, the master of which vessel had died a few weeks previously. The doctor on board the Columbine had received letters from Mr. Lander dated from king Obie's palace at Eboe, about ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of the solitary curlew, the saucy burr of the grouse, the screech of the owl, the croaking of the raven, the flight of the magpie, the slowly flying heron, the noisy cock, the hungry seagull, the shrill note of the woodpecker, the sportive ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... flying down the river, looking very splendid in its black, white, and red plumage, in the bright light of the morning. It haunted the reach for some days, and was not shot. Among other visitors to this part of the river and its island during spring were a curlew, which fed for some time on the eyot during the early morning, and a pair of pheasants, one of which, an old-fashioned English cock bird, was subsequently captured unhurt. A flock of sandpipers remained there for some weeks, and during the summer ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... was so spiritual that he left his voice at the foot of the pulpit stairs, and lived in the Song of Solomon, with occasional excursions into the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and it was thoughtless not to have told Mr. Curlew that two or three dogs—of unexceptionable manners—attended our kirk with their masters. They would no more have thought of brawling in church than John himself, and they knew the parts of the service as well ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... a brooding curlew, a faint sigh from a plover, and the wild rasping cry of a lapwing greeted them overhead. Yet there was a silence, a silence broken for a moment by the cries of the birds, but a silence thick and heavy. Between ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... broke they passed the gate, which, there being peace in the land, was already open. Fifteen minutes later they were on the lonely Westleton Heath, where for a while naught was to be heard save the scream of the curlew and the rush of the wings of the wild-duck passing landward from the sea. Presently, however, another sound reached their ears, that of horses galloping behind them. Grey Dick pulled ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... of beach burning in the fierce sunlight, the endless meadows, with the glimmer of water in the distance, the dunes, the twisted cedars, the leagues of scintillating ocean, rocking, rocking, always rocking. In the starlit nights the curlew came in from the sand-bars by twos and threes; I could hear their querulous call as I lay in bed thinking. All day long the little ring-necks whistled from the shore. The plover answered them from distant, lonely inland pools. The great white gulls drifted ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... just the weather I'd pick to take the old Curlew out in; but when I see through the glasses what the white thing was that's poundin' around on Razor Back Ledges, and seen the distress signal run up—why, I couldn't stay ashore. There was others would have ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... approach of night, had been between me and the worst kind of destruction - viz. that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I would on a goat or turtle; and have thought it no more crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I would unjustly slander myself if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged, with great humanity, all these unknown deliverances were due, and without which I must inevitably have fallen ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... could see to give cause for this. A flock of curlew were passing, wailing one to the other, across the sunset; a string of late gulls trailed athwart the sky; and a wedge of those beautiful little wild-duck known as wigeon was letting itself down to the shores of the inlet. Far out to ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... THE ESKIMO CURLEW,—Numenius borealis, (Forst.). This valuable game bird once ranged all along the Atlantic coast of North America, and wherever found it was prized for the table. It preferred the fields and meadows to the shore lines, and was the companion ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... course of the day we saw many geese, cranes, small birds common to the plains, and a few pheasants. We also observed a small plover or curlew of a brown color, about the size of a yellow-legged plover or jack-curlew, but of a different species. It first appeared near the mouth of Smith's River, but is so shy and vigilant that we were unable to shoot it. Both the broad and narrow-leaved willow continue, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire. Joe went to sleep—HOW, I don't know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet he ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... first specimen home in 1874. These pheasants do not rise in the jungle and are, therefore, uninteresting to the Borneo sportsman. They are frequently trapped by the natives. There are many kinds of pigeons, which afford good sport. Snipe occur, but not plentifully. Curlew are numerous in some localities, but very wild. The small China quail are abundant on cleared spaces, as also is the painted plover, but cleared spaces in Borneo are somewhat few and far between. So much for ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Aelii at the other, have revived into importance as Carlisle and Newcastle,[288] but of the rest few indeed remain save as solitary ruins on the bare Northumbrian fells tenanted only by the flock and the curlew. But this very solitude in which their names have perished has preserved to us the means of recovering them. Thanks to it there is no part of Britain so rich in Roman remains and Roman inscriptions. At no fewer than twelve of these "stations" such have been already found relating to troops ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... thing, as a general rule, any more than any other complete upsetting of the balance of nature. A great deal could be learnt from the excellent work already done all over the continent with regard to the farmer's and forester's wild friends and foes. A migrating flight of curlew, snipe, plover or sandpipers is worth much more to the farmer alive than dead. But by no means every farmer knows ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... the Baron's horse as they went past on the way to the post; the scarlet jacket glided along quickly, heading the others. Gold Star and Orbit were much fancied. Curlew, Halton, and Sniper had friends. Postman was the outsider, a two-hundred-to-one chance; only a few pounds went on him for the ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... of Duck Island were in keeping with its general appearance, melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of the passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, were all beyond powers of written expression. The aspect of these mournful fowls was not at all cheerful or inspiring, as the boat containing ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... less black-a-vised than more frequent bergs," where in the distance the mountains "loom up on its borders much less substantial, apparently, in fabric than so many spirals of blue turf smoke," and where the curlew's cry "can set a whole landscape to melancholy in one ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sun by the over-arching boughs of birch and hazel, and solaced by the tinkling music of a neighbouring rill. Thick underwood concealed the dell on all sides; grey lichen-covered boulders surrounded it; no sound disturbed it save the faint cry of the plover and curlew on the distant shore, or the flap of a hawk's wing as it soared overhead. Altogether it looked like a safe and sure retreat, but it did not ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... It was then that the querulous crane rose, and testily protested against the selling of his favorite haunt in the sandy peninsula, which only six months of Jim's excesses had made imperative. It was then that a mournful curlew, who, with the preface that he had always been really expecting it, reiterated the story that Jim had been seen more than once staggering home with nervous hands and sodden features from a debauch with the younger officers; it was the same desponding fowl who knew that Maggie's eyes ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... A curlew's note broke the silence, wild, mournful, unearthly. Meg shivered, and sat up straight. Judy's brow, grew damp, her ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... that ocean-mountain steep, Six hundred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep, From Dooran to the Fairy Bridge, and round by Tullen strand, Level and long, and white with waves, where gull and curlew stand; Head out to sea when on your lee the breakers you discern!— Adieu to all the billowy coast, and winding ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... father, and there is Uncle Mansie," said Jessie, as the two men climbed over the ship's rail and swarmed down into the boat. Then up went the brown sail, and the little Curlew sped blithely past the whaling ships and across the broad bay, and it was not long ere she was moored alongside our jetty ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... Curlew is another "early free-cropping purple plum, habit erect, vigorous," also raised by Francis Rivers. Monarch is a late, good, and very saleable plum. It is said that 75 per cent. or more of the plums planted in recent years have been Victorias. Planters should avoid the Victoria glut. Pond's ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... the Chandeleurs, the storm-drowned Grand Gosiers and the deep- sea fishing grounds beyond, few knew the way hither, and fewer ever sailed it. At the sound of his gun the birds of the beach—sea-snipe, curlew, plover—showed the whites of their wings for an instant and fell to feeding again. Save when the swift Wilderness—you remember the revenue cutter?-chanced this way on her devious patrol, only the steamer of the light-house inspection service, once a month, came up out of the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... Boches would come into these solitary moors, where there are no people any more, only the creatures of the Lais woods, and the curlew and the lapwings which ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... is a Lincolnshire word for the cry of the curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid of a very un-Tennysonian cumbrousness in the second line. But Tennyson had never, he said, heard of that meaning of ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... heavens, and the yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... birds that way were flying, Heron and curlew overhead, With a mighty eagle westward floating, Every plume in ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... in lonely majesty upon the dreary moor, near which no sound is ever heard, save the distant and sullen roar of the ocean, as it breaks in sheets of foam on the rock-bound coast—the fitful cry of curlew, as it wings over them its solitary way—or the occasional low moaning of the wind, as, stealing through amidst the rocks, it seems to pour forth a mournful dirge for the shades of departed greatness:—when we look on a scene like this, we have before our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... sail to Halifax; thence, by a steamer, to those neighboring isles; for the Curlew and the Merlin, British mail-boats, leave Halifax fortnightly for the Bermudas. A thousand miles of life-invigorating atmosphere—a week upon salt water, and you are amid the magnificent scenery of the Tempest! And how ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... sudden attack by a powerful iron-clad fleet. The supposed enemy was represented by the Channel Squadron, under the command of Vice-Admiral Baird, and consisting of H.M.S. Northumberland (flag ship), the Agincourt, Monarch, Iron Duke, and Curlew. The "general idea" of the operations was that a hostile fleet was known to be cruising in the vicinity, and that an attack on the Rock might be made. The squadron left Gibraltar and proceeded to the westward, returning to the eastward through ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... Moanmore, Dermid McMurrogh, King of Leinster, of whom we shall hear hereafter, fought gallantly on the side of the victor. In the same year—but whether before or after the Munster campaign is uncertain—an Ulster force having marched into Sligo, Thorlogh met them near the Curlew mountains, and made peace with their king. A still more important interview took place the next year in the plain, or Moy, between the rivers Erne and Drowse, near the present Ballyshannon. On the Bachall-Isa and the relics of Columbkill, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... rushed and whirled the skein of terrified wild-fowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings, while clear above all sounded the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... an ungainly bird. Occasionally my casual observations are made afar off, with the medium of a telescope. Then the birds are seen behaving naturally, and without fear or self-consciousness. The other day the cute attitudes of a beach curlew interested me, as he stood upon a stone just awash, and ever and anon picked up a crab. A blue heron flapped down beside him, and the curlew skipped off to another rock. In a minute the heron straightened his neck, poised ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Carcell. Crane in sawce. Partrych. Young Pocock. Venson baked. Coney. Fryed meat in paste. Pigeons. Lesh Lumbert. Byttor. A Frutor. Curlew. A Sutteltee. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... side, his eyes attracted to something which had moved. He could see nothing at first, though from the corner of his eye he had certainly caught a flicker of movement over there. Yellow sand, gray rocks and bushes, and above a curlew circling, with long beak outstretched before, and long, red legs stretched out behind. He almost believed he had but caught the swift passing of a cloud shadow over there and was on the point of climbing farther up his own slope, to where a yawning hole in ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... heard a sea-bird call like that," said Joe, in a husky whisper. "It wasn't a gull, nor a shag, nor a curlew." ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... wild flowers in this dear land of ours, The curlew I love to hear scream, And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks That graze ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... psalm-tune which our fathers called "Complaint," and the cracked, wavering voices of the women, with the deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain, rose in the uproar of the storm with a ghostly, strange wildness, like the scream of the curlew or the wailing ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heard of Yeats at Plato, but never had he known crying curlew and misty mere and the fluttering ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... hills with the sweet mournful music were ringing, The curlew and plover in concert were singing; But the melody died 'midst derision and laughter, As the host of ungodly rush'd on ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... you have left behind you, you are alone with the lonely hills and the wide sky and the elemental things that have been from the beginning and will outlast all the tortured drama of men. The very sounds of life—the whistle of the curlew, the bleating of the mountain sheep—add to the sense of primeval solitude. To these sounds the crags have echoed for a thousand and ten thousand years; to these sounds and to the rushing of the winds ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... knew him, was already "the oldest herd on the Pentlands," and had been all his days faithful to that curlew-scattering, sheep-collecting life. He remembered the droving days, when the drove-roads, that now lie green and solitary through the heather, were thronged thoroughfares. He had himself often marched flocks into England, sleeping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eagle is "Mother." She calls to her nestlings and upon her strong wings she bears the message of peace. Peace and its symbol, the clear, cloudless sky, are the theme of the principal songs. The curlew, in the early morning, stretches its neck and its wing as it sits on the roost, and utters a long note. The sound is considered an indication that the day ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... graceful lianas, like floating draperies, forming magnificent canopies of verdure on the face of the rocks. The sea-birds, allured by the stillness of these retreats, resorted here to pass the night. At the hour of sunset we could perceive the curlew and the stint skimming along the seashore; the frigate-bird poised high in air; and the white bird of the tropic, which abandons, with the star of day, the solitudes of the Indian ocean. Virginia took pleasure in resting herself ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Wicklow, and fled shamefully; while almost at the same moment—by a misfortune which was certainly no fault of Essex's, but which went to swell the list of his disasters—Sir Conyers Clifford, the gallant governor of Connaught, was defeated by the O'Donnells in a skirmish among the Curlew mountains, and both he and Sir Alexander Ratcliffe, the second in command, left dead upon ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the South Coast to King George the Third's Sound. Transactions there. Voyage to the North-West Cape, and Survey of the Coast between the North-West Cape and Depuch Island, including the examinations of Exmouth Gulf, Curlew River, and Dampier's Archipelago. Loss of Anchors, and Interview with the Natives. Remarks upon Dampier's account of Rosemary Island, and of the Island ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... wheeze. Whalpet, whelped. Wham, whom. Whan, when. Whang, a shive. Whang, flog. Whar, whare, where. Wha's whose. Wha's, who is. Whase, whose. What for, whatfore, wherefore. Whatna, what. What reck, what matter; nevertheless. Whatt, whittled. Whaup, the curlew. Whaur, where. Wheep, v. penny-wheep. Wheep, jerk. Whid, a fib. Whiddin, scudding. Whids, gambols. Whigmeleeries, crotches. Whingin, whining. Whins, furze. Whirlygigums, flourishes. Whist, silence. Whissle, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... western sky crimson islets forever shifted shapes in a sea of gold. A rosy light suffused the earth. In it the water turned to the pink of a shell, the marshes became ethereal and far away, earth and sky seemed one. The flashing wings of gull and curlew were like fairy ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he first sent me off to learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a cousin that'd made a lot of money tailoring out in Dakota, and he said tailoring was a lot like drawing, so he sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew, to work in a tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months' schooling a year—walked to school two miles, through snow up to my knees—and Dad never would stand for my having a single book ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... foam-flakes are whirling Below on the strand, As white as the pages I turn with my hand; And the curlew afar, From his storm-troubled lair, Laments with the cry Of a soul in despair. Our Father, forget not Our mariners' state; Their ships are so slender, Thy seas are ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... But presently the road was barred by a rail, so they had to stop, and he put his arm round her, and she laid her head on his shoulder; and the murmur of wind and water was in her ears, and she became as the lark that sang above them, the curlew that piped, the quiet cattle, and all inanimate things—untroubled, natural, complete. All intellectual interest being suspended, she had begun to yearn for a companion, a mate. Her delicate mind refused to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... map, and when he glanced south the hills loomed, dark and forbidding, through thin gray mist. Pools of water dotted the marish fields, and beyond these lay a wet, brown moss where wild cotton grew among the peat-hags. Plover were crying about the waste and a curlew's shrill tremolo rang out as it flitted across the leaden sky. The outlook was not encouraging, but Foster picked his way across the bog and struck up the side of a fell. There was a road, but it would ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Like curlew's wings flapped the white sails of the ship on the blue waters. Aspiro's eyes absorbed my mind and memory. The past was voiceless—the future clarion-toned. So we loosed our hold of the real past, and drifted toward an ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... the sea-winds began to rise, and I felt a chill strike through me from my wet shooting-boots. High overhead gulls were wheeling and tossing like bits of white paper; from some distant marsh a solitary curlew called. Little by little the sun sank into the plain, and the zenith flushed with the after-glow. I watched the sky change from palest gold to pink and then to smouldering fire. Clouds of midges danced above me, and high in the calm air a bat dipped and soared. My eyelids ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... through the window, it lay offensively resplendent against the vivid green of the grass. It served, however, for a time, ending its days honourably by capsizing a friend and me, guns and all, into the half-frozen water of the lower estuary while we were stalking some curlew. I had to run home dripping. My friend's gun, moreover, having been surreptitiously borrowed from my cousin's father, was recovered the following day, to our unutterable relief. Out of the balance of the money spent on the boat, we purchased a pin-fire, breech-loading gun, the pride of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... and spectral sky; Far off the black basaltic crags are heaved Against the desolate emptiness of space; But no sweet beam of sunset ever falls Athwart old Skidloe's cloudy crest—no soft And wistful glory of awakened dawn Lays on his haggard brows a touch of grace. Sometimes a lonely curlew skims across The seething torment of the dread abyss, And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond; But, solitary and unchanged for aye, He towers amid the rude revolt of waves, His stony face seamed by a thousand years, And wrinkled with a million ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... "seven whistlers" are curlew, or herringspear birds, thought to be storm-bringers when heard overhead at sea. You will find a story in Buckland's "Curiosities of Natural ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... will plant outposts and sentinels within the green, so be ye wary to smite outpost and sentinel suddenly and that none may hear within the camp nor take alarm; when 'tis done, cry you thrice like unto a curlew that we may know. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... became almost impossible to convey any sustenance to the famishing pair; yet the thing was done, and wonderfully managed, not in the night-time, but in the open day. One shepherd would call to another, in the note of the curlew or the miresnipe, and without exciting suspicion, convey from the corner of his plaid the necessary refreshments, even down to a bottle of Nantz. The cave was never entered on such occasions; but the provisions ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... pallid sand, their sharp angles, miniature cliffs, and their crests crowned with coarse grasses. But now, beneath the dull pall of the winter sky, no spot in the world could have been more lonesome or more desolate, for never a sign of man was to be seen upon them and save for a solitary curlew, whose sad note reached Adrian's ears as it beat up wind from the sea, even the beasts and birds that dwelt there had hidden themselves away. Only the voices of Nature remained in all their majesty, the drear screams and moan of the rushing wind, and above it, now low and now voluminous as the gale ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... he is called,) as he takes up his roost on the withered bough of one of our tallest trees, acquaints us that the sun has just dipped behind the hills, and that it is time to trudge homewards; while the plaintive notes of the curlew, and the wild and dismal screechings of the flying squirrel, skimming from branch to branch, whisper us to retire to our bedchambers. In the morning, again, the dull monotonous double note of the whee-whee, (so named ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... adversary. But a great hubbub in the church marred his exultation, and although he and his faithful clerk continued to sing the hymn of victory, their notes were only heard by fits, like the whistle of a curlew during ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... on into the sedgy grass and the curlew continued to circle, vanishing and reappearing from behind the trees, always uttering those ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... are to be found at the back of most of the beaches, are frequented by ducks, teal, herons, red-bills, and some small flights of the curlew and plover. The bay seemed to be well stocked with fish; and our success with hook and line made us regret having no seine, for the hauling of which many of the beaches are particularly well adapted. It is not improbable that Two-fold Bay, like some ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... think it is funny to pretend that you think I said curlew you are very much mistaken. I have a very great many things to do, more things than a little boy like you can count, and I can't spend all the morning with you. So I am going to write on this slate: "The curfew bell was rung at eight o'clock ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... bleached bones in savage rage That lie unburied by the grass-grown paths. The prairie dogs play sentinel by day And backward slips the badger to his den; The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake, A staring buzzard floating in the blue, And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call,— Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore. All else is mute and dormant; vacantly The sun looks down, the days run idly on, The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls Smothering the records ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... and the supper all fit to go down, and no worry, only to eat and be done with it! And all the new plates come from Watchett, with the Watchett blue upon them, at the risk of the lives of everybody, and the capias from good Aunt Jane for stuffing a curlew with onion before he begins to get cold, and make a woodcock of him, and the way to turn the flap over in the inside of a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the country grows wilder. There is less cultivation, and behind every little shanty rises the great brown shoulder of the neighbouring mountain covered with rough, bent grass—or sedge, as it is called here. Grey plover and curlew scud across the road, a sign of hard weather, and near the rarer homesteads towers the hawk, looking for his prey. Now and again come glimpses of the bay, of the great island of Innisturk, of Clare Island, and of Innisboffin. Wilder and wilder grows the scenery as ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... canyon unexpectedly. The first warning was a sudden eruption from it, a flock of dunlin, a flock which then passed seawards in a regimented flight that was an alternate flash of light and a swift shadow. Dunlin, curlew, oyster-catchers, or gulls, left a gully just before I knew I was headed off again. In one of these creeks, however, the birds left me more than their delicate footprints to examine. They left there a small craft whose ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson |
