"Goldfinch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his walks through the slums, my father was so fascinated by the intelligence of a busy goldfinch drawing water for himself in his cage—he had other accomplishments as well—that he went in and bought it. But not a thing would the little bird do, not a trick would he perform when he got to his new home in Doughty Street, and would only draw up water in the dark or when he thought no one ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... written some pleasing lines on a goldfinch starved to death in a cage, which Emma has learned by heart, and will repeat when I have finished reading. Her concern was so great for her carelessness that she offered to let her birds fly, and turn the rabbits out on ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... you. The nest was very deep, solidly built, and cup-shaped. Eggs, plain white.' In conversation with Captain Cock he afterwards told me that he had watched the bird building its nest. It was rather on the side of the branch, and its solid formation reminded him of a Goldfinch's nest. It was composed of grass, fibres, moss, and lichens externally and thickly lined with hair and feathers. The eggs were pure unspotted white, rather smaller than those of Reguloides occipitalis. Two of them measured .58 by .48 and .57 by .45. They ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Swiss people cure their coughs with Coltsfoot employed like tobacco." When the flowers are fully blown and fall off, the seeds with their "clock" form a beautiful head of white flossy silk, and if this flies away when there is no wind it is said to be a sure sign of coming rain. The Goldfinch often lines her nest with the soft pappus of the Coltsfoot. In Paris the Coltsfoot flower is painted on the doorposts of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... for a few weeks, for a little change and rest. Just as I was leaving home I received your first note, and yesterday a second; and both are most interesting and valuable to me. That is a very curious observation about the goldfinch's beak (435/1. "Descent of Man," Edition I., Volume I., page 39. Mr. Weir is quoted as saying that the birdcatchers can distinguish the males of the goldfinch, Carduelis elegans, by their "slightly longer beaks."), but one would hardly like to trust it without measurement or ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Thomas Armstrong was deep in the scheme. If the discreditable witnesses examined against Lord William Russell are to be believed, a plot had been concocted by a few desperate men to assassinate "the Blackbird and the Goldfinch"—as the conspirators called the King and the Duke of York—as they were in their coach on their way from Newmarket to London. This plan seems to have been the suggestion of Rumbold, a maltster, who lived in a lonely moated farmhouse, called Rye House, about eighteen miles from London, near ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... St. John. The Christ Child is a dear little curly-headed baby, and He stands at His mother's knee with one little bare foot resting on hers. His hand is stretched out protectingly over a yellow goldfinch which St. John, a sturdy little figure clad in goatskins, has just brought to Him. The baby face is full of tender love and care for the little fluttering prisoner, and His curved hand is held over its head ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... its motions. I then took the sparrow out of the cage and put in a finch, which had also been taken from the nest, but was reared far from such a machine, and he was frightened and did not reconcile himself to it for some time. I exchanged this bird for a goldfinch which had been caught after he was full grown, and his alarm at the little mill was so great that he did ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... one with a square flat top. Along this they will run head downward. They are such active birds that they need plenty of space. They chatter all day long and are very cheery, and they are very beautiful in their brown, gold, and scarlet coats. In a wild state the goldfinch feeds chiefly on the seeds of weeds and thistles, groundsel, and dandelion, and he is therefore a friend to the farmer, but in captivity be will thrive on canary and German rape with several hemp-seeds daily, and now and then ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... according to which the London fanciers tried to breed the several sub-varieties.[448] A great winner of prizes at the Pigeon-shows,[449] in describing the Short-faced Almond Tumbler, says, "There are many first-rate fanciers who are particularly partial to what is called the goldfinch-beak, which is very beautiful; others say, take a full-size round cherry, then take a barley-corn, and judiciously placing and thrusting it into the cherry, form as it were your beak; and that is not all, for it will form a good head and beak, provided, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... prefer; And by that warbling bird, the wood-lark place we then, The red-sparrow, the nope, the redbreast, and the wren. The yellow-pate; which though she hurt the blooming tree, Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she. And of these chanting fowls, the goldfinch not behind, That hath so many sorts descending from her kind. The tydy for her notes as delicate as they, The laughing hecco, then the counterfeiting jay, The softer with the shrill (some hid among the leaves, Some in the taller trees, some in the lower greaves) Thus ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan |
