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More "Bird's nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for an aboriginal's hut. For other words expressing the same thing, see list under Humpy. In the dialect of the South-East of South Australia oorla means a house, or a camp, or a bird's nest. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... appeared in the south, in order to get a bed and a view of the adjacent locality. Having shot a leche, and made a glorious fire, we got a good cup of tea and had a comfortable night. While collecting wood that evening, I found a bird's nest consisting of live leaves sewn together with threads of the spider's web. Nothing could exceed the airiness of this pretty contrivance; the threads had been pushed through small punctures and thickened ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... ware, weapons, war-coats, and boats, are divided equally among the sons, the eldest perhaps getting a little more than the others. The girls divide the old beads, cloth, bead-boxes, and various trifles. The male slaves go to the sons, the female slaves to the daughters. Bird's nest caves and bee trees might be divided or shared ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... without money and without price, with which nature is lavish toward the poor who love her and attend her carefully, such as the first flowers of the season, nuts and seed-vessels, and sometimes an empty bird's nest and a stray bright feather and bits of bright stones, which might, for her baby fancy, be as good as my brother's gold and silver, and shells, and red and russet moss. All these I offered her from time to time as reverently and ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... the roads, whistling as he went, and occasionally tossing his battered cap in the air. He often lingered on his way, now to cut down a particularly tempting switch from the hedge, now to hunt for a possible bird's nest. It was very nearly six o'clock when he reached the back avenue, swung himself over the gate, which was locked, and ran softly on the dewy grass in the direction of the laurel bush. Old Betty had given him most careful instructions, and he was far too ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... who professed to have been down there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand woman of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... spring a large number of those which have survived the Southern campaign return to their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out under his porch, one April day, and showed me a phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The same bird had no doubt returned year after year; and as there was room for only one nest upon her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have heard of a white ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... but we will try to find something instead," said Kallolo, giving me his blowpipe and bow to hold. He then climbed up the tree till he reached the bird's nest, from which he extracted two eggs, and brought them down safety. They were considerably larger than a duck's egg, white and granulated all over, though the bird itself did not appear to be above the size of an ordinary duck. It was, I found, a crested curassow. The eggs being newly ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... barracan spread on the sands. Sometimes a piece of bread is broken over the dates. They then squat round this repast in groups. The slaves save from their previous day's supper, or from the morning, a few dates for this time of the day, and are allowed each a drink of water. Noticed a bird's nest on a furze of The Desert. This is only the second I have ever seen in Sahara. A few small birds are now hopping about on the line of route. But I have observed the colour of the birds to vary with the region through which ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... mention a name; Jeanne and Julien would look, at first seeing nothing, but at last discovering the summit of the mountain. It was a village, a little granite hamlet, hanging and clinging like a bird's nest to the vast mountain. Jeanne got tired of going at a ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo; but that occasionally she laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit, or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage having been taken of the mistaken maternal instinct of another bird, than by their own mother's care, encumbered as she can hardly fail ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... tired of crickets he thought he'd look for a bird's nest. He came to a wide, flat, spreading juniper bush, just the kind that might have a bird's nest under it; and as he nosed around it he came face to face with little Stripes. You see, they were both after the same thing, and both ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the fields, but it also makes its home in barns and houses. Its back and sides are of a slate color, but the under part of its body, and its legs and feet, are white. It is sometimes called the white-footed mouse, or wood-mouse. It builds a round nest in trees, that looks like a bird's nest, and it lives ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... certain: a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... The little fishes sang and laughed, the plants bent their branches toward them laden with golden fruit. Then he saw a bell hanging in a tree with a long rope for ringing it; to the rope was tied a cow with a bird's nest between her horns and Crispin was inside ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and, drawing the curtain to shade the light, left the room that she might be perfectly quiet. And when she returned to the drawing-room, she inquired of the other children what they had been doing, and received a full account of the feast, and the bird's nest, and all the little ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... had seen, with every distinction of shape and size and color sharply present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?"—Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... on the second day rushes recently torn up were seen floating near the vessels. A plank hewn by an axe, a carved stick, a bough of hawthorn in blossom, and lastly a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs on which the parent-bird was sitting, were seen swimming past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living witnesses of their approach ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... and becomes too vast for refinement. At present, the dinner was served on Sevres porcelain of Rose du Barri, raised on airy golden stands of arabesque workmanship; a mule bore your panniers of salt, or a sea-nymph proffered it you on a shell just fresh from the ocean, or you found it in a bird's nest; by every guest a different pattern. In the centre of the table, mounted on a pedestal, was a group of pages in Dresden china. Nothing could be more gay than their bright cloaks and flowing plumes, more elaborately exquisite than their laced shirts and rosettes, or more fantastically ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... down on dandelion-balls woven together with horse-hair. In this dainty nest are laid four or five creamy white eggs, speckled with lilac tints and red-browns. The unwelcome egg of the Cow-bird is often found in the Yellow-bird's nest, but this Warbler builds a floor over the egg, repeating the expedient, if the Cow-bird continues her mischief, until sometimes ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... a place at home where Prince Charlie once had a drink. When the girls are here he gets in a couple of women to look after them. Other times he only has his heathen Chinee lot, and jolly good they are! That is, of course, if you like stewed puppy and bird's nest," Hugh added solemnly; ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... in sympathy with the animal world; how to understand the languages of the creatures that we have long been accustomed to call "dumb," and the sign language of the lower orders of these dependent beings. The church owes it to her mission to preach and to teach the enforcement of the "bird's nest commandment;" the principle recognized by Moses in the Hebrew world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the "Meadow Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Twing, advancing to the side of the rebel, "look here then!" With a dexterous movement and a slight struggle from the boy, he lifted the hat. A half-dozen apples, a bird's nest, two birds' eggs, and a fluttering half-fledged bird fell from it. A wave of delight and astonishment ran along the benches, a blank look of hopeless bewilderment settled upon the boy's face, and the gravity ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... humane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but from a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... looked round, and saw a tall man hastening after him. "Stop and take me with you, and take me into your service, and you won't regret it!" "Who are you," said the prince, "and what can you do?" "My name is Long, and I can extend myself. Do you see a bird's nest in that pine yonder? I will bring you the nest down without having to ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... is too bad I have forgotten how many pecan-trees he had planted, and how many sheep he kept. A well-regulated memory would have held fast to such figures: mine is certain only that there were four eggs in the mocking-bird's nest. Mr. G. was a man of enterprise, at any rate; a match for any Yankee, although he had come to Florida not from Yankeeland, but from northern Georgia. I hope all his crops are still thriving, especially his white roses and his ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... degraded form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a "churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... found some fledg'd bird's nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair well or grove he sings in now, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the score, are permitted to ply their trade unchecked. I mean to say that there is ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... birds and animals revived. He had favourite dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird's nest upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went round watching the progress which the birds made with their building, carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted with the habits of British birds, the result of a long, loving, and close ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... buns! How does my lady's garden grow? Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top Some little mice sat in a barn to spin If all the world were apple-pie If wishes were horses I have a little sister Mother Goose WHO STOLE THE BIRD'S NEST? Lydia Maria Child RHYMES. I saw a ship a-sailing Jack and Jill went up the hill Little Bo-peep Little boy blue Little girl, little girl Little Jack Horner sat in the corner Little Johnny Pringle had a little pig Little Miss Muffet There was a little man Little Tommy ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... yonder; she could squirm through the underbrush with the agility of a rabbit. She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest people despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer for robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring them herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder lot ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... every circumstance which had happened since their last parting, said that amongst others whom they had robbed they met a smooth-faced shoemaker, who said he was just married and going home to his friends. They persuaded him to turn out of the road to look in the hedge for a bird's nest, whither he was no sooner got, but they bound, gagged and robbed him, and afterwards turning back, barbarously clapped a pistol to his head and shot out his brains. After this Angier declared he would never drink in the company ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... them for the stock we kept there. Very often all the rest were full, and I had to send horses off to another place. I have often sent a wagon-load of hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would not be enough left to make a bird's nest. I have killed a fine beef, and it would all be eaten up in a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... to their own home—he brought also some small token for "Jim's second young lady," whereby I was understood; now a couple of daisies, a rose, or two or three violets, or a few sprigs of mignonnette, begged from Dutch Johnny; now a bird's nest, manufactured by himself out of twine and a few twigs; and once a huge turnip which he had seen fall from a market-cart as it passed on its way down the avenue, and picking it up, after vainly trying to make the carter hear, had laid it aside as a suitable gift for me; and another time ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a slope at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the opposite slope; "the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end. And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and look ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... curls up and dreams. On calm summer mornings you hear no sound except the chirping and twittering of the sleeping birds. The birds are great dreamers—like dogs; like dogs they will twitch and stir in their sleep, as if they were running and flying and playing and chasing each other. Just stalk a bird's nest of which you know at half past two in the morning, some time during the month of July; and before you see them, you will hear them. If there are young birds in the nest, all the better; take the mother bird off and the little ones ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... walls. They had long strings of buttons and boxes of spools in partnership; and when they would go up the Seine on little excursions on Sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. Then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. That was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up a strip of cloth. And all the things in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... is May? May! May! No going home without her. May! Here she comes galloping, the beauty!'—(Ellen is almost as fond of May as I am.)—'What has she got in her mouth? that rough, round, brown substance which she touches so tenderly? What can it be? A bird's nest? Naughty May!' ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and dragged him out to see the bird's nest ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... could imitate. Over several parts of the rim the water was flowing down into other basins. I climbed up and looked over into one of the pools, which was literally hanging on to the one above it like a bird's nest to a wall; while beautiful stalactites were suspended below it, caused by the water which flowed over the sides. The temperature of the water when it came out of the side of the mountain was high, but in the course of its passage from pool to ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... soaking wet, with nothing more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in flames. I do not think any other method would ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... dearly like to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took food out ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Death, the jewel of the just. Shining nowhere but in the dark, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could men outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair field, or grove, he sings in now, That is to ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... alone," said she; "I have such a prize;" and she held in her hand a bird's nest, with its three ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Outside it is made of moss, fine dry grass, and wool, all matted together, and covered all over with the lichen which grows on the trunks and branches of trees. It is often very difficult to find this bird's nest, it looks so exactly like the part ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... queer appearance; scarred by deep gashes on chest and arms, his body was daubed with red ochre, and his ribs picked out with white; on his head a kind of chignon formed of grass, hair, and string held his matted locks in place, like a bird's nest on his crown; he had neither beard nor whiskers, and was not blessed with any ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... arrived at Mary Erskine's about an hour after Beechnut left them. They met with no special adventures by the way, except that when they reached the great pine-tree, Phonny proposed to climb up, for the purpose of examining a small bunch which he saw upon one of the branches, which he thought was a bird's nest. It was the same pine-tree that marked the place at which a road branched off into the woods, where Mary Bell had lost her way, several years before. Malleville was very unwilling to have Phonny climb up upon such a high tree, but Phonny himself was very desirous ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... exclamation, "Stop, stop, child, you don't know what you are doing."—"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't—what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool—no one can ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... capable of inspiring those around them. But spiritual experiences cannot be warmed over—they must be new every day. That is what Saint Paul meant when he said that the outer man decays, but the inner man is renewed. An old experience in religion is of no more value than a last year's bird's nest! You cannot feed the ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... details would spoil the intending-reader's pleasure. So, as Hamlet observes, "Breke, Breke my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" The Earth Girl first sees the light, such as it is, in a cavern, and is brought up on raw eggs fresh from the sea-bird's nest, uncooked herbs, and raw fish. No tea, coffee, milk, or liquors of any description, were within reach of this unhappy family of three, consisting of Pa, Ma, and the Infant Phenomenon. How they slaked their thirst is not clearly stated, unless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... out the easiest way to go. Oh, no! He chose the very steepest places to slide down. And as he went slipping down the steepest cliff of all he came upon something that gave him a great surprise. For he saw, built right in the crack of a ledge, a big bird's nest made of sticks. It was the biggest bird's nest Cuffy had ever seen; and in it were two great white eggs. They were the greatest white eggs Cuffy ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... second day, some rashes recently torn up, were seen near the vessels. A plank, evidently hewn by an ax, a stick skillfully carved by some cutting instrument, a bough of hawthorn in blossom,—and lastly, a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs, on which the parent bird was sitting amid the gently-rolling waves,—were seen floating past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living and inanimate witnesses of their approach to land. They were a voice from the shore, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... raccoon loves to prey upon it. Whole troops at night visit the corn-fields and commit extensive havoc. These mischievous habits make the creature many enemies, and in fact it has but few friends. It kills hares, rabbits, and squirrels when it can catch them, and will rob a bird's nest in the most ruthless manner. It is particularly fond of shell-fish; and the unios, with which many of the fresh-water lakes and rivers of America abound, form part of its food. These it opens as adroitly with its claws as an oyster-man could ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that my heart would ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... and ruddy drupe of the ie-ie (pl. II) and its kindred, the hala-pepe (pl. III); the scarlet pompons of the lehua (pl. XIII) and ohi'a, with the fruit of the latter (the mountain-apple); many varieties of fern, including that splendid parasite, the "bird's nest fern" [Page 20] (ekaha), hailed by the Hawaiians as Mawi's paddle; to which must be added the commoner leaves and lemon-colored flowers of the native hibiscus, the hau, the breadfruit, the native banana and the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer, almost pitying, look on his face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird's nest and must move softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open and they passed in together, and then Mary stood and waved her hand ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the beautiful bird's nest which I mentioned the other day. It is a perfect piece of architecture, far superior to the huts made in this country. The only apparent deficiency is, that it seems to hang on nothing, or is suspended sometimes on a slender straw, at other times on a thin twig. The nest is built of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... once more. The round moon was getting low now, and the shadows she cast out across the corn were long and weird. But the downpour of her light was still mysterious in its clarity, and in its sheen the porcupine, rolled up like a bird's nest, swung ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... on a prison or—the simile made me smile—an orphan asylum. There was no hint of the comely roughness of untidy ivy on a ruin. Clipped, trained, and precise it was, as on a brand-new protestant church. I swear there was not a bird's nest nor a single earwig in it anywhere. About the porch it was particularly thick, smothering a seventeenth-century lamp with a contrast that was quite horrible. Extensive glass-houses spread away on the farther side of the house; the numerous towers to which the building owed its name seemed ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... especially thanking Madame St. Catherine, I began to climb, hauling myself up by the rope, whereon I had made knots to this end; nor was the climbing more difficult than to scale a branchless beech trunk for a bird's nest, which, like other boys, I had often done. So behold me, at last, with my legs hanging in free air, seated on the sill of the casement. Happily, of the three iron stanchions, though together they bore my weight, one was loose in the lower socket, for lack of lead, and this one ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... flower, it became a 'rotating haze,' as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The 'haze' now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... incidents which occurred about the period when the hero was breeched, Laura began another equally interesting, and equally ornamented with tears, and told how heroically he had a tooth out or wouldn't have it out, or how daringly he robbed a bird's nest, or how magnanimously he spared it; or how he gave a shilling to the old woman on the common, or went without his bread and butter for the beggar-boy who came into the yard—and so on. One to another the sobbing women sang laments upon their hero, who, my worthy reader has long since perceived, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flowers, and together we have dressed it to perfection. There are four vases of roses, a bowl full of chrysanthemums, and red leaves round all my pictures. The leaves are Virginia creeper. It doesn't last long, but is lovely while it lasts. Helen also brought a bird's nest which the gardener found in a hawthorn-tree on the lawn. It hangs on a branch, and she has tied it to one side of my bookshelves. On the opposite side is another nest quite different,—a great, gray hornets' nest, as big as a band-box, which came from the mountains a year ago. ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... sort of a proposition they had tackled. Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels! taking advantage of a mere boy. Meet those notes? You bet he would; and then he'd go down there and boost those stocks until M. & D. looked like a last year's bird's nest. He thrust the letter in his pocket and walked buoyantly to ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... on the ground, so that he might go to l'Encuerado, who was calling him. The Indian had found a humming-bird's nest fixed on a branch, which he had cut off and was bringing us. The elegant little structure was a perfect marvel of architectural skill, lined inside with the silky down of some plant. Two young birds, still unfledged, and scarcely as big as nuts, opened their ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... it must be a field-mouse's nest that some birds had stolen. But in the fall I took the nest home and I saw it was a real bird's nest, all woven round of strong grass with finer kinds for a lining; and there were dead leaves on the outside, so that the top looked like all the rest of the ground. I had often heard that loud singing before, but this was the first time I had a good look at the bird and his nest, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... retorted without lowering his tone. "I tell you the boy has gone back home and the hut is as empty as a last year's bird's nest. I'll stake my oath on it. The place is shut and locked tight as a drum. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... marges spring Thick bulrushes to hide the reed-bird's nest; Where the shy ousel dips her glossy wing, And balanced in the water takes her rest: While under bending leaves, all gem-arrayed, Blue dragon-flies ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... the Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by means of moorings that fasten the object to the adjoining twigs. The whole, a graceful ovoid, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... I took my way to the town, after observing, to my great annoyance, that the castle could have been as easily taken as a bird's nest; and seeing a beer-glass painted on a sign-board, I guessed that here was the inn. Truth to say, my heart wanted strengthening sorely, and I entered. There was a pretty wench washing crabs in the kitchen, and as I made up to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... naturally to him. It seems hard that he should come under the yoke so early, but we must not approach such subjects with Western ideas. The exuberant spirits of boyhood are not indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. He never does mischief for mischief's sake; he robs no bird's nest; he feels no impulse to trifle with the policeman. Marbles are his principal pastime. He puts the thumb of his left hand to the ground and discharges his taw from the point of his second finger, bending it back till it touches the back of the hand and then letting it off like a steel ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give her a ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... but he was as pale as his captor. "I wur na doin' thee no harm. I on'y coom to look fur a bird's nest." ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... along," he said. "I feel like a boy who has marked down something rare in the way of a bird's nest. We will go back to Brunswick Square exactly the same way as you approached it on the night of ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the king of the fishes. Once more the young man, like the Finnish Ilmarinen in Pohjola, subdued the mighty fish, and went back triumphant. The third adventure, as in 'Nicht Nought Nothing,' was to climb a tree of extraordinary height in search of a bird's nest. Here, again, the youth succeeded, and finally conspired with the daughters to slay the old magician. Lastly the boy turned the magician into a sycamore tree, and won his daughter. The other daughter ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... this way: if Tom was going to win a scout award by finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the place he would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was going to win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he trailed him seven miles through the woods and found that the burglar was his own good-for-nothing father. So he did not ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... that, Professor. I placed the tube up there," he pointed to what looked like a bird's nest near one of the gables. You see, as that is situated, no light can ever get at it; the foliage of that tree keeps the sun away and its always rather dark there. In addition, there is that little shutter that I ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... a great, masterful man like this take charge of one, and Ma sighed gratefully as she lay back. "It does kinda feel like a bird's nest," she declared. "And you kinda look like a robin, too; you're allus ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... found in his Rambler[728], against the notion that the brute creation is endowed with the faculty of reason: 'birds build by instinct; they never improve; they build their first nest as well as any one they ever build.' GOLDSMITH. 'Yet we see if you take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a slighter nest and lay again.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that is because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must therefore ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... not much to see,—a very bird's nest house with a great tree shading it, and a little porch at the side. A rather thin elderly woman sat sewing in a rocking-chair. She did not even look ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... wonder at myself if it were so. Have we not been all in all to one another from the time when we first peeped into the bird's nest, waded in the brook, ran after the butterflies, and prattled to each other that we would marry fine gentlemen, and ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... as they rankle, thy blood as it runs, But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons— Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird's nest, Drink love in each life-drop that flows from ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Inundation of the Rhine, and Clara. Lewis, the Little Emigrant. The Easter Eggs, and Forget-me-not. The Cakes, and the Old Castle. The Hop Blossoms. Christmas Eve. The Carrier Pigeon, the Bird's Nest, etc. The Jewels, and the Redbreast. The Copper Coins and Gold Coins, etc. The Cray-Fish, the Melon, the Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of a schoolboy; who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest shows it his companion, and he ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... tree they found the grey cat-bird's nest. He was a funny bird, always crying like a lost pussy. ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... as to lightning-stroke is its photographic properties. In this connection Stricker of Frankfort quotes the case of Raspail of a man of twenty-two who, while climbing a tree to a bird's nest, was struck by lightning, and afterward showed upon his breast a picture of the tree, with the nest upon one of its branches. Although in the majority of cases the photographs resembled trees, there was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... he hunted as he had hunted with his ape people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's diet, the better—and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce, brutal anthropoid ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other containing a small charcoal fire. The old cookee, with his queue tied neatly up about his shaven head, takes a variety of mixtures from the drawers,—bits of dried fish, seaweed, a handful of spaghetti, possibly a piece of shark's fin, or better still a lump of bird's nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to time, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... have made him acquainted. Even as it was, they did not escape his silent notice. It was pleasant for him, from whose life the early dew had been dried away by a well-risen sun, to recall its former freshness by glimpses of this pair of young beginners. It was like having a bird's nest under his window. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... toy, His sisters' sport, his wild bird's nest; And climbing to his mother's breast, Enjoys yet ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... persons have a curious affinity with the gentle and good in creation—who can watch and even handle a bird's nest without making it be deserted, whom bees do not sting, and horses, dogs, and cats love so as to reveal their best instincts in a way that seems fabulous. In spite of the Lyra Innocentium, I think this is less often the case with children ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... days, Katy. Whisky Jim come plaguey near to gittin' that claim. He got Shamberson on his side, and if Shamberson's brother-in-law hadn't been removed from the Land Office before it was tried, he'd a got it. I'm going to pre-empt and build the cutest little bird's nest for you. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... glass jar, filled with large flies. As Davy took this out of his pocket, the cork came out with a loud "pop!" and the flies flew away in all directions. Then came, one after another, a tart filled with gravel, two chicken-bones, a bird's nest with some pieces of brown soap in it, some mustard in a pill-box, and a cake of beeswax stuck full of caraway seeds. Davy remembered afterward that, as he threw these things away, they arranged themselves in a long row on the ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... difference those pretty shoes make, and the skirt and the new cap. Annie Bouman is there, too. Even Janzoon Kolp's sister has been admitted, but Janzoon himself has been voted out by the directors, because he killed the stork, and only last summer was caught in the act of robbing a bird's nest, a legal offence ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... a miniature Bo-peep crook, enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above the ground, often at only half that height. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... side overlooking the valley, hung a little camp like a bird's nest. It was hidden there in the densest wood, yet it looked out over the whole land. No bird, indeed no mother of her young, ever chose a deeper or wilder retreat, or a place more utterly apart from the paths and approaches ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... such an astonishing sight that the three simply sat down on the ground and stared at it. It was nothing more nor less than a house, a real little house high above the ground and nestled into the branches of the trees, just as a bird's nest might be. ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... rock shelters me from the rain. I smoke my pipe, smoke one pipe after another; and every time I light it, the tobacco curls up like little worms crawling from the ash. So also with the thoughts that twirl in my head. Before me, on the ground, lies a bundle of dry twigs, from the ruin of a bird's nest. And as with that nest, so also ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... window, of the little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's Nest." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... explained. The man had undoubtedly possessed the bird's nest which communicates its charm of invisibility to its possessor, though not equally so to his shadow; and this nest he had now thrown away. I looked all round, and soon discovered the shadow of this invisible nest. I sprang towards it, and was ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... in the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whom Elfride was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways a bird's nest, who mastered her and made her weep most bitterly at her own insignificance, thus thankful for a sight of her face. She looked down upon him, her face glistening with rain and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... were apt to come in contact with his spectacles. The gardeners had severest instructions not to approach their nests. It was one of the minor griefs of his life that, being so short-sighted, he could never discover a bird's nest; no, not even as a child. Memories of boyhood began to flit through his mind; they curled upwards in the scented wreaths of his Havana. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... berry; often ruining a fine bunch, or a number of them, in a short time. I have therefore been compelled to wage a war upon some of the feathered tribe, although they are my especial favorites, and I cannot see a bird's nest robbed. However, there are some who do not visit the vineyard, except for the purpose of destroying our grapes, and these can not complain if we "won't stand it any longer," but take the gun, and retaliate on them. The oriole, the red bird, thrush, and cat bird are among the number, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... with his own hands, and giving it full-cock to a page, told him to go out and shoot a man in the outer court; which was no sooner accomplished than the little urchin returned to announce his success, with a look of glee such as one would see in the face of a boy who had robbed a bird's nest, caught a trout, or done any other boyish trick. The king said to him, "And did you do it well?" "Oh, yes, capitally." He spoke the truth, no doubt, for he dared not have trifled with the king; but the affair created hardly any interest. I never heard, and there appeared ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... person will, of course, be careful in approaching a wild bird's nest, otherwise much mischief may be done in a very short time. I have known "dainty eggs" and "darling baby-birds" to be literally visited to death by well-meaning people, with the best of intentions. The ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... are the birds and animals and insects, and the more you know of them the more you begin to like them and to take an interest in them; and once you take an interest in them you do not want to hurt them in any way. You would not rob a bird's nest; you would not bully an animal; you would not kill an insect—once you have realized what its life and habits are. In this way, therefore, you fulfill the Guide Law of becoming a ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... intervening between it and the observer's position. As an act of persons, to conceal is always intentional; one may hide his face in anger, grief, or abstraction; he conceals his face when he fears recognition. A house is hidden by foliage; the bird's nest is artfully concealed. Secrete is a stronger word than conceal, and is used chiefly of such material objects as may be separated from the person, or from their ordinary surroundings, and put in unlooked-for places; a man conceals a scar on his face, but ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
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