"Catbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Tower has been able to work up some, and while both boys are deeply interested, it's Malcolm who is beginning to slip away alone and listen to and practise bird cries until he deceives the birds themselves. Yesterday he called a catbird to within a few feet of him, by reproducing the notes as uttered and inflected by ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... come in March; but these two ground-birds are seldom heard till toward the last of April. The ground-birds are all tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak from. Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour together. This bird is the great American chipper. There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... rattled through ripening wheat while the driver whistled. An uneasy mare whickered to her colt, the colt answered, and the light began to decline. Miles away a rooster crowed for twilight, and dusk was coming down. Then a catbird and a brown thrush sang against a grosbeak and a hermit thrush. The air was tremulous with heavenly notes, the lights went out in the hall, dusk swept across the stage, a cricket sang and a katydid answered, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... as chipper as a catbird with two tails!" sang out the fun-loving Rover. But his pale face was not in keeping with his words. Tom was not yet himself. But be wasn't going to show it— especially ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... out right an' left, Then all the waters bow themselves an' come, Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune An' gives one leap from April into June: Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think, The oak-buds mist the side-hill woods with pink, The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud, The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud, In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings, All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, Whose shrinkin' hearts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... much one's eyes encountered then Of serious youth and funeral-visaged men; The solemn elders saw life's mournful half,— Heaven sent this boy, whose mission was to laugh, Drollest of buffos, Nature's odd protest, A catbird squealing in a blackbird's nest. Kind, faithful Nature! While the sour-eyed Scot— Her cheerful smiles forbidden or forgot— Talks only of his preacher and his kirk,— Hears five-hour sermons for his Sunday work,— Praying and fasting till his meagre face Gains its due length, the genuine ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... him, and his song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the main chance which calls forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He never has those fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he has not wholly ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of repair in the kindly dawn and formed a symphony in gray with the willow-studded, low-lying lagoon banks. The air throbbed with the subdued noises of awakening animal life. In a shrub near them, a catbird cleared his throat in a few harsh notes as a prelude to a morning of tuneful parody, and on the slope below, a fat autumn-plumaged robin dug frantically in the sod ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... window, he pointed to the family burying-ground, and said, "The dear wife sleeps under that tallest pine." The snow had covered the mound, but again the Major could see April days out there, and the heavy bloom of the orchard—the redbird and the catbird were pouring out symphonies of melody; the silver-winged pigeons were bending through the golden skies, and again he could hear a mother's voice calling in happiest tones ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... succeed. Once I remember a Robin got the better of me, so did a Catbird, and another time a Baltimore Oriole. When I can't whip a bird myself I generally give a call and a whole troop of Sparrows will come to my aid. My, how we do enjoy a fuss ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the encomiums that have been pronounced ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs |
