"Jackdaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Families is still more marked. We need only recall the harsh and noisy Parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or take as an example the web-footed Family,—do not all the Geese and the innumerable host of Ducks quack? Does not every member of the Crow Family caw, whether it be the Jackdaw, the Jay, the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the Songster Family,—the Nightingales, the Thrushes, the Mocking-Birds, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or, take as an example the web-footed family: Do not all the geese and the innumerable host of ducks quack? Does not every member of the crow family caw, whether it be the jackdaw, the jay, or the magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the songster family—the nightingales, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... see you dead rather than alive, so that he might safely take your eyes by way of an appetizer, and forthwith proceed to lift away your softer pieces preparatory to strolling under your ribs like a jackdaw in a cage much too small. He sits there placid, unwinsome, and patient; waiting for you to die. But he has his little vanities. He is tremendously proud of his wings—and they certainly are wings to astonish. On a warm day he likes to open them for coolness, but often ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the people seem to burn night lamps) give it a cosy appearance; the cats make one think that fiends are pouring out of hell, through a hole in the roadway. Peep o' day is the stillest time of all. The cats seat themselves on walls. Sparrows chirp sleepily. Some rooks and a hoary-headed jackdaw come down from the trees nearby, quarter the roadway for garbage, and fly away croaking. Busy starlings follow. If the weather is hard and fish offal scarce on the beach, the gulls will pay us a supercilious visit. About six o'clock the children begin singing in bed, and soon afterwards one hears ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of the bowl with a wooden spoon, a tame jackdaw who had been sitting on an old stool by the fireside, hopped over and perched ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... warbles of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or lesser perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. Does not every member of the Crow family caw, whether it be a Jackdaw, the Jay, or the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... pictured with it in the water. On the opposite bank stood the great rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice, and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the lamb damage the eagle; but remember the fate of the jackdaw, Mr. Gray-coat! I deserve some ice for my exertions, so come into the hall and get some, and tell me if you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so much so, that when they had half-furnished it, they altered their minds and went to the great crack half way up the old cedar, and settled there; "like a pair of giddy unsettled things," as the jackdaw said, who meant to have been their neighbour; but was not above taking possession of the soft bed they had left behind. As to Spottleover, he, too, was out of temper all the rest of the day, and when Flutethroat met him in the afternoon he found his neighbour all smeared with clay, and ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old pictures, good old furniture. Their first crude conception of dazzling suites of the newly perfect is replaced almost from the outset by a jackdaw dream of accumulating costly ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... comes home or goes out, when in a word she believes she is alone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will tell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of expression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity of this change, you will not fail to have observed the expression she wore behind your back) you may read her soul as if you were reading a book ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... objects, such as collars and bits of india rubber and the day before yesterday's Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, indeterminate man in a green baize apron, who went about raising casual dust with a great feather broom, at first stowed the litter away daily, with jackdaw ingenuity of concealment, until Septimus gave them five francs each to desist; whereupon they desisted with alacrity, and the books became the stepping-stones aforesaid, stepping-stones to higher things. His only concern was the impossibility of repacking them when ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... and Pisthetaerus, two old Athenians, disgusted with the litigiousness, wrangling and sycophancy of their countrymen, resolve upon quitting Attica. Having heard of the fame of Epops (the hoopoe), sometime called Tereus, and now King of the Birds, they determine, under the direction of a raven and a jackdaw, to seek from him and his subject birds a city free from all care and strife." Arrived at the Palace of Epops, they knock, and Trochilus (the wren), in a state of great flutter, as he mistakes them ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... make quite a fortune in his eyes; ten whole guineas lay glittering in the old night cap where he kept his savings, and the tailor thought he might now set up for a gentleman. So he bought cloth, made himself, in secret, a fine cloak, coat, and breeches, and in these jackdaw adornments paraded about the streets a whole morning, trying to appear an idle fine gentleman. At last he strutted into the best inn, ordered a grand dinner and a bottle of wine, and ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was 'a little beauty'. Her friends repeated the pleasing phrase enthusiastically, and for several minutes she stood, like a jackdaw in the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, was a prouder seen, Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams, Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims! In and out through the motley rout, That little Jackdaw kept hopping about: Here and there, like a dog in a fair, Over comfits and cates, and dishes and plates, Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall, Miter and crosier! he hopped upon all. With a saucy air, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Woodpecker, The Wren and the Eagle, The Blackbird and Swallow, The Jackdaw and Starling, And the wonderful Peacock; The Lapwing and Peewit, The bold Yellowhammer, The bad Willy-wagtail, The Raven so awful, And the Cock with his Hens; Stone-checker, Hedge-sparrow, And Lint-white and Lark, The Tom-tit and Linnet, And brisk little Sparrow, ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... bold, enterprising, resourceful, and good all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him—grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in all countries and climates, and prosper wherever ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... broken down, the roof open, and the rain and winds rushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old building represented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as any once lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by the jackdaw. The family had, as it were, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... JACKDAW (Corvus monedula).—A very amusing, though very wicked pet. There used to be throngs of them in the tower of the old church at Hursley, and their droll voices might be heard conversing in the evening. Mr. Chamberlayne had one which, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie—these birds' thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... was my age to a year, and many a ploy we had together; there was the jackdaw's nest in the ivy on the old tower we harried together," and the General could only indicate the delightful risk of the exploit. "My father and the minister were pacing the avenue at the time, and caught sight of us against the sky. 'It's your rascal and mine, Laird,' we heard the minister ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... art right, for when Caesar reads to us a new book from the Troyad, thou, instead of crying out like a jackdaw, wouldst have to give an opinion that was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... magpie, now—only an ordinary affair—very likely the queen would be jealous, indeed, and there would be a fight in the palace, which would be nothing at all new, but this is much more serious, a very serious matter, and none can tell how it will end. As Kauc, the crow, was saying to Cloctaw, the jackdaw, this morning——" ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... where she lay only more feverish—conjecturing, and painting frightful pictures, till she heard the crow of the early village cock, and the caw of the jackdaw wheeling close to the eaves as he took wing in the gray of the morning to show her that the business of a new day had commenced; and yet Barney had ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a king; then a pauper, and presently a satrap, and after that came horse, jackdaw, frog, and I know not how many more; there is no reckoning them up in detail. Latterly, I have been a cock several times. I liked the life; many is the king, many the pauper and millionaire, with whom I took service in that ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... word!" Captain Kneebone eyed them both with uncommon favor. "That's it, ye know. I just 'opped about Saigong like a—jackdaw, picking up these impromptus. But I came here all the way to break the news proper, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own. He becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he entered on his task. We admire the amateur student in his public essays, as we admire a jackdaw or a parrot: he does considerably more than could have been ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... birds evinced the most perfect friendliness and confidence in us, and we became greatly attached to them. They and the fowls seemed excellent travellers, and after a long day's march would come up smiling, like the jackdaw of Rheims, "not ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... perhaps 'tis better for you not to see it, lest you should come off as ill by seeing the Muses, as Actaeon did by seeing Diana: For you'd perhaps be in Danger of being turn'd either into a Hedgehog, or a wild Boar, a Swine, a Camel, a Frog, or a Jackdaw. But however, if you can't see, I'll make you hear 'em, if you don't make a Noise; they are just a-coming this Way. Let's meet 'em. Hail, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... determine whether seeds would lose their vitality in passing through the digestive organs of birds, Kerner von Marilaun fed seeds of two hundred and fifty different species of plants to each of the following: blackbird, song thrush, robin, jackdaw, raven, nutcracker, goldfinch, titmouse, bullfinch, crossbill, pigeon, fowl, turkey, duck, and a few others; also to marmot, horse, ox, and pig, making five hundred and twenty separate experiments. As to the marmot, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... obsequious, mealy-mouthed, hope-I-see-you-better face, and carries his hands as if he had just taken his fingers from a poultice; while your lawyer is recognised at once by his perking, conceited, cross-examination phiz, the exact counterpart to the expression of an over-indulged jackdaw. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... dunderhead! You jibbering jackdaw! How could I reject a boy who simply would not be rejected? Why, I'll bet a ripe peach that Bill Peck was one of the doggondest finest soldiers you ever saw. He carries his objective. He sized you up just like that, Skinner. ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... you is which! Lilias, Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, Clifford!" she declared, shaking hands with each. "I'm very rich to have five new cousins all at once! To-morrow you must show me everything, the rabbits and the dogs, and the tame jackdaw! Oh yes! I've been hearing about them and about you! Cousin Clare told me just what you would be like. I kept asking her ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... we had a jackdaw," said Charley. "He was a very clever bird. He used to go round to the kitchen window every day at a certain hour, for a potato that the cook used to give him. If it was not ready she would tell him so, and he would go away for a while, but he always ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... I shall mention is Pride. There is not in the universe a more ridiculous nor a more contemptible animal than a proud clergyman; a turkey-cock or a jackdaw are objects of veneration when compared with him. I don't mean, by Pride, that noble dignity of mind to which goodness can only administer an adequate object, which delights in the testimony of its own conscience, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... estimate? Who will accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he saves? If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth, would be not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... that even my own father denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and they justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among men like a jackdaw among birds. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... most terrible moments of man's life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross—that he will remember. He concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have remembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and find him needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... season of course the Jackdaw descends into the plains of the North-west Punjaub, is very numerous near the foot of the hills, and has been found in cis-Indus as far east as Umballa, and south at Ferozpoor, Jhelum, and Kalabagh. In Trans-Indus it extends unto ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... weak in natural history, or have you forgotten that the jackdaw is a most respectable family bird? An example to ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... black dog and a jackdaw; and though the bird shows a preference for human companionship, when he cannot obtain that he hops off to the dog's kennel, on the top of which he sits, talking to his four-footed friend in his own fashion; and the dog seems well-pleased to receive ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... original composition is, that it makes you insensible to the mere mechanical labour of writing,—but the intellectual saving would be tremendous. I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing every one who ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's stint—victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed Alpine jackdaw, that lanius ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... only necessary to remove one to make room for my body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had not been lighted for many years; there was no soot in the passage. There was a jackdaw's nest high up. I could see the old jackdaw looking down at me. Up above her head was a little square of sky. I did not doubt that when I got to the top I should be able to scramble out of that square ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... them, what strange stories you have picked up about our country, and this river? We have plied here, men and boys, for years; and to be sure we cannot say that we never saw a swan: there are some here and there towards the fens, which make a low dull noise: but as for any harmony, a rook or a jackdaw, in comparison of them, may be looked ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... word could be better than goistering, and we prefer goister to gauster. Its likeness to boisterous will assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary at the end of the book goistering is explained as guffawing. That word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy vulgarity and mere needless jabber ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... needs, of course, try to get the relish on paper, and he wrote a great deal of boyish stuff in flagrant imitation of Dickens, and hid it, jackdaw-like, in such places as he could find. In the slattern old office where Paul was learning more or less to be a workman at his trade there was no such thing as a ceiling. Frayed mortar, with matted scraps of cow-hair in it, used ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... "I'm a jackdaw, Nelsy," he said, trying to smile. "Do you remember how I used to carry on up there? I had a rotten time in Mt. Alban, but it was the best time I ever had. I wish to the good Lord I could do something besides banking. But my salary is now $750, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... very common, as is the crow, gadak (corvus), and jackdaw, pong (gracula), with several species ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... collecting. In the corners again were sticks, kerries, and two assegais, a number of queer-shaped stones and bones, handles of broken table-knives, bits of the locks of guns, portions of an American clock, and various other articles which this human jackdaw had picked up and hidden away. Altogether it was a strange place: and vaguely it occurred to Jess, as she sank back upon the dirty skins, that, had it not been for the old clothes and the wreck of the American clock, she would have made acquaintance with a very fair example of the dwellings ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... birds how readily could the practised observer distinguish the skull of the tuneful, melodious canary from that of the chirping, inharmonious sparrow. Nor could he fail to mark the constant difference between the form of the head of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo's head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge. In the dolphin, the porpoise, the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... grew more numerous and more painful, and a bald spot was seen on his crown. The people worked as before, by fits and starts, but more fitty and starty than ever. The factory was closed, and the manager died. They buried him about a week ago, a sort of human jackdaw of Rheims without the curse taken off. Protestants say the Galway workpeople wore him down, broke his spirit and broke his heart, but Catholics know better. The only wonder was that instead of being instantly consumed by fire from ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... VAIN JACKDAW. I do not wish to stay with jackdaws. I will not walk with jackdaws. I will not talk with jackdaws. I think myself too ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... myself by stripping up my sleeves, and showing my naked arms and breasts in their sight, when my protector was with me. At which times they would approach as near as they durst, and imitate my actions after the manner of monkeys, but ever with great signs of hatred; as a tame jackdaw with cap and stockings is always persecuted by the wild ones, when he happens ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... hand, poor shot; butterfingers[obs3]. no conjurer, flat, muff, slow coach, looby[obs3], lubber, swab; clod, yokel, awkward squad, blanc-bec; galoot[obs3]. land lubber; fresh water sailor, fair weather sailor; horse marine; fish out of water, ass in lion's skin, jackdaw in peacock's feathers; quack &c. (deceiver) 548; lord of misrule. sloven, slattern, trapes[obs3]. amateur, novice, greenhorn (learner) 541. Phr. il n'a pas invente' la poudre[Fr]; he will never set the Thames on fire; acierta errando[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a Capon, a button mould, a lame haberdine[125], a red beard Sprat, a Yellowhammer, a bow case, a very Jackdaw with his toung slit. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... away their treasures without using them, as the magpie or the jackdaw does with the articles ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... ease and self-possession which can only be acquired by long habitual intercourse with well-bred persons, this surely is the wisest course that could be adopted, and a hundred degrees above that fidgety, jackdaw-like assumption of nonchalance with which the ill-bred amongst ourselves seek to cover ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde and the little wild lass would be playing in the heather, and climbing for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair by the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... down on us yelling for our scalps, we would have had a merry meeting. But they're either gone to bring their friends or they're trying to take us in the back. I'll guard the front, and you keep your eyes on the hinder parts, though a jackdaw could scarcely ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... had passed slowly, like a funeral, above the low horizon. The wind had torn the convent garden until nothing but a few twigs remained; even the laurels seemed about to lose their leaves. The nuns had retreated with blown skirts; Sister Mary John had had to relinquish her digging, and her jackdaw had sought shelter ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore |
