"Kingfisher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wife, and with a superstitious pang had felt himself alone. His heart torn with a hundred inarticulate cries of memory and grief, he sat on beside the water, unconscious of the passing of time, his gray eyes staring sightlessly at the wood-pigeons as they flew past him, at the occasional flash of a kingfisher, at the moving panorama of summer clouds ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... er jes' a-not a-keerin':— Kingfisher gittin' up an' skootin' out o' hearin'; Snipes on the t'other side, where the County Ditch is, Wadin' up an' down the aidge like they'd rolled their britches! Old turkle on the root kindo-sorto drappin' Intoo th' worter like he don't know how it happen! Worter, ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... my friend; the Kingfisher But yestermorn conjured me here Out of his green and gold to say Why thou, in splendour of the noon, Wearest of colour but golden shoon, And else dost thee array In a most sombre suit of black? 'Surely,' he sighed, 'some load of grief, Past all our thinking—and belief— Must weigh upon his back!' ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... is water in both. In Bombay, as well as in its harbour, everything is original and does not in the least remind one of Southern Europe. Look at those coasting vessels and native boats; both are built in the likeness of the sea bird "sat," a kind of kingfisher. When in motion these boats are the personi-fication of grace, with their long prows and rounded poops. They look as if they were gliding backwards, and one might mistake for wings the strangely shaped, long lateen sails, their narrow angles fastened ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... rising from the river, trailed its long legs across the sky, or a kingfisher sparkled in his own splash. Once a lonely fisherman down by the Avon started a wild duck from the sedge, and away it went pattering up-stream with frightened wings and red feet running along the water. And then a river-rat plumped into the stream ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... in her daughter's society, and from illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery circle knew her but little, and were certainly more affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz., a kingfisher, which had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... gigantic plumes of feathers a hundred feet into the heat-palpitating air. Frequently, too, they halted to watch the motions of some tiny humming-bird hovering like a living gem over the cup of a flower, or the flight of a gaudily painted kingfisher or parrot. A great silence pervaded the woods, for the trees were for the most part so lofty that the sough of the wind in their topmost branches was inaudible, and it was the hour when the insect world indulged in its daily siesta. Animals there were ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... to the bird is no great distance. Then the Wood-pigeon's iridescent hues, the eyes on the Peacock's tail, the Kingfisher's sea-blue, the Flamingo's carmine are more or less closely connected with the urinary excretions? Why not? Nature, that sublime economist, delights in these vast antitheses which upset all our conceptions of the values of things. Of ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... asked leave for her to come with him, and would take nobody else; and hot day as it was, Bessie had never had such a charming walk. She kept herself from making one single fuss; and in return, he gathered wild strawberries for her, showed her a kingfisher, and took her to look in at a very grand aquarium in the fishing-tackle maker's window, where she saw some gold-fish, and a most comical little newt. And going home, they had a real good talk about their ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crested; upper parts slate-blue; underneath white, and belted with blue or rusty. Bill large and heavy. Middle and outer toes joined for half their length. Call-note loud and prolonged, like a policeman's rattle. Solitary birds; little inclined to rove from a chosen locality. Migratory. Belted Kingfisher. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the great kingfisher, the laughing-bird of the Australian bush," said Julius Faber, amused at ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the guns had not spoken, and the first report which awoke the echoes of the forest of the Far West was provoked by the appearance of a beautiful bird, resembling the kingfisher. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... through him when he sees Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these, The silken breastplate of a mandarin, Centuries dead, which he had given her. Exquisite miracle, when men could spin Jay's wing and belly of the kingfisher! ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... scanned many a crank in his day—was not so alarming as it had once seemed to Clara; its coarse-woven, deep-blue linen and needle-worked yoke were pleasing to him, and he could hardly take his gaze from the kingfisher-blue band or fillet that she wore round ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... furthest across the stream with his head bent down and looking as if he were trying to think his head off. Only in the most lonesome places, far from where the hens cackled and the geese gabbled and the cocks crew, would the Boy Who Knew What the Birds Said find him. And when he did find him Kingfisher-all-Blue would not open his beak to say one word—no, not even when the Boy would say "Where did you get your beautiful color?" and "Why is your ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... others the female is rather smaller than the male, but the difference in each case is very slight. It is specially significant to note that this similarity of plumage occurs in some of the most beautiful of our birds, as, for instance, the kingfisher and the jay, where the brilliant dresses of the sexes are practically alike; the female robin shares the beauty of the male; in all the families of the charming tits the sexes are alike; this is also the case with the roller-bird with its gaily-coloured plumage; ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... attached mourner at their funerals than a physician endeavouring to maintain their flickering vitality. He tries experiments and has a taste for dissection. He proves by the evidence of his senses, and believes them in spite of the general report, that a dead kingfisher will not turn its breast to the wind. He convinced himself that if two magnetic needles were placed in the centre of rings marked with the alphabet (an odd anticipation of the electric telegraph, minus the wires), they would not point to the same letter ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... salmon. As an angler he was a thorough artist, as a woodsman he was an expert, and as a companion he was most agreeable. Among the Indians, who have the habit of naming every person from some personal trait, he was known as "the Kingfisher," and by that name I shall call him. The second of our party, who procured the right of fishing the Restigouche, and made up the party, I shall call Rodman, which suits him both as fisherman and in his professional character of engineer. The third, being a tall man of rather military ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... an excuse to Nature for being out among her busy things. For even at this stillest of hours there is far less repose in Nature than we imagine. What created thing can seem more patient than yonder kingfisher on the sea-wall? Yet, as we glide near him, we shall see that no creature can be more full of concentrated life; all his nervous system seems on edge, every instant he is rising or lowering on his feet, the tail ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... took his path, Spied what a nest the kingfisher hath, 290 Marked the fields green to aftermath, Marked where the red-brown field-mouse ran, Loitered a while for a deep-stream bath, Yawned for ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... which, unless Miss Mapp was sadly mistaken, would astound and agonize by its magnificence all who set eyes on it. She had found the description of it, as worn by Mrs. Titus W. Trout, in an American fashion paper; it was of what was described as kingfisher blue, and had lumps and wedges of lace round the edge of the skirt, and orange chiffon round the neck. As she set off with her basket full of tradesmen's books, she pictured to herself with watering mouth ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... I repeat it, never travel alone, and above all, never go to Venice alone and without love! For young married people in their honeymoon, or a pair of lovers, the gondola is a floating boudoir, a nest upon the waters like a kingfisher's. But for one who is sad, and who stretches himself upon the sombre cushions of the bark, the gondola ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... yellow honey,"[47] flattering it for its tickling sweetness; but we neglect the wisdom and ingenuity of other creatures, both as regards the birth and bringing up of their young. For example, the kingfisher after conception weaves its nest with the thorns of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... and with none of his habitual courtesy. "You think the kingfisher and the black eagle have no better thing to live for than to become the decorations of a great personage's glass cabinets. You think genius can find no higher end than to furnish frescoes and panellings for a nobleman's ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... inborn modesty. He refers to the roe, who runs away from the stag—but in a circle. (Groos, Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899, p. 339; also the same author's Die Spiele der Thiere, pp. 288 et seq.) Another example of coquetry is furnished by the female kingfisher (Alcedo ispida), which will spend all the morning in teasing and flying away from the male, but is careful constantly to look back, and never to let him out of her sight. (Many examples are given by Buechner, in Liebe und Liebesleben in der Tierwelt.) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... my dear," said Mrs. Kingfisher, "boys will be boys; by the time they are grown up they will be all right. Now, my ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of the stream continually shut out the scene behind us and revealed as calm and lovely a one before. We glided from depth to depth, and breathed new seclusion at every turn. The shy kingfisher flew from the withered branch close at hand to another at a distance, uttering a shrill cry of anger or alarm. Ducks that had been floating there since the preceding eve were startled at our approach and skimmed along the glassy river, breaking its dark surface ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... half covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher, which here is allowed to fish in peace, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... child, bare-legged, watching the forbidden ground beyond the river. A fresh breeze was moving the trees and making the whole a dazzling mass of shifting light and shadow. He sat so still that a glorious violet and red kingfisher perched quite close, and, dashing into the water, came forth with a fish, and fled like a ray of light along the winding of the river. A colony of little shell parrots, too, crowded on a bough, and twittered and ran to and fro quite busily, ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... way, a natural weathercock instead of the gilded vane, as defined by Brown, would have been a rara avis: "A kingfisher hanged by the bill, converting the breast to that point of the horizon whence the wind doth blow, is a very strange ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... hostilities could not be avoided. About one in the afternoon Captain Henry Smith of the Kingfisher sloop was ordered to lead the way, and Desmond was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the late resounding perch, Fly various, hushed their early song; and mark, Beneath the darkness of the bramble-bank That overhangs the half-seen brook, where nod The flowing rushes, dew-besprent, with breast Ruddy, and emerald wing, the kingfisher 80 Steals through the dripping sedge away. What shape Of terrors scares the woodland habitants, Marring the music of the dawn? Look round; See, where he creeps, beneath the willowy stump, Cowering and low, step silent after step, The booted fowler: keen his look, and fixed ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... blue silk and bright embroidery At the first call of Spring the fair young bride, On whom as yet Sorrow has laid no scar, Climbs the Kingfisher's Tower. Suddenly She sees the bloom of willows far and wide, And grieves for him she lent to fame ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... and yew, and so back into heath again. It was joyful to hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they darted from one clump of greenery to the other. Now and again a peaty amber colored stream rippled across their way, with ferny over-grown banks, where the blue kingfisher flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... out farthest toward Spain and Africa and the southern stars. Their leathery leafage had sprouted in advance of the faint mist of yellow-green around them, and it was of another and less natural green, tinged with blue, like the colors of a kingfisher. But one might fancy it the scales of some three-headed dragon towering over a herd ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... swiftly circling overhead, making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional raho lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... A kingfisher dropped with his musical K'plop! into the shoal of minnows that were rippling the water in their play just in front of me. Farther out, a fishhawk came down heavily, Souse! and rose with a big chub. And none of these sharp-eyed wood folk saw me or knew that they ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Meanwhile the Crews loiter about the Town: A. Percival, Frost, and Jack in his Kingfisher Guernsey: to whom Posh does the honours of the place. He is still busy with his Gear: his hands of a fine Mahogany, from Stockholm tar, but I see he has some return of hoseness. I believe that he and I shall now sign the Mortgage Papers that make him owner of Half Meum and Tuum. I only get ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... paper a singular incident occurred. I heard a strange, wild note, and something brilliant dashed past me to the end of the room, and there, on a white marble bust sat a lovely kingfisher—a bird I had hardly ever seen, even at a distance, and here he had come to pay me a visit in my drawing-room. Would that I could have told him how welcome he was! but, alas! he darted about the room in wild alarm, flew against the looking-glasses, and though I tried to guard him from a plate-glass ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... scow in the lake and made a pretence of fishing. The loneliness of the lake and the isolation of the boat suited his humor. He did not find it true that misery loves company. At least to human beings he preferred his companions of Lone Lake—the beaver building his home among the reeds, the kingfisher, the blue heron, the wild fowl that in their flight north rested for an hour or a day upon the peaceful waters. He looked upon them as his guests, and when they spread their wings and left him again alone he felt ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... young pickles I never hatched before!" said she to Mrs. Kingfisher, who came to gossip ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and at some of the Canary islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days only in the season as water-courses, are clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on the branches of the castor- oil plant, and thence darts on grasshoppers and lizards. It is brightly coloured, but not so beautiful as the European species: in its flight, manners, and place of habitation, which is generally in the driest ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... bench, intending to take off the judicial ermine and put some more coal in the stove, when the attention of Soiled Murphy was attracted to the bird. He allowed that it was a common "hell-diver with an abnormal head," while Lyons claimed that it was a kingfisher. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... held an invincible blockade of his neighbors, and the progress and improvement he despised—granting only, after a royal fashion, occasional license, revocable at pleasure, in the shape of tolls, which amply supported him, with the game he shot in his kingfisher's eyrie on the Marsh. Even the Government that had made him powerful was obliged to 'condemn' a part of his property at an equitable price for the purposes of Fort Redwood, in which the adjacent town of Logport shared. And Boone Culpepper, unable to resist the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... abundance, and snipe and wild-fowl resorted to the river in winter. Thither also, at all seasons, repaired the stately heron, to devour the finny race; and thither came, on like errand, the splendidly-plumed kingfisher. The magpie chattered, the jay screamed and flew deeper into the woods as the horsemen approached, and the shy bittern hid herself amid the rushes. Occasionally, too, was heard the deep ominous croaking ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an "easy" on the slightest pretext. A water- lily, the dimness of his eyeglass, the drooping of the sunlight in the West, the problem of whether some dingy little bird was a kingfisher or a crested wagtail, demanded consultation and a pause in our toil. Occasional rests, he proved, were a wise, nay, necessary precaution with a heavy old tub manned by indifferent oarsmen. I, on the other hand, would have violently explored the Thames in a man-o'-war's barge if ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... came tripping Across the green grass at my feet; A kingfisher poised, and was peering Where current and calm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sea-birds; and several varieties of plover, the redshank, greenshank, sandpiper, and snipe may be found there. The crossbill comes very often, and the green woodpecker's cry is quite familiar. But perhaps the most beautiful little winged creature that favours us is the kingfisher." ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... charming scenery, and the requisite skill, combined to please him. He had a love for nature, and he gratified it in this pursuit. His domain abounded in those bright chalky streams which the trout love. He liked to watch the moor-hens, too, and especially a kingfisher. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... tout passe; and while the kingfisher turns his sapphire back in the sun against the lemon-yellow of the willow leaves, and the smouldering russet of the oak-crowns succeeds to the crimson of the beeches and the gold of the elms, we shall do well to emulate the serene magnanimity of Nature and console ourselves with the reflection that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... displaying to Carefinotu that the Great Spirit had also favoured him with the power of the lightning; and perceiving a kingfisher tranquilly seated on an old stump near the river was bringing the stock up to his cheek, when ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... deceit; "how do you think he could get to this place? But tell me, do the serpents ever appear? when? and where? Tell me all about their habits." "Do you see that beautiful white sandy beach?" said the bird. "Yes!" he answered. "It is there," continued the Kingfisher, "that they bask in the sun. Before they come out, the lake will appear perfectly calm; not even a ripple will appear. After midday (na-wi-qua) you ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... arch face, wrapping loosely round her her dressing-gown of a sort of plumbago-coloured, dark-grey silk lined with fine silk of metallic blue, and there, ivory and jet-black and grey like black-lead, she would sit in the white bedclothes flicking her handkerchief and revealing a flicker of kingfisher-blue silk and white silk night dress, complaining of her neuritis nerve and her own impossible condition, and begging Alvina to stay with her another half-hour, and suddenly studying the big, blood-red stone on her finger as if she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... where no sound breaks the silence except the gurgle of the river as it sweeps round the rocks, the lonely Kingfisher sits upon an overhanging branch, his turquoise plumage hardly less intense in its lustre than the deep blue of the sky above him; and so intent is his watch upon the passing fish that intrusion fails to scare him from his post; the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Indian in him an' that 'll be the worse for the men who will have to meet him. I'm tellin' you, Greaves, Jean Isbel is the black sheep of the family. If you ride down his record you'll find he's shore in line to be another Poggin, or Reddy Kingfisher, or Hardin', or any of the Texas gunmen you ought to remember.... Greaves, there are men rubbin' elbows with you right heah that my Indian son ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... gradually dissolves in the sun-light, while between the trees that border the river the deep-blue sky appears, with beautiful small cumulus clouds suspended in the atmosphere. With the exception, perhaps, of a large blue kingfisher sitting in solitary state on a branch extending over the water, or a distant hornbill with its cheerful grandiose laugh, there are no evidences of animal life, nevertheless the exquisite scenery seems to lure ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... azure off the upper side of the wings proves this one to be no bat, but a Morpho—a moth as big as a bat. And what was that second larger flash of golden green, which dashed at the moth, and back to yonder branch not ten feet off? A Jacamar {138d}—kingfisher, as they miscall her here, sitting fearless of man, with the moth in her long beak. Her throat is snowy white, her under-parts rich red brown. Her breast, and all her upper plumage and long tail, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... jumped along merrily in the water, as a kingfisher does, and scarcely even wondered where its course ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... that impeded its course to the river, joined with fatigue and long exposure to the sun and air, caused her at length to fall asleep. The last rosy light of the setting sun was dyeing the waters with a glowing tint when she awoke; a soft blue haze hung upon the trees; the kingfisher and dragon-fly, and a solitary loon, were the only busy things abroad on the river; the first darting up and down from an upturned root near the water's edge, feeding its youngings; the dragon-fly ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... pooter seems still the only river, the temperature of which is always below that of the air. One interesting Elaeocarpus occurred—Petal. viridibus apice dentatis; calice griseo viridi, vix valvato. I may remark, that the aestivation of Kydia is scarcely valvate. I saw a, to me, new kingfisher and wood-pecker. The black and white kingfisher, Dalcedo rudus, is not found on the B. pooter beyond the termination of the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... birds were Mr. and Mrs. Kingfisher, with dark, glossy, green wings, spotted with light blue. Their tails were also light blue, and there was a patch of yellow near their heads. The little Kingfishers were quite as pretty as their parents, and ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... must not suppose that she came frequently to those hills. She was to be seen no more often than you will see a kingfisher when you watch for it under a willow. Yet because in the season of kingfishers you know you may see one flash at any instant, so to Young Gerard each day of spring and summer was an expectancy; and this it was that kept his lift alight. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... every mountaineer knows that sheep could not have had a colour more adapted to render them inconspicuous, and that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from the rocks which so constantly crop up on hill sides. Even the brilliant blue of the Kingfisher, which in a museum renders it so conspicuous, in its native haunts, on the contrary, makes it difficult to distinguish from a flash of light upon the water; and the richly-coloured Woodpecker wears the genuine dress of a Forester—the green ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Indian advised it. On account of the rise of the Penobscot, the water ran up this stream quite to the pond of the same name, one or two miles. The Spencer Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were now in plain sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us, the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what possibly was never spelt before, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... a dry blade! eat a dry blade! From the nest that the kingfisher made! What will the Joblilies do, When the old ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... but the description is exact enough to identify it with the present Natty Bumppo's cave. In the summer of 1909 was discovered lower down the hillside another and larger cave, the small entrance of which, in the woods beyond Kingfisher Tower, at Point Judith, had long remained unobserved. Here the name of Natty Bumppo came near being involved in another controversy, for some local archeologists maintained that the newly discovered cave was the one which Cooper meant to ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... at a few sea birds, shore birds, and a marsh bird. Many inland birds, too, are fond of the shore. The artful Jackdaw builds in the cliffs, and his cousin, the Crow, searches the shore for food. Even the gay Kingfisher has been seen diving in ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... flecked by the mirrored clouds, kissed into "cat's paws" by the faint breeze; on it goes until its farther course is lost in the shadow of the olive-green woods that tower in massive darkness against the soft amber-colored clouds and pale blue sky. The watchful kingfisher, perched on the other side of the stream, eyes me askance but has no great fear at my presence, the splash of a disturbed turtle or the heavier fall of a diving frog calling for his more earnest attention. ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... several yards from the shore it is quite shallow, so that a wharf two hundred and fifty feet long was necessary to make it easy to launch our small rowboats. A railing extends along the side of the wharf, and upon this railing the kingfisher perches, watching for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... that for ages had listened To the rush of the pebble-paved river between, Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened, All breathless with awe have I gazed on ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... people could be watched at work of all kinds, from blacksmithy to finest filigree silver work inlaid with the tiny colored feathers of the brightly colored kingfisher; and from rough carpenter work to the finest ivory carving for which the Chinese are famous. Of course the amount they pay for some of this work of extreme skill is ridiculously small, yet their living expenses are so small that they are doubtless in better circumstances than ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... walks along the towing path, when moor-hens are swimming, and dipping on a glimpse of the spectator; when fish are rising, or sometimes taking a sudden "header" into the air and going down with a splash; when the water-vole rushes for his hole with head just above the water; when a blue flash of kingfisher darts by, and the deep blue or green dragon-flies sit on the sedges, or perhaps a tiny May- fly sits on a rail to shake off its last garment, and come forth a snow-white fairy thing with three long ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... kingfisher," said Chaerephon. "I never heard a bird like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kind of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... in shape and general appearance is like the Kingfisher. Instead however of living on fish, he contents himself with lizards, beetles, grasshoppers, etc., and amongst these he makes a great havoc. The range of this bird did not extend beyond the ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... young willows, "what will become of us? what will they make of us? Ssshhh, ssshhh." But no one replied, chiefly because no one knew, excepting the kingfisher, and he was away ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... beaver-dam. The pool itself was deep in places, but before the river came to it, it flowed for a hundred yards and more over a level gravel bottom, so shallow that even as a cub I could walk from shore to shore without the water being above my shoulders. At the edge of the pool the same black and white kingfisher was always sitting on the same branch when we came down, and he disliked our coming, and chirred at us to go away. I used to love to pretend not to understand him, and to walk solemnly through the water underneath and all round ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... the water hasten dancing over the stones, or among the twigs of a fallen branch. Sometimes, little fish vanished before they had become real, like hallucinations, sometimes wagtails ran by the water's brink, sometimes other little birds came to drink. She saw a kingfisher darting blue—and then she was very happy. The kingfisher was the key to the magic world: he was witness of the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... 125.) It is also remarkable that birds which sing well are rarely decorated with brilliant colours or other ornaments. Of our British birds, excepting the bullfinch and goldfinch, the best songsters are plain-coloured. The kingfisher, bee-eater, roller, hoopoe, woodpeckers, etc., utter harsh cries; and the brilliant birds of the tropics are hardly ever songsters. (40. See remarks to this effect in Gould's 'Introduction to the Trochilidae,' 1861, p. 22.) Hence bright colours and the power of song seem to replace ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... watch things happening: perhaps a water-rat will swim along suspecting nothing, and then, seeing you make a movement, will dive and disappear, and suddenly come into view ever so far away on the other bank. Perhaps a kingfisher will flash by or settle on a branch overhanging the water. Kingfishers grow more rare every year, owing to the merciless and unthinking zeal with which they are shot; and maybe before long there will be no ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the dark-leaved casuarinas. The next day, an excursion was made up the river Nepean, a tributary of the Hawkesbury, on which trip many valuable facts of natural history were obtained, Bougainville enriching his collection with canaries, waterfowl, and a very pretty species of kingfisher and cockatoos. In the neighbouring woods was heard the unpleasant cry of the lyre-pheasant and of two other birds, which feebly imitate the tinkling of a hand-bell and the jarring noise of the saw. These are not, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... A kingfisher shot across above the golden surface of the buttercups, straight for the brook, moving, as it seemed, without wings, so swiftly did he vibrate them, that only his azure hue was visible, drawn like a line of peacock blue ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... splashed and dipped along the margin of the water. Everywhere this species seems seized with an aquatic fervor, and in localities hundreds of miles apart I have seen them gradually desert their fly-catching for surface feeding, or often plunging, kingfisher-like, bodily beneath, to emerge with a small wriggling fish—another certain reflection of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... familiar to him as the rustle of the reeds in a breeze. The blue heron rose heavily from the backwater, and winged his slow flight high above the trees. Here, indeed, seemed reason for fear; but the great bird was not in the humour for killing voles, and soon passed out of view. Now a kingfisher, then a dipper, sped like an arrow past the near corner of the pool; and the whiz of swift wings—unheard by all except little creatures living in frequent danger, and listening with beating hearts to sounds unperceived ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the peasants as a money-lender squeezes his victims, but the peasants' redress, the furtive musket and horrible dynamite, that was terrible. God, what a mess!... And had Granya been caught into that evil problem, a kingfisher among cormorants? ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... saw a kingfisher, who was sitting on a limb overhanging the water. "Why do you sit there, my young brother?" said Old Man. "Because," replied the kingfisher, "the Chief Bear and his brothers have killed your wolf; they have eaten the meat ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... in which the Chameleon lay at anchor was not very far from the residence of Blue Beard. When the escort arrived there the horizon was tinged with the first rays of the rising sun. The Chameleon was a brigantine, light and swift as a kingfisher, riding gracefully on the waves, at her mooring. Not far from the Chameleon was seen one of the coast guards who traversed in his rounds the only point of Cabesterre ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... her;—swallows skimming and sheering Spring Pond, trout that jumped at sunset, the quick furry shapes of mink and muskrat, the rattling flash of a blue-winged kingfisher, a tall heron wading, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to and fro upon a tall weed; and there, at the bend of the brook, sits an old kingfisher on a dead branch, gorged with his morning meal, and regardless of his reflected image in the still pool beneath. The goguelu[1] rises suddenly up from his tuft of grass, and, having sung a few staves of his gurgling song, drops down again ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... heights of the Sierra Erere. As dawn begins to redden the sky, large flocks of ducks and of a small Amazonian goose may be seen flying towards the lake. Here and there we see a cormorant, seated alone on the branch of a dead tree; or a kingfisher poises himself over the water, watching for his prey. Numerous gulls are gathered in large companies on the trees along the river-shore. Alligators lie on its surface, diving with a sudden splash at the approach of the canoe. Occasionally a porpoise ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... that sang at morning with the earliest swallows' cry, kingfisher of Pallas in the loom, and the heavy-headed twirling spindle, light-running spinner of the twisted yarn, and the bobbins, and this basket, friend to the distaff, keeper of the spun warp-thread and the reel, Telesilla, the industrious ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... : teni, gardi, konservi. kernel : kerno. kettle : kaldrono, bolilo. key : sxlosilo, (piano) klavo. kick : piedfrapi. kidney : reno. kill : mortigi, bucxi, senvivigi. kind : speco; afabla, bonkora kingdom : regno, regxlando. kingfisher : alciono. kiss : kisi. knapsack : tornistro. knave : fripono; (cards) lakeo. knead : knedi. knee : genuo. kneel : genufleksi. knife : trancxilo. knight : kavaliro. knit : triki. knock : frapi. knot : nodo, (in wood) lignotubero know : (—"a fact"), ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... larger than the Belted Kingfisher and the underparts are nearly all bright chestnut, except the white throat. They nest in river banks the same as the common American species, and the eggs are white, but larger. Size 1.45 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... cellars into which the flood swept to uprear itself in a second into pyramids of force and foam. This seemed to fascinate Clark, and he peered with unwinking eyes till a sharp clatter just over his head caused him to look up. Still he did not move his body, and a kingfisher on a branch, after regarding him for an instant with bright suspicious eyes, flung himself into the air and hovered over a nearby eddy with an irregular flapping of quick, blue wings. Then, like a bullet, he dived into ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... rose-pink clusters of blossoms, line the banks, scattering their fragrance far and near. The rancorous cry of the catbird, and the rattling call of the kingfisher, that feathered spirit of the stream, are left behind; the clear flutelike notes of the meadow lark take their place, and the hills, covered with wild flowers, roll back from its margin, as if to make ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... undrugged mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fish-bones and crabs and sand, sea-weed fine and fair, and the old sycamores, the old dead trees, in the tops of whose white branches the halcyon built its nest. Well the children knew the winter days, so bright and mild, when the brave birds were breeding. Well they knew when the young kingfisher would begin to make his royal progress, with such safe dignity descending, branch by branch, until he could no longer resist Nature, but must dash out in a "fine frenzy" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... settlement: a farm and feudatory cottages in perfect completeness, an isolated self-sufficing community, lacking nothing—not even the yellow ferret in the cage. The footpath beyond the homestead crosses a field where we find the Arun once again—here a stream winding between steep banks, sure home of kingfisher and water-rats. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the first birds I went out to seek—perhaps the most medicinal of all birds to see—was the kingfisher; but he was not anywhere on the river margin, although suitable places were plentiful enough, and myriads of small fishes were visible in the shallow water, seen at rest like dim-pointed stripes beneath the surface, and darting away and scattering ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they: Nought disturbs ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... know any case of both sexes, more especially of the female, [being] more brightly coloured whilst young than when come to maturity and fit to breed? An imaginary instance would be if the female kingfisher (or male) became dull ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... opinion of some critics, though I personally incline to MALACHI or HABAKKUK. This personal magnetism which Mr. LLOYD GEORGE radiates in the House he radiates no less in 10, Downing Street, where a special radiatorium has been added to the breakfast-room to radiate it. Imagine an April morning, a kingfisher on a woody stream, poplar-leaves in the wind, a shower of sugar shaken suddenly from a sifter, and you have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... of AEolus, who threw herself into the sea after her husband, who had perished in shipwreck, and was changed into the kingfisher. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... KINGFISHER.—This beautiful bird signifies the return of someone for whom you have been longing; if flying, news of a surprising ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... wandered in a place of dark leaves, beside the moat under the frowning towers, I saw a kingfisher sit on a bough, his back powdered with sapphires, his red breast, his wise head on one side, watching the stream. In a moment he plunged and disappeared; in an instant he was back again on his perch, flashing, like Excalibur, over the stream, his ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... must keep as carefully as I have done, and which will give you wealth and happiness. Ten years ago, the same year that your father died and your mother also left us, I went out one morning before daybreak to surprise the crabs asleep in the sand. As I was stooping down, hidden by a rock, I saw a kingfisher slowly floating toward the beach. The kingfisher is a sacred bird which should always be respected; knowing this, I let it alight and did not stir, for fear of frightening it. At the same moment I saw a beautiful green adder come from a cleft of the mountain and crawl along ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... who was of the party, added to his collection of birds, a kingfisher, and a specimen of a glossy species about the size and colour of an English blackbird; others were seen and killed, but all common to other parts; the most rare of the latter was the large cream-coloured pigeon I have alluded ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher—its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel's eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... which I saw at their best on the Jumna at Okhla. They poise in the air above the water with their long bills pointed downwards at a right-angle to their fluttering bodies, searching the depths for their prey; and then they drop with the quickness of thought into the stream. The other kingfisher—coloured like ours but bigger—who waits on an overhanging branch, I saw too, but the evolutions of the hovering ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... a time Little Bear went for a long walk along the river path. He was alone, and so did not know that he had gone far from home until Father Kingfisher saw him and called: ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... ripples making a sleepy whisper under the bow and the tiller, now and then, jerking lazily under his hand. One side of the stream was marshy so that he pushed into tall grass and cat-tails and startled an indignant kingfisher who was dozing on a dead tree. The bird went skimming off, a flash of blue and white that he followed as he ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... their own convention at Guthrie and divided the land into counties. Congress made them wait five months—an age in the new country—before approving the Organic Act. The district, which a short time before had been the Unassigned Lands, became the counties of Logan, Oklahoma, Cleveland, Canadian, Kingfisher and Payne. To these was added Beaver County which in Brick Willock's day had been called "No-Man's Land," and which the law-abiding citizens, uniting against bandits and highwaymen, had sought ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... broad-shouldered wildcat showed himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts; cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... to the unicorn for some unexplained reason. Other typical little Stuart animals and birds fill in the extra panels, such as the spotted dog who chases a little hare who is never caught, and the gaily-coloured parroquet and kingfisher, which no respectable Stuart picture would be without. The caterpillar, the ladybird, and the snail are all en evidence; and below is a real pond, covered with talc, and containing fish and ducks, the banks being made of tiny branching coral beads ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... are laid in holes or other dark places are white without markings of any kind, as illustrated by those of the Chimney Swift, Belted Kingfisher, and all Woodpeckers. In such instances Nature shows no disposition to be lavish with her colouring matter ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... two noisy intruders; the waxen blossoms of the arrowhead, the broad shining leaves and golden-hearted blossoms of the water lily and the stately blue spikes of the pickerel weed bent before their ruthless tramping. A kingfisher, startled from his day's work by the uproarious pair, shot down the stream, his derisive laugh echoing far through the leafy avenue. The two almost forgot the great import of their journey in its delight. Scotty splashed ahead, capering from fallen log to ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... ate.) Catering. (Kate. Her ring.) Hero. (He row.) Tennessee. (Ten, I see.) The following are also good charade words: Knighthood, penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... such blues before: electric-blue and deep, seething navy blue, flecked with foam and silver spray; calm lapis-lazuli blue; a sort of greeny, mummy-case blue; flashing, silk-shot blue, like a kingfisher's feathers. Sometimes the sea was as calm as a mill-pond, and you could see down and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... of his poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched, half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer there is such an atmosphere about the countryside as George Meredith has created in his "Richard Feverel" ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... old brook that had frightened him?" he wondered. "Perhaps it was only the hedge-hog waddling along back from the brook to his hole in the ledge above, or it might be the kingfisher, who had tired of the bend of the brook a week before and had changed his thieving ground to the rapids above, where he terrorized daily a shy family of trout, pouncing upon the little ones with a great splashing and hysterical chattering as they darted ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... Bechstein. French, "Aquassiere," "Cincle plongeur."—The Dipper or Water Ouzel, though not very common, less so, indeed, than the Kingfisher, is nevertheless a resident species, finding food all through the year in the clear pools left by the tide, and also frequenting the few inland ponds, especially the rather large ones, belonging to Mr. De Putron in the Vale, where there is always a Dipper or a Kingfisher to be seen, though I do ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... rivers and different creeks you number six species of the kingfisher. They make their nest in a hole in the sand on the side of the bank. As there is always plenty of foliage to protect them from the heat of the sun, they feed at all hours of the day. Though their plumage is prettily varied, still ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... grass, The tide that crept with coolness to its roots, 190 The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; The life that gladdened everything was mine. Was I then truly all that I beheld? Or is this stream of being but a glass Where the mind sees its visionary self, As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay, Across the river's hollow heaven below His picture flits,—another, yet the same? But suddenly the sound of human voice Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours, 200 Doth in opacous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 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 need not rehearse. So, descriptive words in vegetation, or person, or characteristic, what volumes are contained in them! ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... delusion. I have them at this moment before eyes, stealing along the border of the brook where it lay open to the day or was merely fringed by shrubs and bushes. I see the bittern rising with hollow scream as they break in upon his rarely-invaded haunt; the kingfisher watching them suspiciously from his dry tree that overhangs the deep black millpond in the gorge of the hills; the tortoise letting himself slip sideways from off the stone or log on which he is sunning himself; and the panic-struck frog plumping in headlong as they approach, and spreading an alarm ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... purple kingfisher poising in the air over a shoal, his head bent downward, his wings vibrating swiftly. He drops like a shot and comes up out of the water with a fish held crosswise in his bill. With measured wing-strokes he flits to the top ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... friend, Old Felix, and about the "sassy" blue-jays and the darting kingfisher that nested in the cut-bank where he worked, of the bush-birds that shared his sour-dough bread. He tried to picture to her the black bear lumbering over the river bowlders to the service berry bush across the river, where he stood on his hind legs, cramming his mouth ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... and expect it;" and they bade him ask for a clearance and pass, with proper witnesses of his demand. "Were it mine," said a leading merchant, "I would certainly send it back." Hutchinson acquainted Admiral Montagu with what was passing; on which the Active and the Kingfisher, though they had been laid up for the winter, were sent to guard the passages out of the harbor. At the same time orders were given by the Governor to load guns at the Castle, so that no vessel, except coasters, might go to sea without a permit. He had no thought of what was to happen; the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small, with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries about the business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cognominally. He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... keep them for mere curiosity. Each of them is the Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example—my Cluseret—is the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see yonder—Badinguet, I call him—is the Soul of the hawks; this, my Mimi, is the Soul of the little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as King of the Birds is to keep a representative of each of these always on hand; in which endeavor I am faithfully aided by the whole population of the island, who bring me eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... seemed to give me a sense of life. Oh! what walks I had along the grassy banks, where my friends the frogs were dreaming on the leaf of a nenuphar, and where the coquettish and delicate water lilies suddenly opened to me, behind a willow, a leaf of a Japanese album, and when the kingfisher flashed past me like a blue flame! How I loved it all, with the instinctive love of eyes which seemed to be all over my body, and with a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sounded the thrilling, throbbing notes of the cardinal, broken suddenly and drowned by the roll of the flicker, the wild, weird cry of the great-crested flycatcher, or the rapid, hay-rake rattle of the belted kingfisher. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... curve at the base of the neck, which may be due merely to the craw. The big slender herons, on the contrary, bend the long neck back in a beautiful curve, so that the head is nearly between the shoulders. One day I saw what I at first thought was a small yellow-bellied kingfisher hovering over a pond, and finally plunging down to the surface of the water after a school of tiny young fish; but it proved to be a bien-te-vi king-bird. Curved-bill wood-hewers, birds the size and somewhat ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... should wish to bombard the walls in the sacred cause of civilisation. Then the view was lost in the date-palm forest, through which tiny tributaries of the Tensift run babbling over the red earth, while the kingfisher or dragon-fly, "a ray of living light," flashes over the shallow water, and young storks take their first lessons in the art ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... of dark red flowered satin, covered with hundreds of butterflies, embroidered in gold, interspersed with flowers. Over all, she had a variegated stiff-silk pelisse, lined with slate-blue ermine; while her nether garments consisted of a jupe of kingfisher-colour foreign crepe, brocaded ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Halcyon days, ones of peace and tranquillity; anciently, days of calm weather in mid-winter, when the halcyon, or kingfisher, was supposed to brood. It was fabled that this bird laid its eggs in a nest that floated on the sea, and that it charmed the winds and waves to make them calm ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... obviously impossible is it to explain as due to use or disuse the colours of animals. No direct adaptation to function could have produced the blue protuberances on a mandril's face, or the striped hide of a tiger, or the gorgeous plumage of a kingfisher, or the eyes in a peacock's tail, or the multitudinous patterns of insects' wings. One single case, that of a deer's horns, might alone have sufficed to show how insufficient was the assigned cause. During their growth, a deer's horns ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... this is a mere fairy tale, but the author has sometimes seen wild birds (a lark, kingfisher, robin, and finch) come to men, who certainly had none of the charm of Joan of Arc. A thoughtful child, sitting alone, and very still, might find birds alight on her in a friendly way, as has happened to the author. If she fed ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... A Kingfisher sat on the edge of a boat that a young man had prepared for a fishing expedition. A box of bait and a bucket to hold the fish were on one of the benches, whilst a fishing-rod lay across the boat, and its long line had a float at the end ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... you watch, the swift winged swallows dart from their homes in the steep bank of the stream; the kingfisher sounds his discordant rattle and hangs poised in mid air as he gazes into the waters below; the woodbine like a staunch friend still clings round the oak or hangs out its crimson banner in autumn; the meadowlark ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that the horse hath no gall; that a kingfisher hanged by the bill showeth where the wind lay; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not;' and so on—questions, it may be, as pertinent as those learnedly discussed in half-crown ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the protection of a pelisse lined with fur, and a dog's-skin bonnet, such as was worn by the peasants, I walked daily on the ramparts, or on a sort of public ground or garden, in which was a pond. Here I had no companion but a kingfisher, a beautiful creature that used to glance by me. I consequently became much attached to it. During these walks I composed the poem ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... that she felt when she first arrived home, came to her at longer and longer intervals. Once a week she went down to Uncle Billy's, where she watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels into the sluice, the kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey, and listening to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old mill—and stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under the honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew vaguely uneasy about her—she dreamed so ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... strength, so that by the time he had completed his eighth year he was familiarly acquainted with the animals of that region, and had the most lively admiration for the more interesting specimens. He watched with delight the kingfisher, and loved to distinguish the voices of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... her disappearance, and terrified by the household whisper that she had been ill-used just before her death by a servant. A grandmother died about the same time, leaving little impression, because she had been little seen. The other death was of a beloved kingfisher, by a doleful accident. When the boy was five, he lost his playfellow and, as he says, intellectual guide, his sister Elizabeth, eight years old, dying of hydrocephalus, after manifesting an intellectual ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Indian goose (Anser Indica); common and Gargany teal; two kinds of gull; one of Shearwater (Rhynchops ablacus); three of tern, and one of cormorant. Besides these there were three egrets, the large crane, stork, green heron, and the demoiselle; the English sand-martin, kingfisher, peregrine-falcon, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, and the European vulture: the wild peacock, and jungle-fowl. There were at least 100 peculiarly Indian birds in addition, of which the more remarkable were several kinds of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... said, "Don't you think, Hope, you could make up your mind to go to Mrs. Kingfisher's ball next week? You know you haven't been ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis |
