"Thrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you walked about on the soft brown carpet, you could hear the wonderful song the pine needles made as they rubbed against each other; and perhaps far away in the top of some tall tree you could hear the wood- thrush sing ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... exceedingly viscid and sticky pulp, surrounding the hard little nut-like seeds: and this pulp makes the seeds cling to the bills and feet of various birds which feed upon the fruit, but most particularly of the missel thrush, who derives his common English name from his devotion to the mistletoe. The birds then carry them away unwittingly to some neighbouring tree, and rub them off, when they get uncomfortable, against a forked branch—the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... him up; but God have mercy upon us all! Sir John Lawson, I hear, is worse than yesterday: the King went to see him to-day most kindly. It seems his wound is not very bad; but he hath a fever, a thrush, and a hickup, all three together, which are, it seems, very ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... seventy warblers are described by Davie in his "Nests and Eggs of North American Birds," and the Kentucky Warbler is recognized as one of the most beautiful of the number, in its manners almost the counterpart of the Golden Crowned Thrush (soon to delight the eyes of the readers of BIRDS), though it is altogether a more conspicuous bird, both on account of its brilliant plumage and greater activity, the males being, during the season of nesting, very pugnacious, continually ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the merry thrush is swinging On a springing spray; Or when the witch that lives in gloomy caves And creeps by night among the graves Calls a cloud across the day; Cease we never our fairy song, March we ever, along, along, Down the dale, or up ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... brown, had a rough effect of being quickly tossed into form, which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him to place him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily, unwillingly graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of a hermit-thrush; but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion in Cynthia's looks, her acts were of plain and honest prose, such as giving Westover the pleasantest place and the most intelligent waitress in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Thrush, in Miller, True Bird Stories; Antics in the Bird Room, in Miller, True Bird Stories; Fate of the Children of Lir, in Grierson, Children's Book of Celtie Stories; Halcyone, in Brown, Curious Book of Birds; St. Francis's Sermon to the Birds, Longfellow (poem), ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... filled with an insatiable desire to know more and more of the beautiful world about her. She gathered knowledge from every country walk; she showed so much "uncommon sense," David Eby said, that it was a keen pleasure to show her the nests of the thrush or the rare nests of the humming-bird. David and his mother, enthusiastic seekers after nature knowledge, augmented the father's nature education of Phoebe by frequent walks to field and woods. And ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... gay Paris world was beating in time to the spring in the air. Yet these artists had deserted the asphalt of the boulevards for the cobbles of a village street, the delights of the cafe chantant had been exchanged for the miracle of the moon rising over the sea, and for the song of the thrush in the bush. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... skulking among the bushes, and a fine large hare was shot; porcupine-quills were common, and we picked up the mummy of a little hedgehog. The birds were swift-winged hawks and owls, pigeons and ring-doves; crows again became common, and the water-wagtail was tame as the Brazilian thrush, Joo de Barros: it hopped about within a few feet of us, quite ignoring the presence of Frenchmen armed with murderous guns. I cannot discern the origin of the pseudo-Oriental legend which declares that the "crow of the wilderness" (raven) taught Cain ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented of created beings. I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle on my consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers. The sun shone. A thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my bedroom windows. The tree, laughed and shook out its finery at me like a woman, saying: "See how green I am, after Sunday's rain." Antoinette's one eyed black cat (a hideous beast) met me in the hall and arching its back welcomed me affably to its new residence. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... beautiful beliefs. And such was that,— By solitary shepherd first surmised Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 140 Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished, As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared Confess a mortal name,—that faith which gave A Hamadryed to each tree; and I Will hold it true that in this willow dwells The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, Of ancient Hospitality, long since, With ceremonious thrift, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... flower grow and blossom upon either side; and a little bird, with a throat like a thrush, warbles a canticle of exquisite musical modulations, so to speak. But the most stirring sight of all is the system of logging carried on by the mill companies. "Look! Quick!" ejaculates the driver; and your gaze is directed to a ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... into a roll, scooped of it's crum; to baste them well with butter, and roast them, until they are brown and crisp. The ortolans are kept in cages, and crammed, until they die of fat, then eaten as dainties. The thrush is presented with the trail, because the bird feeds on olives. They may as well eat the trail of a sheep, because it feeds on the aromatic herbs of the mountain. In the summer, we have beef, veal, and mutton, chicken, and ducks; which last ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... distinguished the brown thrush, robin, turtle-dove, linnet, gold-finch, large and small blackbird, wren, and some others. As they came along, the whole party were of opinion that this river was the true Missouri; but Captain Lewis, being fully persuaded ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... evening of late July, the dusk upon the lawn, and most of the house-party already gone upstairs to dress for dinner. I had been standing beside the open window for some considerable time, motionless, and listening idly to the singing of a thrush or blackbird in the shrubberies—when I heard the faint twanging of the harp-strings in the room behind me, and turning, saw that Marion had entered and was there beside the instrument. At the same moment she saw me, rose from ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... of the frog. With a frog of good size, low down, and taking part in the pressure of the foot on the ground, contraction will be prevented. On the other hand, an ill-developed frog, one wasted by long-continued and spreading thrush, or one robbed of its normal function by excessive paring in the forge, is a common starting-point of the condition we are considering. We have already referred to this in Chapter III., when considering the experiments of Lungwitz in this connection. What we have to bear in mind ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... music in the twitter o' the bluebird and the jay, And that sassy little critter jes' a-peckin' all the day; There' music in the "flicker," and there' music in the thrush, And there' music in the snicker o' ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... the bog-water through holes in his beak, makes a booming sound which is most impressive. Now do not think me an ornithologist or a bird sharp. Personally I do not know a bittern from an olive-backed thrush. But I have read some poetry, and I remember what Thomson says ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... was just climbing above the treetops when the radio boys and Frank Brandon set out over the forest road, to the accompaniment of a full chorus of lusty feathered singers. Robin and starling and thrush combined to make the dewy morning gladsome, and the boys whistled back at them and wished Larry Bartlett were there ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... she exclaimed triumphantly, "you've no call to mind about that. That's only thrush, that is. Three of ourn had it, and did beautiful. She's bound to be a bit fretful, but she won't come to no harm, so long as you keep ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... he called upon a wealthy young lady by the name of Silsby, who had the eyes of a gazelle, but "when I mentioned subscription it seemed to fall on her ears, not as the cadence of the wood thrush, or of the mocking bird does on mine, but as a shower ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... this and noted on the horizon contours of the mountains about her home, faint and far in an elusive amethystine apotheosis against the red and flaming west, and called out her glad recognition in a voice as sweet as a thrush, his comrades waxed jealous, and contravened his statements and argued and wrangled upon landmarks to which they had never before given a second thought in all their mountaineering experience, so keenly they competed for ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the fond deceiving breeze, with many a glimpse to attract a glance, all the cream of their summer intentions. And in full enjoyment of all these doings, the poet of the whole stood singing—the simple-minded thrush, proclaiming that the world was good and kind, but himself perhaps the kindest, and his nest, beyond doubt, the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's note, the nuance of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight enough, inductive and deductive cunning enough, not only a meaning, but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where the menacing shell described its curve through the air, a harmless crow flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at last the once hotly contested battleground ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... distances across which he had heard her had not flattered. Her voice was untrained, of course, but it seemed to Peter that it had lost nothing by the neglect, for as she gained confidence, she forgot Peter, as he intended that she should, and sang with the complete abstraction of a thrush in the deep wood. Like the thrush's note, too, Beth's was limpid, clear, and sweet, full of forest sounds—the falling brook, the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... for gray mist was descending, Slow rose the bard and retired from the hill, The blackbird's mild notes with the thrush's were blending, Oft scream'd the plover her wild notes and shrill, Yet still from the hoary bard, Methought the sweet song I heard, Mix'd with instruction and blended with woe; And oft as I pass along, Chimes in mine ear his song, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... thrush A contagious childhood disease caused by a fungus, Candida albicans. Causes small whitish eruptions on the mouth, throat, and tongue, and usually accompanied ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... instance, there is an undoubted connection. In Susan's case, as recorded by Wordsworth, what connection had the corner of Wood Street with a mountain ascending, a vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove? Why should the song of a thrush cause bright volumes of vapor to glide through Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of Cheapside? As she stood at that corner of Wood Street, a mop and a pail in her hand most likely, she heard the bird singing, and straight-way began pining and yearning for the days of ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... arched over the narrow path, and a wild canary, singing in the sun, hopped from bough to bough. A robin's cheery chirp came from another tree, and the clear notes of a thrush, with a mottled breast, were answered by another in the ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... or Mohammedan Nawab, among other luxuries, keeps also his aviary. In these may be seen rare and expensive parrots, brought from the Spice Islands. They delight also in diyuls and shamahs. The latter is a smaller bird than our thrush, but larger than a lark; his breast is orange, the rest of his plumage black, and in song he is equal to our black-bird. The diyul also sings sweetly; he is about the same size as the shamah, his plumage black, with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... projects were sufficiently ripe he went one day to the Wood of Conils. A thrush sang in a tree and a little hedgehog crossed the stony path in front of him with awkward steps. Agaric walked with great strides, muttering fragments of sentences ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... 3. Thrush and blackbird singing In the coppice near, All the blue sky ringing With their notes so clear! The twitt'ring swallows skimming, Through the air of morn,... Happy all, all ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... as mid-day to me, When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee, And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat, And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies— So I swoon in the noon ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... rare visitors these days, and the thrush which used to hover over our vineyards in real flocks, have almost entirely vanished. The swallows, however, are our faithful friends and have never failed to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... especially beautiful songs are the Thrushes, which include the Robin and the Bluebird, the finest singer in this family probably being the Hermit Thrush. In the Southern States there is no more popular singer among the birds than the Mockingbird. But it should be remembered that a bird's song cannot be separated from the associations which it calls up in one's memory. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... removes things from the gums"—Geranium maculatum—Wild Alum, Cranesbill: Used in decoction with Y[^a]n[^u] Unihye[']st[)i] (Vitis cordifolia) to wash the mouths of children in thrush; also used alone for the same purpose by blowing the chewed fiber into the mouth. Dispensatory: "One of our best indigenous astringents. * * * Diarrhea, chronic dysentery, cholora infantum in the latter stages, and the various hemorrhages are the forms of disease ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... of all, Bobby loved a comfortable and friendly robin redbreast—not the American thrush that is called a robin, but the smaller Old World warbler. It had its nest of grass and moss and feathers, and many a silver hair shed by Bobby, low in a near-by thorn bush. In sweet and plaintive talking notes it told ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... song and plumage. And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the Gray-cheeked Thrush (Turdus aliciae) in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of the Cedar-Bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song contains a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the apple tree, a robin began to sing. A thrush joined him from a near-by thicket. Birds began chirping ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... differently when I repeat it. You lose the sweet shyness of her face, the appeal in her eyes not yet dry, and that soft minor chord in her voice that reminds me now of a wood-thrush. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... streamlets gush, And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush, With sun on the meadows And songs in the shadows Comes again to me The gift of the tongues of the lea, The gift of the ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deep hush fell around the circle, and every listener was still, even as the rustling leaves hang motionless when the light breeze falls away in the hour of sunset. Then through the silence, like the song of a far-away thrush from its hermitage in the forest, a voice came ringing: "I know it, I ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... ours, what more tenderly beautiful than our green, English countryside? The thunderous roar of plunging cataracts, the cloud-capped pinnacles of mighty mountains may fill the soul with awed and speechless wonder, but for pure joy give me an English coppice of a summer evening when blackbird and thrush are calling, or to sit and hearken to the immemorial music of a brook—Friend Jarvis, you ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... thrush, on the contrary, is patience itself. A youngster of this lovely family sits a half hour at a time motionless and silent on a branch, head drawn down upon his shoulders, apparently in the deepest meditation. When he sees food coming he is gently agitated, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news about themselves. And Daisy thought the world got ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... overeating results in vomiting and gas, and thus interferes with normal nursing, as also may tongue-tie. A condition in the mouth, medically known as "stomatitis," and commonly known as "thrush," often gives rise to a fretful cry when nursing is attempted. In the first place, the baby cannot "hold on" to the nipple; while, in the second place, it hurts his inflamed mouth when he ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... at week-ends was really a home to it, and the graver sides of life, the deaths, the partings, the yearnings for love, have their deepest expression in the heart of the fields. All was not sadness. The sun was shining without. The thrush sang his two syllables on the budding guelder-rose. Some children were playing uproariously in heaps of golden straw. It was the presence of sadness at all that surprised Margaret, and ended by giving her a feeling ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... call Of friends who at the North had staid, By stern old Winter undismayed, To see the dainty snow-flakes fall. These kindly greeted, with small head Held on one side, a sparrow said, "To choose a gift for Cecily We've met to-night. What shall it be?" A flute-like trill, in graceful pride, A thrush sang sweetly, then replied, "What better than the gift of song?" "None better," ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a melancholy croaker, Zachariah. You see naught but the buzzards, when all about you are the newly come birds of spring, the bluebird, the robin, and the thrush. Soon the meadow lark will be in the fields, and the young quail and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... in this apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall hunt and sing, and hide her nest; We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... we in the apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... does arise, And make happy the skies; The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring; The skylark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound; While our sports shall be seen On ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... to tread this weary world without my experience to assist you. In the first place, never draw dagger on slight occasion—every man's doublet is not so well stuffed as a certain abbot's that you wot of. Secondly, fly not at every pretty girl, like a merlin at a thrush—you will not always win a gold chain for your labour—and, by the way, here I return to you your fanfarona—keep it close, it is weighty, and may benefit you at a pinch more ways than one. Thirdly, and to conclude, as our worthy preacher says, beware of the pottle-pot—it ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... beautiful as spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... girl spoke, some bird among the evergreens uttered a shrill, plaintive cry, rather than song—a sound which the thrush occasionally makes in the winter, and which seems to express something of fear, and pain, and impatience. "What does she say?—can you ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... extremely popular in court circles during the corrupter periods of the Empire. Suetonius (Tib. 42) tells us that Tiberius gave one Asellius Sabinus L1400 for a dialogue in which the mushroom, the beccaficoe, the oyster, and the thrush advanced their respective claims to be considered the prince of delicacies. To this age also belong the collection of epigrams on Priapus called Priapea, and including many poems attributed to Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid. They are mostly of an obscene character, but some ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in the flood, Which sparkles 'neath the summer's sun, And fair the thrush in green abode Spreading his wings in sportive fun, But fairer look if truth be spoke, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Don't know. The proper thing for me now is to know nothing. I've forgotten everything. I know I'm a slave. I don't even know what I do know. (aside) Now our thrush here is after the worm in my trap; he'll soon be hung up handsomely, the way I've ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... and night- hawking goat-suckers, few birds are seen. But, unseen, in the depths of every wood, a songster breaks out ever and anon in notes equal for purity and liveliness to those of our English thrush, and belies the vulgar calumny that tropic birds, lest they should grow too proud of their gay feathers, are ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... of them know how much there is to learn; what variety of character, as well as variety of emotion, may be distinguished by the practised ear, in a 'charm of birds' (to use the old southern phrase), from the wild cry of the missel-thrush, ringing from afar in the first bright days of March, a passage of one or two bars repeated three or four times, and then another and another, clear and sweet, and yet defiant—for the great 'stormcock' loves to sing when rain and wind is coming on, and faces ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... for her harvest. Was it the dollar, or was it the sweet, wandering, summer air? Was it the mingled perfumes of vine and fruit and soft loam loosened as she crept among the brambles, or was it the shimmer of the waning sunlight or the whir of the wings of birds or the note of a hermit-thrush in some still depth of the woodland ever so far away? Or was it only because she was young and invincibly happy at times, in spite of a sore heart, that she sang to herself as her nimble fingers secured the juicy, delicate red things and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the mothers not to look at the full moon, nor let their babies do so; an attack of thrush would be the result. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... birch-leaves were stirred on the ground; the ferns—Nest could have believed that they were the very same ferns which she had seen thirty years before, hung wet and dripping where the water overflowed—a thrush chanted matins from a holly bush near—and the running stream made a low, soft, sweet accompaniment. All was the same; Nature was as fresh and young as ever. It might have been yesterday that Edward Williams ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... crowded round them as they flocked upstairs to spend the evening in their Christmas games, Gabriel smiled grimly, and clutched the handle of his spade with a firmer grasp, as he thought of measles, scarlet fever, thrush, whooping-cough, and a good many ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... christening of these songsters. There was a good family resemblance in many cases. The blustering partridge, brooding over her young in the thicket, was very nearly like the same bird in England. For the mellow-throated thrush of the old land they found a mate in the new, of the same size, color, and general habits, though less musical. The blackbird was nearly the same in many respects, though the smaller American wore a pair of red epaulettes. The swallows had their coat tails cut after ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... through the forest, when one of our hunters made a sign to us to stop, and he advanced cautiously. We saw him raise his bow and let fly an arrow. Down fell a small bird rather larger than a thrush, the plumage as we saw it falling being of the most intense cinnabar red with the softest and most lovely gloss. Mr Hooker ran forward in the greatest state of agitation I had ever seen him exhibit, and kneeling down, gradually lifted up the bird. Had he discovered a nugget of gold of the same ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... that unshamed rival of an English cousin famed in poetry, and the sharp crescendo of the coach-whip bird would scarcely be classed as "sweet." "The tinkle of the bell-bird in the ranges may have gratified his ear; but the likelihood is that the birds which pleased him were the harmonious thrush and the mellow songster so opprobiously named the thickhead, for no better reason than that collectors experience a difficulty in skinning it.* (* Mr. Chas. L. Barrett, a well known Australian ornithologist, and one of the editors of the Emu, knows the Promontory well, and he tells ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... It was a sign, however, that her life was very quiet and peaceful, that she had leisure to think upon the thing at all; and often she forgot it entirely in her low, chanting song, or in listening to the thrush warbling out his afternoon ditty to his patient mate in the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... she carried to the top of a timber under my porch. But she did not seem to lose her temper. She did not spitefully reclaim the straws and strings that would persist in falling to the porch floors, but cheerfully went away in search of more. So I have seen a wood thrush time after time carrying the same piece of paper to a branch from which the breeze dislodged it, without any evidence of impatience. It is true that when a string or a horsehair which a bird is carrying ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... meals. This comparatively feeble insect has been allowed by the throngs of birds to spread over the whole continent. A naturalist in one of the Western States had examined several species of the thrush, and found they had eaten mostly that class of insects known as ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from a wood ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... songs of rapture From thrush and lark are no more heard? What matter if their modes of capture Denude ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... us nearer both to nature and to man. No high-road, not even a lane, conducts to the deeper recesses of the wood, where you hear the wood-thrush. There are a thousand concealed fitnesses in nature, rhymed correspondences of bird and blossom, for which you must seek through hidden paths; as when you come upon some black brook so palisaded with cardinal-flowers as to seem "a stream of sunsets"; or trace its shadowy ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... road on summer nights. Laura walked there with me when she was engaged, and told me how it all happened, and the fishers rode past that time too, just as we came to an opening. We hid ourselves behind a great boulder; and the thrush began to sing, and many other birds, but the thing that affected me ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... the haunts of men, and even without a friend with thee, thou wouldst not find it solitary. The crowing of the hannaquoi will sound in thine ears like the daybreak town-clock; and the wren and the thrush will join with thee in thy matin hymn to thy Creator, to thank Him for ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... wreaths drooped till they touched the heads of all who entered. When Mrs. Murray and Edna ascended the steps and knocked at the open door, bearing the name "Allan Hammond," no living thing was visible, save a thrush that looked out shyly from the clematis vines; and after waiting a moment, Mrs. Murray entered unannounced. They looked into the parlor, with its cool matting and white curtains and polished old-fashioned mahogany furniture, but the room was unoccupied; then passing ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... concealment of the true creeper (Certhia familiaris); nor does it, like that bird, run up the trunks of trees, but industriously, after the manner of a willow-wren, hops about, and searches for insects on every twig and branch. In the more open parts, three or four species of finches, a thrush, a starling (or Icterus), two Opetiorhynchi, and several ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... feet; or, rather, I kneeled there before them. Do not think that we were left without a proper guard, for we could be seen from the balcony of the house, and on the mountain-ash tree was an old missel-thrush that kept on chirruping and twittering, "Take care, you ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... immediate effect of contraction caused by the absence of the expanding action of the frog and the consequent dead condition of the hoof from want of circulation and proper secretions. The horse would be equally free from "drop" and "pumiced" sole, seedy toe, thrush, and ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... flourish of the bob-o'-link, the soft whistle of the thrush, the tender coo of the wood-dove, the deep, warbling bass of the grouse, the drumming of the partridge, the melodious trill of the lark, the gay carol of the robin, the friendly, familiar call of the duck and the teal, resound from tree and knoll and lowland, prompting the expressive exclamation ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... What should it be? Both wondered and held their tongues for fear—one can not help thinking—and really they had little need of words. The peal of a hermit thrush filled the silence with its golden, largo chime and overtones and died away and rang out again and again. That voice spoke for them far better than either could have spoken, and ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... heard you tell a tale Tender as the nightingale, Sweeter than the early thrush Pipes at day-dawn from the bush. Wake once more the liquid strain That you poured, like music-rain, When, last night, in the sweet weather, You and I were out together. Unto whom two notes are given, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... company, and they set out in the same direction that Peggy had taken. Margaret had been in the oak woods several times with Peggy, and thought she might very likely find her there; but no one answered her call; only the trees rustled, and the hermit-thrush called in answer, deep in some thicket far away. Presently, as they walked, there shot through the dark oak branches a sunny gleam, a flash of green and gold. They pressed forward, and in another moment stood on the edge ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... window to the dying day, and lightly sighed. The time was April's end, and had been squally, with violent storms; but the last onslaughts of the north-wester had routed the rain-clouds. The day was dying under a clear saffron sky, and a thrush piped its mellow elegy. Miss Percival heard him, and listened, smiling with her lips, and with her eyes also which the serene light soothed. Her lips barely moved, just relaxed their firm embrace, but no more. She held the light gratefully with her eyes, seemed unwilling to lose a moment of ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, Sing birds, in ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... finger All things near, Left a dewdrop on each blossom Like a tear Sing! merry thrush, on high To the breaking ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... singer in these solitudes, Which never robin's whistle stirred, Where never bluebird's plume intrudes. Quick darting through the dewy morn, The redstart trills his twittering horn, And vanisheth: sometimes at even, Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven, The high notes of the lone wood-thrush Fall on the forest's holy hush: But thou all day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and flesh of his flesh, and it was just the same as if he himself could do all the fine things which Frank could do; for as long as one of the family won honor, what matter which of them it was? Whereon he shouted through the wall, "Good night, old song-thrush; I suppose I need ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... long past wealth and piety, are some of them among the most beautiful in the world. Then came the "Venite," of which here and there she sang a line or so, just one or two rich notes like those that a thrush utters before he bursts into full song. Rare as they might be, however, they caused those about her in the church to look at ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... you very much indeed—nearly as much as Annie, and a great deal more than Lizzie. And I never saw any one like you, and I must come back again to-morrow, and so must you, to see me; and I will bring you such lots of things—there are apples still, and a thrush I caught with only one leg broken, and our ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of clouds below, white as the light of transfiguration, tossed into waves a mile high by the touch of the sunbeam. Creative ordering was observed in actual process. It is done under our eyes to show us how easy it is. Would it be any less glorious if there were no Popocatepetl? A thrush among vines outside is just now showing us how easy it is to create an ecstasy of music out of silence. She has only to open her mouth and the innate aptitudes of air rush in to actualize her creative wish. Not only is it easy for the bird, but she is even provoked to this love ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... besides Timothy Turtle, who was not pleased when Bobby Bobolink moved to Cedar Swamp at haying time. But this was a very different sort of person. It was Jolly Robin's cousin, Mr. Hermit Thrush. Everybody called him "the Hermit" for short, because he was a quiet gentleman, who did not like to attract attention, but preferred to spend his time in a thicket on the edge of the swamp. He had a beautiful, ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the boat; gradually they ceased, and the clear and beautiful water became still. Felix slept till nearly noon, when he awoke and sat up. At the sudden movement a pike struck, and two moorhens scuttled out of the water into the grass on the shore. A thrush was singing sweetly, whitethroats were busy in the bushes, and ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... with the birds in the garden," said Sweet Voice, one of the young pigeons, "the thrush, the blackbird, and bluebird, and all. They sang to me and I cooed to them, and together we made the world gay. The bluebird sang of the sunshine, and the blackbird of the harvest; but the thrush sang the sweetest song. It was about her nest in ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... investigation, such as the relative numbers of the two sexes, and especially on polygamy. Can you aid me with respect to birds which have strongly marked secondary sexual characters, such as birds of paradise, humming-birds, the rupicola or rock-thrush, or any other such cases? Many gallinaceous birds certainly are polygamous. I suppose that birds may be known not to be polygamous if they are seen during the whole breeding season to associate in pairs, or if the male incubates, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of the train died away in the distance, and then, such was their utter stillness, from the thorn-bush close to them a thrush suddenly thrilled into song. The soft notes fell balmlike into that awful silence and turned it ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... and I suggested that we had better be going back to the hotel. The talk seemed already to have taken us away from all pleasure in the prospect; I said, as we found our way through the rich, balsam-scented twilight of the woods, where one joy-haunted thrush was still singing: "You know that in America the law is careful not to meddle with a man's private affairs, and we don't attempt to ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... they do scorn, They rise very early i' th' morn, And walk into the field, where pretty birds do yield Brave music on every thorn. The linnet and thrush do sing on each bush, And the dulcet nightingale Her note doth strain, by jocund vein, To entertain that worthy train, Which ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... swans, wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and other ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ponderous coach and the four black horses made slow progress. The creeping pace, the languid warmth of the afternoon, the scent of flowering trees, the ceaseless singing of redbird, catbird, robin, and thrush, made it drowsy in the forest. In the midst of an agreeable dissertation upon May Day sports of more ancient times the Colonel paused to smother a yawn; and when he had done with the clown, the piper, and the hobby-horse, he yawned ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... thy nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... specimens were kept; so that a hundred and eighty years ago, when the country was much closer to the old Palace than it is now, there was nothing surprising in the chink, chink of the blackbird and the loud musical song of thrush and lark awakening a sleeper there somewhere about sunrise. And to a boy who loved the country sights and sounds, and whose happiest days had been spent in sunny Hampshire, it was very pleasant to lie there in a half-roused, half-dreamy state listening to the bird notes floating in upon the cool ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... the general appellation of Nightingales. These birds do not confine their singing to the night, like the true nocturnal birds, and are most vocal when inspired by the light of the moon. Europe has several of these minstrels of the night. Beside the true Philomel of poetry and romance, the Reed-Thrush and the Woodcock are of this character. In the United States, the Mocking-Bird enjoys the greatest reputation; the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the New York Thrush ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... at the vast continent of his ignorance. It is impossible to take a walk in the country oneself without being amazed at the vast continent of one's own ignorance. Thousands of men and women live and die without knowing the difference between a beech and an elm, between the song of a thrush and the song of a blackbird. Probably in a modern city the man who can distinguish between a thrush's and a blackbird's song is the exception. It is not that we have not seen the birds. It is simply that we have ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... vocalist, melodist; singer, warbler; songster, chaunter[obs3], chauntress[obs3], songstress; cantatrice[obs3]. choir, quire, chorister; chorus, chorus singer; liedertafel[Ger]. nightingale, philomel[obs3], thrush; siren; bulbul, mavis; Pierides; sacred nine; Orpheus, Apollo[obs3], the Muses Erato, Euterpe, Terpsichore; tuneful nine, tuneful quire. composer &c. 413. performance, execution, touch, expression, solmization[obs3]. V. play, pipe, strike up, sweep ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... was with us in the thickest part of the wood a long way off. She heard a bird sing, a mavis I believe—was it not a mavis? Very well, then she heard a thrush, and she turned in the direction whence the sound came. She went some distance, but could not come across it. When she turned back, the bear came out of the bushes, it attacked her, pulled her to ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... really has music in him. Read his poem "The Thrush" and you will see it. Tennyson said to me," [he added], "that Browning had plenty of music IN him, but he could ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... go-to-meeting clothes; and plenty of room and chance in her for a brave man to earn his bread, if he will but go right on about his business, as the birds and the flowers do, instead of peaking and pining over what people think of him, like that miserable Briggs. Hark to that jolly old missel-thrush below! he's had his nest to build, and his supper to earn, and his young ones to feed, and all the crows and kites in the wood to drive away, the sturdy John Bull that he is; and yet he can find time to sing as merrily as an abbot, morning ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... end, along the forest level; farther, the wild mint and the centaurea perfume the shady nooks, the oaks and lime-trees arch their spreading branches, and the honeysuckle twines itself round the knotty shoots of the hornbeam, whence the thrush gives forth her ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... blooms in the falling dark, That flower of mystical yearning song: Sad as a hermit thrush, as a lark Uplifted, glad, and strong. Heart, we have chosen the better part! Save sacred love and sacred art Nothing is good ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... a certain piece in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child, or party so affected to eat, doth certainly cure the thrush. From ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... wrought iron. On their hardy shrubs the pale pink clusters of mountain laurel were beaten into shapeless colour-masses by the wind-blown rains. Sometimes, up above, where the fiery points of redbud trees shot skyward, a thrush sang or a blue jay scolded—and the bird-notes were laden, like the air, with the primal ripeness ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... therapeutic agent) is in civilization now confined to sexual perverts and the insane, among some animals it is normal as a measure of hygiene in relation to their young. Thus, as, e.g., the Rev. Arthur East writes, the mistle thrush swallows the droppings of its young. (Knowledge, June 1, 1899, p. 133.) In the dog I have observed that the bitch licks her puppies shortly after birth as they urinate, absorbing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... all settled at last, and in another week I shall have left Thrush Hill. I am a little bit sorry and a great bit glad. I am going to Montreal to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from one bush to another as though he had been lost up there for years and had grown quite hopeless about seeing his kind again. When there was a gap in the mountains, he could hear the querulous, senseless love-quarrel of flickers going on below him; passing a deep ravine, the note of the wood-thrush—that shy lyrist of the hills—might rise to him from a dense covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... evening gunshot set soft echoes tumbling from hill to hill, distant, more distant. Strains of the cavalry band rose in the evening silence, "The Star Spangled Banner" floating from the darkening valley. Then silence; and presently a low, sweet thrush note from ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... tut, Peter!" exclaimed Jenny Wren. "Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut! Who told you any such nonsense as that? Of course they are related. They are cousins. I thought everybody knew that. They belong to the same family that Melody the Thrush and all the other Thrushes belong to. ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... there is no hint of death; a sweet and fragrant life seems to breathe its subtle, inaudible music through all things. In the depths of the woods one feels no loneliness; no liquid note of hermit thrush is needed to make that silence music. The harmony of universal movement, rounded by one thought, carried forward by one power, guided to one end, is there for those who will listen; the mighty activities which feed the century-girded oak from the invisible chambers of air and the secret places ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... left the city, to partake of the pleasures of the country.—Scarcely had the blackbird and the thrush begun their early whistle to welcome Louisa, than the weather changed all on a sudden; the north wind roared horribly in the grove, and the snow fell in such abundance, that every thing appeared in ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... as the thrush sings—because God had put music in her heart and shaped her throat to give forth pure rich liquid sounds and meant her to be revealed through song. And that evening, in the simple little slumber song ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... within himself for the monition which men have felt as the voice of the eternal memory; sometimes, like Keats, but with none of the intoxication of Keats's sense of a sharing in victory, he grasped at the recurrence of natural things, 'the pure thrush word,' repeated every spring, the law of wheeling rooks, or to the wind 'that was old when the gods were young,' as in this profoundly typical sensing ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... and takes the scaly fry. Meanwhile each hollow wood and hill Doth ring with lowings long and shrill, And shady lakes with rivers deep Echo the bleating of the sheep; The blackbird with the pleasant thrush And nightingale in ev'ry bush Choice music give, and shepherds play Unto their flock some loving lay! The thirsty reapers, in thick throngs, Return home from the field with songs, And the carts, laden with ripe corn, Come groaning to the well-stor'd barn. Nor pass ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... sees the flower and the bud with a poet's curiosity and awe, and does not count the stamens in the aster, nor the feathers in the wood-thrush, but rests in the surprise and affection ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... snows go back to Mother Sea. The California woodwales screamed in clamorous joy. They thought it was about a few acorns left in storage in the Live Oak bark, but it really was joy of being alive. This outcry was to them what music is to the thrush, what joy-bells are to us—a great noise to tell how glad they were. The deer were bounding, grouse were booming, rills were rushing—all things ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to propagate by rubbing the glutinous berries and their seeds on the under side of a small branch at the angle where it joins a limb. There it will often flourish unless snapped up by a wandering missel-thrush. It is very slow in growth, but, when it attains a fair size, is strikingly pretty in winter when the tree is otherwise bare, for its peculiar shade of faded green, with its white and glistening berries, makes an unusual effect—quite different ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... drowsy noon, A flight of geese and an autumn moon, Rolling meadows and storm-washed heights, A fountain murmur on summer nights, A dappled fawn in the forest hush, Simple words and the song of a thrush, Rose-red dawns and a mate to share With comrade soul my gypsy fare, A waiting fire when the twilight ends, A gallant heart and the voice ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... came they awoke with the first light of the morning, and they knew the very minute when the lark would begin to sing, and when the thrush and the blackbird would pour out their liquid notes, and when the robin would make the soft, green, tender leaves tremulous at ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... down to Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is forgotten ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... figures, Theo?' Queenie asked, half-sympathetically, half-absently, her attention being attracted by a bold thrush hopping across ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... The wild thrush lifts a note of mirth; The bronzewing pigeons call and coo Beside their nests the long day through; The magpie warbles clear and strong A joyous, glad, thanksgiving song, For ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... 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. ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... you give me room to rectify a slip of the pen? My "Sing-away Bird," in your May number, is not a thrush, but a sparrow; and I ought to be ashamed of the mistake, for I knew he was a sparrow, and had already spoken of him, in a story in verse, published three or ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... of the Grey-sided Laughing-Thrush found by Mr. Gammie on the 17th June near Darjeeling, below Rishap, at an elevation of about 3500 feet, was placed in a shrub, at a height of about six feet from the ground, and contained one fresh egg. It was a large, deep, compact cup, measuring about 5.5 inches in external diameter and about 4 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... his special knowledge of this subject. "Then birds' nests be it." A long and animated conversation ensued: the bird-nesting of his boyhood, the blackbird's nest which his father had held him up in his arms to look at when a child at Wylam, the hedges in which he had found the thrush's and the linnet's nests, the mossy bank where the robin built, the cleft in the branch of the young tree where the chaffinch had reared its dwelling—all rose up clear in his mind's eye, and led him back to the scenes of his boyhood at Callerton and Dewley Burn. The colour ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles |
