"Kingfisher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when he was going to walk to Bonchamp, he 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 father's voyage, and how they ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... story, 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 describe as Natty Bumppo's, being better adapted ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... 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 ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the nest of the halcyon or kingfisher, supposed to float on the sea, which our Saint describes so well and applies so exquisitely in one of his letters, was the true picture of his own heart. The great stoic, Seneca, says that it is easy to guide a vessel on a smooth sea and aided by favourable winds, but that it ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... growth and strengthened with his 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 ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... 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 ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... incident is cited by Bezemer (Volksdichtung aus Indonesien). See also the Bagobo tale of the Kingfisher (Benedict, Jour. American Folklore, Vol. ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... him a red jay; a tiny gold-crest perched on a thorn branch; a kingfisher gleaming with turquoise hues, poised ready for a dive upon a froth-lapped stone. He was no cultured critic, but he knew the ways of the wild creatures and saw that she had talent, for her representations of them were instinct ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... 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 ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... Hebrew naturalist begins with those which inhabit the sea and its rocky cliffs, the gannet and the cormorant; then he proceeds to the marsh birds, the bitterns; then to the river and lake birds, the pelican, the kingfisher, or the shagarag; then the stork, which is a bird of passage, lives on land as well as on water, and feeds on frogs and insects no less than on fish; then to another, which probably is a bird of passage also, because it is mentioned the last in the catalogue. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... hour came, and Little Tim seated himself for his luncheon on a knoll carpeted with thick, tufted grass. A kingfisher, disturbed by his arrival, went rattling on his way upstream. And as the boy drew from his dingy blouse a scrap of brown paper, enclosing a bit of bread and cheese, and laid it down beside him, the stream seemed to be dancing ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... 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
... 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
... thinks that 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 them, so ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... eyes! Her dress—Felix had 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
... the 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 may be rendered waterproof by this plash ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... gone abroad. So to White Hall to him, and there I spoke with him, and so to Westminster, did a little business, and then home to the 'Change, where also I did some business, and went off and ended my contract with the "Kingfisher" I hired for Tangier, and I hope to get something by it. Thence home to dinner, and visited Sir W. Batten, who is sick again, worse than he was, and I am apt to think is very ill. So to my office, and among other things with Sir W. Warren ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... fells 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 ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... trout-fishing as practised in the South of England. Given fine weather, and a good novel, nothing can he more soothing than to sit on a convenient stump, under a willow, and watch the placid kine standing in the water, while the brook murmurs on, and perhaps the kingfisher flits to and fro. Here you sit and fleet the time carelessly, till a trout rises. Then, indeed, duty demands that you shall crawl in the manner of the serpent till you come within reach of him, and cast a fly, which usually makes him postpone his dinner-hour. But he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... 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, like ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... brown thrashers hide, The chat and cat-bird chide; The blue kingfisher houses Above the stream, And here the heron drowses Lost in his dream; The vireo's flitting note Haunts all the ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... pair of young pickles I never hatched before!" said she to Mrs. Kingfisher, who came ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... short intervals, soaring for a moment high over the other voices, 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
... beaver, which once were so numerous in all the Western country. The river enters this park from the solitudes of Red Canyon, a splendid chasm, 25 miles long, 2500 feet deep, and abounding in plunging waters. The name is from the colour of the sandstone walls. Above it are three short canyons, Kingfisher, Horseshoe, and Flaming Gorge, aggregating about 10 miles. There are there no rapids worth mentioning, but the scenic beauty is entrancing. The walls are from 1200 to 1600 feet, in places extremely precipitous. Flaming Gorge, with walls 1300 feet, is particularly distinguished by ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher—an ornithological Marius—reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't make up his mind whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the reflection ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... daylight; but, as the dawn began to redden the sky, large flocks of ducks, and of the small Amazonian geese, might be seen flying towards the lakes. Here and there a cormorant sat alone on the branch of a dead tree, or a kingfisher poised himself over the water, watching for his prey. Numerous gulls were gathered in large companies on the trees along the river-shore; alligators lay on its surface, diving with a sudden plash at the approach of our canoe; and occasionally a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... brown sparrow came tripping Across the green grass at my feet; A kingfisher poised, and was peering Where current and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris. Except for this mark, recognizable almost as far as the bird could be distinguished at all, he looked exactly like our common New England towhee. Somewhere behind me was a kingfisher's rattle, and from a savanna in the same direction came the songs of meadow larks; familiar, but with something unfamiliar about them at the same time, unless ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the low ground bordering the swamp was fast dissolving in curling wisps of vapor under the ardent rays of the sun. The forest was alive with bird song; squirrels chattered to him from the trees and the rattle of the kingfisher was in his ears, but Mokwa held a steady course northward, his little eyes fixed on ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... 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, however, the only feathered fowl remarkable for the peculiarity of their ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there, Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew, And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue! The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... that way, since the 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, but I pronounced after him till he said it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the goldfinch and the kingfisher are not often seen except in picture-books; but our own little robin is a real beauty, is he not? And what can be gayer than the feathers of some of our cocks, which strut about so proudly? Then, the more you notice the songs of birds, the more you ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... non-migratory birds are really, for the most part, strangers acclimatized by long sojourn. Some of them—the turtledove, the magpie, the kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with our European species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the brightness of their colours. White and black ibises, red flamingoes, pelicans, and cormorants enliven the waters of the river, and animate the reedy swamps ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... My coming strikes a terror on the scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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 off boughs of trees ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... which he had received from Towha. This, with the hair and eye, was carried back to the priests. Soon after, Otoo sent to them another piece of feathers, which he had given me in the morning to keep in my pocket. During some part of this last ceremony, a kingfisher making a noise in the trees, Otoo turned to me, saying, "That is the Eatooa" and seemed to look upon it to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... follows: 'That crystal is 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 magazines ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... before they are quite clear to myself. Sometimes, when we are talking together, some subject comes up on which I do not care to express my opinion. Eleanor fixes her clear, penetrating eyes upon me, and drags my thought out into the light, just as a kingfisher pounces upon and pulls a fish out of the water. Had I anything to conceal, any secret, I should be afraid of her; and as it is, I do not like this invasion of my personal kingdom,—though my thoughts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... 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 of a rock ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... on the bank and 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 more to be ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... 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
... sheep are not coloured green; but 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 ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Although convinced that aid was now impossible, we took our guns and hastened to the spot where the accident happened; but all was still there, not a wavelet disturbed the surface of the stream. A small speckled kingfisher was hovering overhead, as if balanced in the air, with its beak bent down on its breast, watching the fish beneath; presently it darted like an arrow into the water; returned with an empty bill, and then went off, with its clear, sharp, twittering note, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... a heron, 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 beneath the willows, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... it seems a mere Oriental passiveness and the forsaking of works,—just 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 ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "Betsey Malcolm to thunder!" and then he whistled. "Set a dog to mind a basket of meat when his chops is a-waterin' fer it! Set a kingfisher to take keer of a fish-pond! Set a cat to raisin' your orphan chickens on the bottle! Set a spider to nuss a fly sick with dyspepsy from eatin' too much molasses! I'd ruther trust a hen-hawk with a flock of patridges than to trust Betsey Malcolm ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... places, where no sound breaks the silence except the gurgle of the river as it sweeps round the rocks, the lonely Kingfisher, the emblem of vigilance and patience, 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 ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... lake and said nothing. If she fixed her eyes on anything, it was on the quivering balance of a kingfisher in the air. When with a flash of silver and blue he swooped, and, without seeming to have touched the water, went skimming away with a fish in his bill, her eyes wandered slowly back ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Quebec, with its beautiful 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 like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various |
