"Plover" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like water round a boat. The white clouds wander. Let us wander too. The whining, wavering plover flap and float. That crow is flying after that cuckoo. Look! Look!... They're gone. What are the great trees calling? Just come a little farther, by that edge Of green, to where the stormy ploughland, falling Wave upon wave, is lapping to the hedge. Oh, what a lovely ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... O cluster of friends, Sleep!—or only when May, Brought by the west-wind, returns Back to your native heaths, And the plover is heard on the moors, Yearly awake to behold The opening summer, the sky, The shining moorland—to hear The drowsy bee, as of old, Hum o'er the thyme, the grouse Call from the heather in bloom! Sleep, or only for this Break ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... birds. In the ponds which we passed earlier in the day we saw hundreds of mallard ducks and teal. The car often frightened golden plover from their dust baths in the road, and crested lapwings flashed across the prairie like sudden storms of autumn leaves. Huge, golden eagles and enormous ravens made tempting targets on the telegraph poles, and in the ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... on miles of it without a break, unless the fever fog can be called a break. The only life in this great morass was that of the aquatic birds, and the animals that fed on them, of both of which there were vast numbers. Geese, cranes, ducks, teal, coot, snipe, and plover swarmed all around us, many being of varieties that were quite new to me, and all so tame that one could almost have knocked them over with a stick. Among these birds I especially noticed a very beautiful variety of painted snipe, almost the size of a woodcock, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... favourite restaurant, the Gallus Bankiva, discussing the weaknesses of the world with his nephew, who had lately returned from a much-enlivened exile in the wilds of Mexico. It was that blessed season of the year when the asparagus and the plover's egg are abroad in the land, and the oyster has not yet withdrawn into it's summer entrenchments, and Sir Lulworth and his nephew were in that enlightened after-dinner mood when politics are seen in their right perspective, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... There is no sign or sound of Indian, either behind or before them. The stillness of the desert is around them—its silence only interrupted by the "whip-whip" of the night-hawk's wings, and at intervals its soft note answering to the shriller cry of the kid-deer plover that rises screaming before their feet. These, with the constant skirr of the ground-crickets and the prolonged whine of the coyote, are the only sounds that salute them as they glide on—none of which are of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... size, shape and flavour of those about Neworleans, and the lower part of the Mississippi. We also found very fat muscles; and on the river as well as the creek, are different kinds of ducks and plover. The wind, which in the morning had been from the northwest, shifted round in the evening to the southeast, and as usual we had a breeze, which cooled the air and relieve us from the musquitoes, who generally give us ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... White Heron. Ardea occidentalis. Bald Eagle. Haliaeetus leucocephalus. Wilson's Tern. Sterna hirundo. Ring Plover. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... island, unless a few detached beaten tracks deserve that name. Most of the houses are upon the shore; so that all the people have little boats, and catch fish. There is great plenty of potatoes here. There are black-cock in extraordinary abundance, moor-fowl, plover and wild pigeons, which seemed to me to be the same as we have in pigeon-houses, in their state of nature. Rasay has no pigeon-house. There are no hares nor rabbits in the island, nor was there ever known to be a fox, till last year, when one was ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the colonel, shelling a plover's egg. "It is the last thing in the world they would suspect at Scotland Yard after their warning, that I should bring Raoul over again. Besides, they don't know him anyway. He's just a harmless young French cabinet-maker. He doesn't talk and I will get him out of the silly ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... one from Florence, another from Sienna, and a third from Viterbo, for dressing one dish, the docce piccante of Florence. He had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London, to bring him the eggs of a certain sort of plover, found near St. Maloes. He has eaten a single dinner at the expense of fifty-eight pounds, though himself only sat down to it, and there were but two dishes. He counted the minutes between meals, and seemed totally absorbed in the idea, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... our part of the world at least, how pleasant and soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm. All above it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate, but near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here are trees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, and a man ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... in reach as a sea; the lowering sun was casting over its distant swells a faint impalpable mist, through which the breaking teams on the neighboring claims plowed noiselessly, as figures in a dream. The whistle of gophers, the faint, wailing, fluttering cry of the falling plover, the whir of the swift-winged prairie pigeon, or the quack of a lonely duck, came through the shimmering air. The lark's infrequent whistle, piercingly sweet, broke from the longer grass m the swales nearby. No other climate, sky, plain, could produce the same unnamable weird charm. No tree ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... surplus of ballast. He spent the whole day in these preparations, and the latter were finished when Kennedy returned. The hunter had been successful, and brought back a regular cargo of geese, wild-duck, snipe, teal, and plover. He went to work at once to draw and smoke the game. Each piece, suspended on a small, thin skewer, was hung over a fire of green wood. When they seemed in good order, Kennedy, who was perfectly at home in the business, packed ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... on the map, and when he glanced south the hills loomed, dark and forbidding, through thin gray mist. Pools of water dotted the marish fields, and beyond these lay a wet, brown moss where wild cotton grew among the peat-hags. Plover were crying about the waste and a curlew's shrill tremolo rang out as it flitted across the leaden sky. The outlook was not encouraging, but Foster picked his way across the bog and struck up the side of ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... a year's pension, And more is behind; Put him in mind Christmas is near, And neither good cheer, Mirth, fooling, nor wit, Nor any least fit Of gambol or sport Will come to the court If there be no money, No plover or cony Will come to the table, Or wine to enable The muse, or the poet, The parish will know it Nor any quick warming-pan help him to bed; If the 'Chequer be empty, so will ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... a door in Plover's Court, and a half-dressed, half-starved, and wholly dirty child, with no boots to her feet, opens to me; and when this miserable heir of the ages, after she has stared at me like a famished animal, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... breezes waft thee gently forth, And while upon thy left the plover sings His proud, sweet song, the cranes who know thy worth Will meet thee in the sky on joyful wings And for delights anticipated join ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... have here with us a man, whose face is of the colour of the skin of a plucked plover—he listens. He has come, as he has told you, from a land which lies beyond the Great Salt Lake. I believe him, for he does not hide his face, or ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... hidden in the lush grasses of a distant hollow came to him the twilight honking of nesting geese and the quacking content of wild ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes of a lone "organ-duck" and the plaintive cries of plover, and farther out, where the shadows seemed deepening against the rim of the horizon, rose the harsh, rolling notes of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And then, from a clump of willows near ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... ye wee songsters o' the wood; Ye grouse that crap the heather bud; Ye curlews calling thro' a clud; Ye whistling plover; An' mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood!— He's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... speeded her undertaking. No one saw her save a few quail and nesting plover that whirred up at her approach and tried to lure her and the dogs away from their nests by pretending to be hurt and running a few paces ahead on the ground. Chicken Little had seen this bird ruse too often to be fooled by it, but Huz and Buz pursued each bird hopefully ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... within shady stretches of a friendly bank—remain to show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of the coyote and ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... few ducks, teal, herons, cranes, and a bird named from its bill the Red-bill, upon the lagoons, with some small flights of curlew and plover of a ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... like poppy beds over the bog, and signalling and firing till the misty October air tingled with excitement. When you have lived your life among wide-bounded solitudes, where the silence is oftenest broken by the plover's pipe or the croak of some heavily flapping bird, you will know the meaning of a bugle-call. Mick and his contemporaries had acted as camp-followers from early till late with ever intensifying ardour; one outcome whereof was that ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... mistaking her, probably, for some huge devouring whale. So strange are they when first seen, though long read of and long looked for, that it is difficult to recollect that they are actually fish. The first little one was mistaken for a dragon-fly, the first big one for a gray plover. The flight is almost exactly like that of a quail or partridge—flight, I must say; for, in spite of all that has been learnedly written to the contrary, it was too difficult as yet for the English sportsmen on board to believe that their motion was not a true ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... her infant brood. From the wild morass, On the sapphire lakelet set within it, Mag [60] sails forth with her wee ones daily. They ride on the dimpling waters gaily, Like a fleet of yachts and a man of war. The piping plover, the laughing linnet, And the swallow sail in the sunset skies. The whippowil from her cover hies, And trills her song on the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... two grey figures arose and Foy saw the flash of steel. Then Hans whistled like a plover, and, dropping their swords they came to him and fell into talk. Presently Hans left them, and, returning to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... seen at the distance had the appearance of a flock of sheep, gigantic cranes, pelicans, and ibis were numerous, whilst in the lagoons of the creek, nearly every kind of water-fowl common to Queensland, was found, except the coot and pigmy goose, plover and snipe were abundant, also the elegant Burdekin duck, and a small crane was noticed having a dark blue head and body, with white throat and neck. (Camp XXXIX.) Lat. 16 degrees 3 minutes 38 seconds. A tree was ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... still the common name for curlew, the peewit and plover being called (onomatopoetically) "Bibat" and in Marocco Yahudi, certain impious Jews having been turned into the Vanellus Cristatus which still wears the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... West Indies:[117] they made a small addition to their collection of plants, and shot a bat, whose wings when extended measured three feet from point to point: They shot also four plovers, which exactly resembled the golden plover of England. Soon after they returned, a small Indian boat came along-side with two Malays on board, who brought three turtles, some dried fish, and a few pumpkins: We bought the turtle, which altogether weighed a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... supposed to be graves; and graves may also be marked by the many small piles of stones. Other stone heaps, some straight, some crescent-shaped, from 10 to 20 feet long, all the curved ones convex to the windward, were wind shelters. Some of them are known to be made by modern hunters as blinds in plover shooting. ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... shone out above the tops of the white gum forest. Fifty yards or so away, in front of the door, a shallow pool had formed in a depression of the hard, sun-baked soil, and as the soft light of the moon fell upon it there came a whirr of wings as a flock of night-roving, spur-winged plover lit upon its margin. I could have shot half a dozen of them from where I sat, but felt that I could not lift gun to shoulder and slaughter when there was no need, and their shrill cries, as they ran to and fro, afforded ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... turns in her bearing, Like a twisting plover she goes; The way of her westward faring Only the ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... shalots were served out a leaf at a time, and welcomed and relished like peaches. Toddy and green cocoa-nuts were brought us daily. We once had a present of fish from the king, and once of a turtle. Sometimes we shot so-called plover along on the shore, sometimes wild chicken in the bush. The rest of our ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... high. Once more, for no conceivable reason, Private Copper found his inward eye turned upon Umballa cantonments of a dry dusty afternoon, when the saddle-coloured son of a local hotel-keeper came to the barracks to complain of a theft of fowls. He saw the dark face, the plover's-egg-tinted eyeballs, and the thin excited hands. Above all, he remembered the passionate, queerly-strung words. Slowly he returned to South Africa, using the very sentence his sergeant had ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... "No; nothing save The plover from the marshes calling, And in yon western sky, about An hour ago, a star ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... metropolis was small enough, and the outer London of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock—these serve for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl, falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. Classical lore and country superstitions ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... boards as one wants for tables, for Faneuil Hall is a place given to hospitality. And so, before six o'clock, the hour assigned for the extemporized dinner, the tables were set with turkeys, with geese, with venison, with mallards and plover, with quail and partridges, with cranberry and squash, and with dishes of Russia and Italy and Greece and Bohemia, such as have no names. The Greeks brought fruits, the Indians brought venison, the Italians ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... as summer heat, summer scents, summer sounds, or summer skies. The first thaw is therefore like the glad, unexpected meeting of a dear old friend; and the trumpet voice of the first goose, the whirring wing of the first duck, and the whistle of the first plover, sounds like the music of the spheres to one's long unaccustomed ears. Then the trickle of water gives one something like a new sensation. It may be but a thread of liquid no thicker than a pipe-stem faintly heard by an attentive ear tinkling in the cold depths far under the ice or snow, ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... What is "lying"? Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy? or was it not He who whispered to her to tell the falsehood—to tell it with a circumstance, without conscientious scruple, not ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Seleucus), the vulture, the falcon or hunting hawk, the owl, the wild swan, the bramin goose, the ordinary wild goose, the wild duck, the teal, the tern, the sand-grouse, the turtle dove, the nightingale, the jay, the plover, and the snipe. There is also a large kite or eagle, called "agab," or "the butcher," by the Arabs, which is greatly dreaded by fowlers, as it will attack and kill the falcon no ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... moderate Plenty of grateful Honey-Liquors, which, with our prime Beef, Mutton, Pork, Veal, Lamb, Variety of Fowls, tame and wild; red and fallow Deer; Hares, Rabbits, Pidgeons, Pheasants, Grouse; and Partridge; wild Duck, Plover, Snipe, &c. Lake, River, Shell and Sea Fish, of all Kinds; the Produce of the Garden, (Horticulture having of late Years so vastly improved among us, that we now have many curious Plants, Fruits, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... vessels in the offing, so much of the same colour did they appear with the waves themselves. Robin then scanned the cliffs as he had done the ocean, and whistled soft, low, but audibly,—a note like that of the frightened plover. It was speedily answered, and in a moment Roupall stood by ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... grass where the silver-weed spread its carpet of yellow flowers. They trampled through belts of withered thrift and skirted winding creeks where tall reeds shook their bent leaves in the searching wind. Light and shadow sped across the marsh, and a flock of plover, shining white and black, circled above the sands. Jake got a sense of space and loneliness he had not expected to feel in England, but he smiled as he noted Jim's brisk step and the sparkle in his eyes. He knew his comrade and saw he was happy. The marsh was something to conquer ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... which was shot had a piece snapped off the end of his tail, another had lost a forefoot in fighting; we saw actual leeches between the teeth, such as are mentioned by Herodotus, but we never witnessed the plover picking them out. Their greater fierceness in one part of the country than another is doubtless owing to a scarcity of fish; in fact, Captain Tuckey says, of that part of the Congo, mentioned above, "There are no fish here but catfish," and we found that ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... heath, Kin to the beating heart beneath; The nesting plover I discover Nor stir the scented screen above her, Yet am I blind—I cannot find What turns a ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... The plover over fields brown red Weeps for her children who are dead; Still day and night she cries to you, "Mes pauvres ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... Cruel, heartless mother-tasker— Why, of all the trees before her, Gathered round, or spreading o'er her, Jenny Wren should choose the apple For her nursery and chapel! Or Jack Daw build in the steeple High above the praying people! Tell me why the limping plover O'er moist meadow likes to hover; Why the partridge with such trouble Builds her nest where soon the stubble Will betray her hop-thumb-cheepers To the eyes of all the reapers!— Tell me, Charley; tell me, Janey; Answer all, or answer any, And ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... lad who sent the bluff Olive-faced Frenchman (sure enough) Screaming and scouring like a plover, Must follow—him I mean who dash'd Into the water and then thrash'd The cullion ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... were in plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake at terrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with long bills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefully at our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrels came into the tents and ate our chocolate and wandered over us fearlessly at night. Bears left tracks around the ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... encumbered the track. We could only go at a foot-pace. Not a blade of grass, not a strip of green, enlivened the prospect, and the only sound we heard was the croak of the curlew and the wail of the plover. Hour after hour we plodded on, but the grey waste seemed interminable, boundless; and the only consolation Sigurdr would vouchsafe was, that our journey's end lay on this side of some purple mountains that peeped like the tents of a demon ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Jim Clanton was progressing. As he ate his plover broth he could not keep his eyes from her. She was so full of vital life. The color beat through her dark skin warm and rich. The abundant blue-black hair, the flashing eyes, the fine poise of the head, the little jaunty swagger of her, so wholly ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... was simple and easily procured. The woods and waters furnished all that they required. A hare and some snipe and plover, with a few trout and a salmon, were the result of a short excursion, that did not extend much farther than a stone's throw from ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... it dips all its food in water: it is a figure of a man who will not take advice, and does nothing but what is soaked in the water of his own will. The heron [*Vulg.: herodionem], commonly called a falcon, signifies those whose "feet are swift to shed blood" (Ps. 13:3). The plover [*Here, again, the Douay translators transcribed from the Vulgate: charadrion; charadrius is the generic name for all plovers.], which is a garrulous bird, signifies the gossip. The hoopoe, which builds its nest on dung, feeds on foetid ordure, and whose song is like ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... morning of the third day I went ashore with my gun to have a few hours' shooting on a large swamp, situated about three miles inland from the village. One of the natives had told Rul that there were great numbers of wild duck and plover there, and offered to guide me to the place; so, telling Merriman that I would be back in time for dinner, I started with the guide. The gun I had with me was a double-barrelled pin-fire Lefaucheux breech-loader, and just before I left the cutter, I put in a couple of cartridges, ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the bogmint was sthrong on the air, an' never a sound But the plover's pipe that ye'll seldom miss by a lone bit o' ground. An' he laned—Misther Pierce—on his elbow, an' stared at the sky as he smoked, Till just in an idle way he sthretched out his hand an' sthroked The feathers o' wan of the snipe that was kilt ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gravestones (if there existed any) belonging to the family or ancestors of his host. As the wanderer was usually to be seen bent on this pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard, or reclined on the solitary tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plover and the black-cock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the popular ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of coffee before him, aromatic, creamy, and hot, with a filleted sole rolled up before him on a little dish, three or four plover's eggs, on which to finish, lying by, and, on the distance of the table, a chasse of brandy, of which he already well knew the virtues, he got his father's letter. He did not at first open it, disliking all thoughts as to his father. Then gradually he tore the envelope, and was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... stroke, And I turned my horse; for within me the love of life awoke, And I spurred, nor heeded the hill-side, but o'er rough and smooth I rode Till I heard no chase behind me; then I drew rein and abode. And down in a dell was I gotten with a thorn-brake in its throat, And heard but the plover's whistle and the blackbird's broken note 'Mid the thorns; when lo! from a thorn-twig away the blackbird swept, And out from the brake and towards me a naked man there crept, And straight I rode up towards him, and knew his face for one I had seen in the hall of the Hundings ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... could have witnessed a happy scene. Erec went first and took his seat; then all the others in order sit down upon the couches, the cushions, and benches. At Erec's side the Count sat down, and the damsel with her radiant face, who was feeding the much disputed hawk upon her wrist with a plover's wing. [114] Great honour and joy and prestige had she gained that day, and she was very glad at heart both for the bird and for her lord. She could not have been happier, and showed it plainly, making no secret of her joy. All could see how gay she was, and throughout ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... still high tide, then left the boat; and our men made little huts of boughs some distance from the shore, where we could sit without being perceived. As the tide ebbed the birds arrived—tall storks, fishing eagles, gulls, curlew, plover, godwits, and many others we did not know. They flew in long lines, till they seemed to vanish and reappear, circling round and round, then swooping down upon the sand where the receding waves were leaving their supper. I never saw ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... seemed in harmony and peace but the breast of man. He who was made lord of this paradise awoke to disturb its repose, to disfigure its loveliness! As the thronging legions poured upon the plain, the sheep which had been feeding there, fled scared to the hills; the plover and heath-fowl which nestled in the brakes, rose affrighted from their infant broods, and flew in screaming multitudes far over the receding valleys. The peace of Scotland was again broken, and its flocks and herds were ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... know. He preferred to take the journey on foot, and he may be here at almost any time. But, as I have told you, he is very uncertain. If he should happen to make the acquaintance of some interesting snipe, or crane, or plover, he may prefer its company to ours, and then there is no counting on him any longer. He may be as likely to turn up at the North Pole as ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... but so it is. We have been going on gallantly all day, leaving the other ships some ten miles behind us. We had passed the Lunshan Hills, off which we spent two days, and from which I sent you my last letter. We were abreast of Plover Point, when suddenly the water shoaled so much that we had to drop anchor. Alas! the ebbing tide was too strong for us, and drove us on a bank, where we are now sticking. If we get off before morning it will not matter much; but if the 'Retribution' comes down and finds us here, we shall ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... feet. As the yellow sun fought his way through the grey mists that dimmed his brightness, and shone out merrily in the blue heights of the sky, Richard's spirits rose, and he laughed and shouted, as hare or rabbit rushed across the heath, or as the plover rose screaming above his head, flapping her broad wings across ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down on the coast drive the birds out of their feeding grounds and they come up to the fresh-water ponds inland to drink and get a change of feed. It is the same way with the shore birds; yellow-legs and plover and the like; though in my grandfather's day they didn't care much about such small game. Bigger birds were plenty enough. Grandfather used to hate yellow-legs, though, for ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... mother, if she 'knew he was out,' must have had a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, says he, cannot like a snipe or a plover run a race neck and neck with a first-class railway carriage; but is he, therefore, a slow coach? By no means: he would go from London to Edinburgh between seedtime and harvest. Now Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i., has no such speed: it has taken six years to come ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... ever, into the calm water, to reappear long after in some totally new and unexpected quarter. A napping duck or two, being wellnigh run over by the canoe, took wing with a tremendous splutter and a perfectly idiotical compound of a quack and a roar, while numerous flocks of plover, which had evidently meant to lie still among the sedges and hide while the canoe passed, sprang into the air at the unwonted hullabaloo, and made off, with diverse shriek and whistle, as fast as their wings could carry ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and set him going again. On one of these occasions, happening to meet Rudolf von Gneist, who had been, during a part of Bismarck's career, on very confidential terms with him, I asked what the real trouble was. "Oh,'' said Gneist, "he has eaten too many plover's eggs (Ach, er hat zu viel Kibitzeier gegessen).'' This had reference to the fact that certain admirers of the chancellor in the neighborhood of the North Sea were accustomed to send him, each year, a large basket of plovers' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and glee. Boys laugh and shout,—a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some tent, not an officer's,—a drum throbs far away in another,—wild kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead slave-masters,—and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous sound of that strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting, which they know only as a "shout." ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... through the silence of the desert itself, and wherever rocks occurred near water they were also seen but not in any number. We caught a fine young bird at Flood's Creek, but as it was impossible to keep it, we let it go. This bird very much resembles the stone Plover of England, but there are ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... a fair way of settling the matter. All the birds agreed to it except the Plover, who went off into the woods and has lived there, wild, ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... at a safe distance on the ploughed ground. Blackbirds, which have now returned from the South, sing in chorus on the adjacent ditch-banks, mingling their harsh notes with the lively songs of myriads of bobolinks, while high overhead whistles the plover. The newly-sprung grass paints the road-side a lush green, the leaves are budding on weed and spray, and over all there hang the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... family coach, drawn by two powerful country horses, lumbers along a narrow Irish road. The ever recurrent signs—long ranges of blue mountains, the streak of bog, the rotting cabin, the flock of plover rising from the desolate water. Inside the coach there are two children. They are smart, with new jackets and neckties; their faces are pale with sleep, and the rolling of the coach makes them feel a little ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... grew more velvety green. Each day the sky waxed warmer. The snow disappeared from the ravines. The ice broke up on the Moggason. The ponds disappeared. Plover flew over with wailing cry. Buffalo birds, prairie pigeons, larks, blackbirds, sparrows, joined their voices to those of the cranes and geese and ducks, and the prairie piped and twittered and clacked and chuckled with life. ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... rook'll caw from the windy tall elm-tree, And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea, And the swallow'll come back again with summer o'er the wave. But I shall lie alone, mother, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... heard one of the gentlemen say—"Hello, little fellow, what are you doing with my toe?" Her baby had awakened and gone over to their bed. It was over a year before they had any chickens or cow; she used to hunt plover's eggs and several times was without flour, having to grind wheat and corn in a coffee mill. The nearest railroad town was ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... side of this wilderness, is Holdernesse Hall, ten miles by road, but only six across the moor. It is a peculiarly desolate plain. A few moor farmers have small holdings, where they rear sheep and cattle. Except these, the plover and the curlew are the only inhabitants until you come to the Chesterfield high road. There is a church there, you see, a few cottages, and an inn. Beyond that the hills become precipitous. Surely it is here to the north that ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not tell from the driver's face whether he was aware of his extravagant speech. He seemed to have already forgotten what he had said, and we drove on through the bog till the dismal distant mountains and the cry of a plover forced ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... respective species; hyenas howl; out of an immense simian silence a group of monkeys suddenly break into chatterings; ostriches utter their deep hollow boom; small things scurry and squeak; a certain weird bird of the curlew or plover sort wails like a lonesome soul. Especially by the river, as here, are the boomings of the weirdest of weird bullfrogs, and the splashings and swishings of crocodile and hippopotamus. One is impressed with the busyness of the world surrounding him; every bird or ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... to his ear no neighing of horses nor shouting of the captains, neither did there arise the din of the busy, barren city. He gazed out upon a sweet blue sky, unfretted by any cloud. His eye crossed a sea of faintly waving grasses. The liquid call of a mile-high mysterious plover came to him. In the line of vision from the tent door there could be seen no token of a human neighbourhood, nor could there be heard any sound of human life. The canvas house stood alone and apart. Battersleigh gazed out of the door as he folded his letter. "It's grand, just grand," ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... all his men, in travelling parties, in the spring. The little forlorn hope consisted of ten men under the command of Lieutenant Pim, an officer who had been with Captain Kellett in the "Herald" on the Pacific side, had spent a winter in the "Plover" up Behring's Straits, and had been one of the last men whom the "Investigator" had seen before they put into the Arctic Ocean, to discover, as ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover's egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... bare hill-summit waves Still the lonely poplar-tree. Where the blue lake-water raves, Still the plover pipe ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts |
