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Canary bird   Listen
noun
Canary bird  n.  (Zool.) A small singing bird of the Finch family (Serinus Canarius), a native of the Canary Islands. It was brought to Europe in the 16th century, and made a household pet. It generally has a yellowish body with the wings and tail greenish, but in its wild state it is more frequently of gray or brown color. It is sometimes called canary finch.
Canary bird flower (Bot.), a climbing plant (Tropaeolum peregrinum) with canary-colored flowers of peculiar form; called also canary vine.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Canary bird" Quotes from Famous Books



... something else I missed in these beautiful chambers—the usual obtrusive, caressed and pampered pet animal of a great lady. No paroquet, no monkey, no little, silken-haired lap-dog, no St. Bernard or Newfoundland dog, no cat, not even a little canary bird, was to be met with; and not a single flower, real or artificial, greeted ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... etc. The Cray-Fish, the Melon, the Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. Godfrey, the Little Hermit. The Water Pitcher, and the Wooden Cross. The Rose Bush, and the Forest Chapel. The Lamb. The Madonna, the Cherries, and Anselmo. The Canary Bird, the Firefly, the Chapel of Wolfsbuhl, and Titus ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... uneasiness. "You see, Daylight Park is run as a club. Home government and all that sort of thing. Well, these livestock fracases raised such a row that the club's Board of Governors has passed an ordinance, forbidding the keeping of any pet animals in the whole park. Nothing bigger than a canary bird can be harbored here. It's a hard-and-fast rule. It seemed the only way to save our whole summer colony from disruption. You know a livestock squabble can cause more ructions in ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... his country, Private Canary Bird Pee-wee," she said. "Now you see what the Girl Scouts of America can do. Maybe sometime you'll want to know how to break through hostile territory and then you'll remember Dora Dane Daring, won't you? Do you think I'm ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... You hitch a race horse up to a plow and you spoil a good horse and your field both. Seems to me as if, if Luke got a chance to be a writer or a professor or something, he might turn out to be a wonder. You can't teach a canary bird to be a hen, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... reference to the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings nestled in the little box. Ah, you think, it is for the sake of the person who ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... canary bird back into its cage for you!" he confided laconically. "It was a little chap's soul. It sure would have gotten ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... which their structure furnishes, can only perform acts of imitation with their vocal organ; this organ, by their habitual efforts to render the sounds, and to vary them, becomes in them very perfect. Thus we know that several birds (the parrot, starling, raven, jay, magpie, canary bird, etc.) imitate the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... musing mood, took up a stone, as was his custom, to throw among a flight of sparrows which had alighted near him: he paused. 'Papa,' said he, 'I will not throw a stone at those sparrows, for I remember how sorry I feel when any person torments my sister's canary bird, and when I see the poor little thing trying to save itself in every corner of the cage: it seems to me as if each of those sparrows, were I to frighten them, would feel just as ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... whether he looked over the way or not. Other changes had come to pass too. The Major, standing in the shade of his own apartment, could make out that an air of greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox's house; that a new cage with gilded wires had been provided for the ancient little canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut out of coloured card-boards and paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece and tables; that a plant or two had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that Miss Tox occasionally practised on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet peas was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... personne, pour s'amuser?" Madame found that rather difficult to answer, and turned the conversation to her life on the barge. The minute little cabin looked clean, with several pots of red geraniums, clean muslin curtains, a canary bird, and a nondescript sort of dog, who, she told me, was very useful, taking care of the children and keeping them from falling into the water when she was obliged to leave them on the boat while she went on shore to get her provisions. I asked: "How does he keep them from ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... left, a new and exquisite idea came into my head—some people may think it a little flighty, but you will understand all the poetry it contains. I have a canary bird—for I love birds with all the inborn intensity of genius—so old that his feathers are nothing more than a creamy white. In that particular he—I should say she—being a female, that never sings beyond a chirp, has the gift of silence peculiar to the sex. I got her cheaper on that account. Well, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... plan which was to give her a fresh and rather imposing start in the world. She was to have a full year in which to determine whether she should accept toil and poverty as her lot, or emulate the symbolic example of Dicky the canary bird. At the end of the year, unless she did as Dicky had done, her source of supplies would be automatically cut off and she would be entirely dependent upon her own wits and resources. In the interim, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... he attempted to rise. The thick, tough skin of the big frog was not easily damaged, but Dorothy feared for her champion and by again using the transformation power of the Magic Belt she made the dove grow small, until it was no larger than a canary bird. ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... dear, Henrietta, I have a sad tale to tell you. You know the pretty canary bird the baker gave me; well, what do you think William did? he cut off half its tail, and part of ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous

... said Tom, contritely, restoring the table to its equilibrium with great difficulty; "I'm more out of place in a lady's parlor than an owl in a canary bird's cage." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... Oh, Loretta, if you only knew how I've suffered. That first night I didn't sleep a wink. I haven't slept much ever since. [Hudges chair forward.] I walk the floor all night. [Solemnly.] Loretta, I don't eat enough to keep a canary bird alive. Loretta . . . ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... bethought himself that he was acting a very silly part. He listen'd a moment to the clatter of the carts, and the tramp of early passengers on the pave below, as they wended along to commence their daily toil. It was just sunrise, and the season was summer. A little canary bird, the only pet poor Lingave could afford to keep, chirp'd merrily in its cage on the wall. How slight a circumstance will sometimes change the whole current of our thoughts! The music of that bird abstracting the mind of the poet but a moment ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... whole,—the deacon would n't have it. He said right out as he wa'n't marryin' Polly to work her to skin 'n' bone, and he knows how he wants his house kept 'n' his cookin' done, so he 'll just keep on keepin' 'n' cookin' as usual. He 's fixed up a good deal; the canary bird 's got a brass hook after all these years o' wooden-peggin', 'n' he 's bought one o' them new style doormats made out o' wire with 'Welcome P. W.' let into it in green marbles. 'P. W.' stands for 'Polly White,' 'n' Mr. Kimball told Mr. Macy they had a awful time ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner

... and cannot walk. He has to keep his foot resting on a stool, and all the amusement he has, is derived from Lizzie and her pet bird. It is a Canary. She has a nice blue ribbon fastened to its foot so that it cannot fly away. It is eating a cherry from the hands of the old gentleman. The Canary bird is the most charming of all singing birds. They can be tamed and when so, are very playful and full of capers. I will tell you some of their tricks. Some years ago, there was an Italian gentleman exhibiting some funny birds in New York. I went ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip

... you Pa has got a great brain, but sometimes he don't have it with him. When he said I was a terror to cats I thought what fun there is in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing cats right off, and before night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird cage, three in Pa's old hat boxes, three in Ma's band box, four in valises, two in a trunk, and the rest in a closet ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... device is again employed in the second volume (Part VII). Wilhelmine Arend is one of those whom sentimentalism seized like a maddening pestiferous disease. We read of her that she melted into tears when her canary bird lost a feather, that she turned white and trembled when Dr. Braun hacked worms to pieces in conducting a biological experiment. On one occasion she refused to drive home, as this would take the horses ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... a canary bird had she for companionship. There was no cozy arrangement for daily feminine employment; no workbasket, or litter of spools and tapes; nothing to indicate what might be her daily way of going on. On the broad ledges of the windows, where any other woman ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Molly, carelessly; "through the gate, I s'pose, into the enchanted garden. So she went in, and everything enchanted happened all at once. She was turned into a fairy, and the kitten was turned into a canary bird, and he roosted on the fairy's shoulder, and then he began to sing. And then the enchantment turned him into a music-box, and so Violetta Evangeline didn't have any kitten or any bird or anybody to play with. But just then the Fairy ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... mice, canary birds, guinea pigs and rabbits are used in trench warfare, because they are more sensitive than man to poisonous gases. It sometimes happens that hundreds of men must be rescued from a trench by three or four men. Each rescuer carries with him a canary bird in a small cage attached to his shoulder. And as long as these birds show no signs of distress the men are safe from gas poison. The birds soon become attached to their masters and seem to like ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon



Words linked to "Canary bird" :   finch, Serinus, common canary



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