"Plover" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer, I should tell you, "In the bird's-nests of the forest, 25 In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle! "All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, 30 In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahn, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!" 35 If still further you should ask me, Saying, "Who was Nawadaha? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... must regret to hear some Persons, even of quality say, 'pray cut up that Chicken or Hen,' or 'Halve that Plover'; not considering how indiscreetly they talk, when the proper Terms are, 'break that Goose,' 'thrust that Chicken,' 'spoil that Hen,' 'pierce that Plover.' If they are so much out in common Things, how much more would they be with ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... of Bustards are the Little, or Field, and the thick-kneed, Stone-curlew, or Norfolk Plover. There are also some fine species in India, where they are generally in pairs, but sometimes in families of four and five: as they do not fly high, they are sometimes pursued on horseback, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... shadowy hollow there was a sparkle of running water. On the other side of the dale the moors stretched away, waste and empty, toward the half-seen hills. The loneliness of the prospect reminded Nasmyth of Canada, and the resemblance grew more marked when the crying of plover rose from the dim heath—it brought back the call of the loon. Still, he did not wonder why Millicent, an orphan with ample means, lived alone except for her elderly companion ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... the other hand, was in no hurry, but remained sitting on his bed and talking to Jakoff about the best places to find plover and snipe. As I have said, there was nothing in the world he so much feared as to be suspected of any affection for his father, brother, and sister; so that, to escape any expression of that feeling, he often fell into ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... incorporated." No! certainly wings and flying are not the ideas that naturally associate with the historian of the Roxburghe, although, in one instance, the dinner is sketched off in the following epigrammatic sentence, which startles the reader like a plover starting up in a dreary moor: "Twenty-one members met joyfully, dined comfortably, challenged eagerly, tippled prettily, divided regretfully, and paid the bill most cheerfully." On another occasion the historian's enthusiasm was too expansive to be confined to plain ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the sun dipped the birds came out to the brae-side to catch his last ray, as they ever love to do. Whaups rose off the sand, and, following the gleam upon the braes, ascended from slope to slope, and the plover followed too, dipping his feet in the golden tide receding. On little fir-patches mounted numerous blackcock of sheeny feather, and the owls began to hoot in ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... 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 gophers emerged from their winter-quarters, ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... equal to the other. The newly-hatched turtles (all hawksbills) were running about in every direction, and among their numerous enemies, I was surprised to see a burrowing crab (Ocypoda cursor) which runs with great swiftness along the sandy beaches. These crabs even carried off a plover which I had shot, not allowing more than ten minutes to elapse before one of them had it safely (as it thought) stowed away in ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... sail, my little boatie; Here 's the haven, still and deep, Where the dreaming tides, in-streaming, Up the channel creep. See, the sunset breeze is dying; Hark, the plover, landward flying, Softly down the twilight crying; Come to anchor, little boatie, In the port ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... those at Cooper's Creek, but much larger and more complete: I should say a dozen blacks might comfortably coil in it together. It is situated at the end of the forest towards the north, and looks out on an extensive marsh, which is at times flooded by the sea water. Hundreds of wild geese, plover and pelicans, were enjoying themselves in the watercourses on the marsh, all the water on which was too brackish to be drinkable, except some holes that are filled by the stream that flows through the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... not," said Christie of the Clinthill, who emerged at that instant from the side-door under the archway. "Look yonder, and choose whether you will return skimming the water like a wild-duck, or winging the air like a plover." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... ominous birds, the vultures, the storks and cranes, or the clamorous sea-birds and the screaming hawks. These suited better the rugged, warlike character of the times and the simple, powerful souls of the singers themselves. Homer must have heard the twittering of the swallows, the cry of the plover, the voice of the turtle, and the warble of the nightingale; but they were not adequate symbols to express what he felt or to adorn his theme. Aeschylus saw in the eagle "the dog of Jove," and his verse cuts like a sword ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Bril—Georges Bril. He lives in a little cleared space in a houseful of books. He is a learned man; he visits Paris each year; he himself has written books. He will tell you when the catacombs were made, how they found out the names of the stars, and why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and the form of poetry is to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you. I will give you a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and let him read them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or give your attention ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Plover Renard Seagull Nautilus Swallow Brisei Cockatrice Scorpion Goldfinch Reindeer Hornet Espoir Mutine Nightingale Camden Pike Lapwing Skylark Duke of York Sheldrake Pigeon Spey Lady Mary Pelham Opossum ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... hardly expected to have to record another grounding, 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 ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... pass'd far on The hills of Ettrick wild and lone; Through summer sheen and winter shade Tending the flocks that o'er them stray'd. In bold enthusiastic glee I sung rude strains of minstrelsy, Which mingling with died o'er the dale, Unheeded as the plover's wail. Oft where the waving rushes shed A shelter frail around my head, Weening, though not through hopes of fame, To fix on these more lasting claim, I'd there secure in rustic scroll The wayward fancies of the soul. Even where yon lofty rocks arise, Hoar as the clouds on wintry skies, Wrapp'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a-walkin' through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An' under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it." He mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. "He never looked up wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' a-ping, pang, ping, pang," in a high falsetto, "went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole owel, a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what ping, pang, ping, pang ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... refinement of egg-eating which Mrs. Stowe found at the mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, where she was honored with lunch. Her sylvan spirit was somewhat startled, when a servant brought five little speckled plover eggs, all lying in the nest just as taken from the tree. How they were cooked is unknown; but one would certainly need a recipe to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... 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
... now the moon was still higher in the heavens, and the yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night-air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the west were shut out from sight, and before them there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... and when 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 marked F. J. in heart ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Peary has told me that he found shore birds on the most northern land, where it slopes down into the Arctic Sea, less than five hundred miles from the North Pole; and these same birds pass the winter seven thousand miles south of their summer home. One of these wonderful migrants is the Golden Plover. In autumn the birds leave {72} eastern North America at Nova Scotia, striking out boldly across the Atlantic Ocean, and they may not again sight land until they reach the West Indies or the northern coast of South America. Travelling, as they do, in a straight line, they ordinarily pass eastward ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... kinds of birds captured in this way, mocking-birds, blue-birds, robins, meadow larks, quail, and plover were the most numerous. They seemed to have more voracious appetites than other varieties, or else they were more unwary, and consequently more easily caught. A change of station, however, put an end to my ornithological plans, and activities ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... whereas if he is hurt his base partner flies instantly off and seeks new wedlock, affording a fresh example of the superior fidelity of the male to the female sex. When they have young, they feign lameness, like the plover. I have several times been thus tricked by them. One soon, however, becomes an old bird oneself, and is not to be caught with such chaff any more. We look about for the young ones, clip off the top joint of one wing, and leave them; thus, in a few months' time, we can get prime young ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... that our navigation was at an end, being merely a sheet of soft mud, with a few inches of water, and sometimes none at all, forming the low water shore of the lake. All this place was absolutely covered with flocks of screaming plover. We took off our clothes, and, getting overboard, commenced dragging the boat—making, by this operation, a very curious trail, and a very disagreeable smell in stirring up the mud, as we sank above the knee at every step. The water ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... which would gladden the heart of old Izaac Walton. Over twenty-five thousand acres of the best shooting in Kerry is reserved for the use of guests. It comprises principally grouse, woodcock, snipe, duck, wild goose, and plover. Both banks of the Caragh River, which is carefully preserved, have also been secured. Dooks, in the vicinity, has been selected for an excellent nine-hole golf course, of which guests, as honorary members, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... are lark and plover; In the cover Deep below the cushat best Loves his mate, and croons above her O'er their nest, Where the ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... hedge, enclosing the first arable field. The hedge is a guide, but the ruts are deep, and it still needs slow and careful walking. Wee-ah-wee! Up from the dusky surface of the arable field springs a plover, and the notes are immediately repeated by another. They can just be seen as darker bodies against the shadow as they fly overhead. Wee-ah-wee! The sound grows fainter as they fetch a longer ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... 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 at the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... irremediable. Why will you persist in tormenting yourself and me about my want of resignation and faith, when you know that exhortation and persuasion have no more effect upon me than the whistle of the plover down yonder in the sedge and seaweed,—where I heartily wish I were lying, ten feet under the shells? Rather a damp pillow for my fastidious, proud head, but, at least, cool and quiet. Calm yourself, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... with his diadem of snow, and the green summits of many less lofty hills arranged round him, like courtiers uncovered before their monarch. Amid this scene, consecrated to solitude and the most sombre melancholy, no sound comes upon the mountain breeze, save the wail of the plover, or the whir of the heathcock's wing, or, haply, the sullen plunge of a trout leaping ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Phillis trifling with a plover's Egg, while Corydon uncovers with a grace the Sally Lunn, Or dissects the lucky pheasant—that, I think, were passing pleasant; As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... untrained intellect at once jumps to the conclusion that one is the cause and the other the effect. Thus in Australia—a specially fertile field for anthropological research, which has recently been explored with great thoroughness and intelligence by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen—the cry of the plover is frequently heard before rain falls. Therefore, when the natives wish for rain they sing a rain song in which the cry of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... twilight glories Paint with blood each sky-line cloud, While the virgin rolling prairie Slowly dons her evening shroud; While the killdeer plover settles From its quick and noisy flight; While the prairie cock is blowing Warning of the coming night— There against the fiery background Where the day and night have met, Move three disappearing figures, Outlined sharp in silhouette. ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... and fowls already mentioned, and by great plenty of wild fowl; for I must observe, that near the centre of the island there were two considerable pieces of fresh water, which abounded with duck, teal, and curlew: Not to mention the whistling plover, which we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... so sweet the calling of the thrushes, The calling, cooing, wooing, everywhere; So sweet the water's song through reeds and rushes, The plover's piping note, now here, now ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... loves the fruitful fells, The plover loves the mountains; The woodcock haunts the lonely dells, The soaring hern the fountains: Thro' lofty groves the cushat roves, The path of man to shun it; The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush, The ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... is a kind of plover, and is very swift of foot. When trying to avoid being seen they run rapidly with depressed heads, or "close by the ground," as the poet puts it. In the same scene, HERO says ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the thrush and the pipe of the plover Sweet voices come down through the binding lead; O queens that every age must discover For men, that man's delight may be fed; Oh, sister queens to the queens I wed. For the space of a year, a month, a day, No thirst but mine could your thirst allay; And ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... to the shore, living almost exclusively along sandy, pebbly margins, the margins of any, of almost every water, from Delaware Bay to the tiny bubbling spring in some Minnesota pasture. Neither is the killdeer her bird. The upland claims it, plover though it be. A barren, stony hillside, or even a last year's corn-field left fallow, is a better-loved breast to the killdeer than the soft brooding breast of the marsh. There are no grass-birds so noisy as these ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Seleucian thrush (Turdus 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
... on, and the talk became more noisy. The trout, the chicken, the thyme lamb (trapped on the hills by the shepherds), the plover eggs, the sirloin, the pastry (the Baroness superintended the making of it herself), all the profusion of the table, rather set him against food than tempted him. Nor could he drink the tiny drop, as it were, of ancient ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... beetles; numberless bugs, both hard and soft; whole colonies of red and black ants; several white grubs dug out of the heart of decaying logs; a handful of snails; a young frog; the egg of a ground-plover that had failed to hatch; and, in the vegetable line, the roots of two camas and one skunk cabbage. Now and then he pulled down tender poplar shoots and nipped the ends off. Likewise he nibbled spruce and balsam gum whenever ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... readily enough, and then I knew the point for which he was making. I followed doggedly. Clouds began to gather over the moon's face, and every now and then I stumbled heavily on the uneven ground; but he moved along nimbly enough, and even cried "Shoo!" in a sprightly voice when a startled plover flew up before his feet. Presently, after we had gone about five hundred yards on the heath, the ground broke away into a little hollow, where a rough track led down to the Lime Kilns and the thinly wooded stream that washed the valley below. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... goose, and a large black and white bird with a crimson head and neck, and a red and yellow horny protuberance on the top of the head. This variety has a sharp spur upon the wing an inch long, and exceedingly powerful; it is used as a weapon of defence for striking, like the spurred wing of the plover. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... an olive! Put an olive into a lark, put a lark into a quail; put a quail into a plover; put a plover into a partridge; put a partridge into a pheasant; put a pheasant into a turkey. Good. First, partially roast, then carefully stew—until all is thoroughly done down to the olive. Good again. Next, open the window. Throw ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... heroic, if not indeed an angelic, character; and cases may occur to you which indicate the reverse. You may point to the quarrels of scientific men, to their struggles for priority, to that unpleasant egotism which screams around its little property of discovery like a scared plover about its young. I will not deny all this; but let it be set down to its proper account, to the weakness—or, if you will—to the selfishness of Man, but not to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... No, you mangonising slave, I will not part from them; you'll sell them for enghles, you: let's have good cheer tomorrow night at supper, stalker, and then we'll talk; good capon and plover, do you hear, sirrah? and do not bring your eating player with you there; I cannot away with him: he will eat a leg of mutton while I am in my porridge, the lean Polyphagus, his belly is like Barathrum; he looks like a midwife in man's apparel, the slave: nor the villanous out-of-tune ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... called, on the Ohio, silverfish, a shrimp of the same 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 ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... Black-bellied Plover Golden Plover Semi-palmated Plover Belted Piping Plover Wilson Plover Piping Plover Killdeer Willett Greater Yellow Legs Summer Yellow Legs Turnstone Red Phalarope Northern Phalarope Avocet Oyster Catcher Long-billed ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... 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, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... their black, speckled faces sprang before them, quick as rabbits; green plover flopped up from the grassy places, wheeling and squealing; a woodcock whirred out of a furze bush so near Larry that he could have struck it down with his crop. Long-legged mountain hares fled right and left of the driving pack, unheeded. Great spaces of the mountain were bare ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... found in the verdant woods, in the coppice, and even on the lonely moors. He flits from one stunted tree to another and utters his notes in company with the wild song of the Ring Ousel and the harsh calls of the Grouse and Plover. Though his notes are monotonous, still no one gives them this appellation. No! this little wanderer is held too dear by us all as the harbinger of spring for aught but praise to be bestowed on his mellow notes, which, though full and ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... Then the low chuckling note of the night hawk sounds soft and melancholy in the distance; and again all is still, save the heavy and impatient stamp of a horse as the mosquitoes irritate him by their bites. Quiet again for a few seconds, when presently the loud alarm of the plover rings over the plain—"Did he do it?"—the bird's harsh cry speaks these words as plainly as a human being. This alarm is a certain warning that some beast is stalking abroad which has disturbed it from its roost, but ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... had a right to carry a gun by virtue of his office, and from many of the gentry he had licences to shoot over their grounds. His lordship, however, had forbidden him to enter his. On Oct. 24, 1769, he passed into his grounds, and walked along the shore within the sea-mark, looking for a plover. Lord Eglintoune came up with him on the sea-sands and demanded his gun, advancing as if to seize it. Campbell warned him that he would fire if he did not keep off, and kept retiring backwards or sideways. He stumbled and fell. Lord Eglintoune stopped a little, and then made as if he would advance. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... a narrow path. A plover flew before thee. Then I saw Thy high black steed among the flaming furze, Like sudden night in the main glare of day. And from that height something was said to me ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... while I led it; And Max, who rode on her other hand, Said, no bird flew past but she inquired {150} What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired— If that was an eagle she saw hover, And the green and gray bird on the field was the plover, When suddenly appeared the Duke: And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed On to my hand,—as with a rebuke, And as if his backbone were not jointed, The Duke stepped rather aside than forward, And welcomed her with his grandest ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... 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, moorfowl, 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... fishes safe from you and me: No matter: salt ad libitum, with bread Will soothe the Cerberus of our maws instead. What gives you appetite? 'tis not the meat Contains the relish: 'tis in you that eat. Get condiments by work: for when the skin Is pale and bloated from disease within, Not golden plover, oyster, nor sardine, Can make the edge of dulled enjoyment keen. Yet there's one prejudice I sorely doubt If force of reason ever will root out: Oft as a peacock's set before you, still Prefer it to a fowl you must and will, Because (as if that mattered when we dine!) The bird is costly, and its ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... To take apprehension Of 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
... upon the fragrant 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
... some muskets so contrive it As oft to miss the mark they drive at, And though well aimed at duck or plover, Bear wide, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... have supposed the shanks had been fastened on to impose on the credulity of the beholder: they were legs in caricatura, and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen, we should have made large allowances for the fancy of the draughtsman. These birds are of the plover family, and might with propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that idea, gives them the apposite name of l'echasse. My specimen, when drawn and stuffed with pepper, weighed only four ounces and a quarter, though the naked part of the thigh measured ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... and turns in her bearing, Like a twisting plover she goes; The way of her westward ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... quadruped. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae[Lat]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock[obs3], duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c. (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine[obs3], ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin[obs3]; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot[obs3]; tag, teg[obs3]; bison, buffalo, yak, zebu, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... not to have gone out with his aristocratic friend Matthew Peel- Swynnerton, he did at length open the box and take out a cigar. "Now," he observed roguishly, cutting the cigar, "we shall see, Mrs. Plover!" He often called her Mrs. Plover, for fun. Though she liked him to be sufficiently interested in her to tease her, she did not like being called Mrs. Plover, and she never failed to say: "I'm not Mrs. Plover." He smoked the cigar slowly, in the rocking-chair, throwing his head ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... extending for ten miles and sloping gradually upward. Here, at one 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 our ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lid so nicely and cunningly adjusted that no eye could have detected where it was joined to the parent globe. Within was a fleece of raw silk containing an object which she presently displayed before the astonished gaze of our hero. It was a red stone of about the bigness of a plover's egg, and which glowed and flamed with such an exquisite and ruddy brilliancy as to dazzle even Jonathan's inexperienced eyes. Indeed, he did not need to be informed of the priceless value of the treasure, which he beheld in the rosy palm extended ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... the Cedre and other fragraunt oyntmentes, and oyles, to preserue it the longer: thei bewrye it in holy sepulture. If a man haue slayne any of these beastes willingly: he is codempned to death. But yf he haue slaine an catte or a snyte, [Footnote: A snipe, from the Saxon snyta. "Greene-plover, snyte, / Partridge, larke, cocke, and phessant." Heyw. Engl. Trav., Act i., Scene ii.] willingly or vnwillingly: the people ronneth vpon him vppon heapes, and withoute all ordre of Iustice or lawe, in moste miserable wise torment him to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... 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 ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... "Kayrawan" which is 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 black ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... swinging to sleep, Winging to sleep, Singing to sleep, Your wonder-black eyes that so wide open keep, Shielding their sleep, Unyielding to sleep, The heron is homing, the plover is still, The night-owl calls from his haunt on the hill, Afar the fox barks, afar the stars peep,— Little brown baby of mine, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... bows of the ship, 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 ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Riht so of love the famine I fonde in al that evere I mai To fiede and dryve forth the day, Til I mai have the grete feste, Which al myn hunger myhte areste. Lo suche ben mi lustes thre; Of that I thenke and hiere and se 940 I take of love my fiedinge Withoute tastinge or fielinge: And as the Plover doth of Eir I live, and am in good espeir That for no such delicacie I trowe I do no glotonie. And natheles to youre avis, Min holi fader, that be wis, I recomande myn astat Of that I have be delicat. ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... spread their tails, chase one another, and perform many strange courting parades. A careful observer of birds, Mr. E. Selous, who is quoted by Havelock Ellis,[63] has found that all bird dances are not nuptial, but that some birds—the stone-curlew (or great plover), for example—have different kinds of dancing. The nuptial dances are taken part in by both the male and female, and are immediately followed by conjugation; but there are as well other dances or antics of a non-sexual character, which may be regarded as social, and these ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... that beyond this aperture a vast extent of sea without land must exist. It may possibly be (this was the view held by the lamented Gustave Lambert) that this sea is open. No greater distance north has ever been attained since Cook's time, except on the Siberian coast—where Plover and Long Islands were discovered, and where at this moment, as we write, Professor Nordenskjold ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the best imported White Wines; and a 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, and Flowers, not only not known, but never even heard of, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... Asia. The other birds and quadrupeds of your collection, though better known, were very interesting, as affording materials for the history of their geographical distribution, a subject now become exceedingly interesting. The plover of the plain ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... five plover, and returned to our vessel. My opinion is that the slave-hunters have made a razzia inland from this spot, but that our guide, Bedawi, has led us into ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... similar tents. There came 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. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... food that is hidden underneath. They very seldom come into bays like this, but keep more on the outer beaches. The other one, with black under parts and dark back finely speckled with yellow, is the Golden Plover, who often visits our beaches ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... of Pretty Dove to assist her in making ready for the big feast. For ten days these women cooked and pounded beef and cherries, and got ready the choicest dishes known to the Indians. Of buffalo, beaver, deer, antelope, moose, bear, quail, grouse, duck of all kinds, geese and plover meats there was an abundance. Fish of all kinds, and every kind of wild fruit were cooked, and when all was in readiness, the heralds went through the different villages, crying out: "Ho-po, ho-po" (now all, now all), "Dead Shot ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... Alaskan Brown Bear, "Ivan," Begging for Food The Mystery of Death The Steady-Nerved and Courageous Mountain Goat Fortress of an Arizona Pack-Rat Wild Chipmunks Respond to Man's Protection An Opossum Feigning Death Migration of the Golden Plover. (Map) Remarkable Village Nests of the Sociable Weaver Bird Spotted Bower-Bird, at Work on Its Unfinished Bower Hawk-Proof Nest of a Cactus Wren A Peace Conference With an Arizona Rattlesnake Work Elephant Dragging ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... woman of the hairy hand. Every old mound was thought to cover hidden gold. And all was so lonely; the green hills rolling between river and river, with no men on them, nothing but sheep, and grouse, and plover. No wonder that Randal lived in a kind of dream. He would lie and watch the long grass till it locked like a forest, and he thought he could see elves dancing between the green grass stems, that were like fairy trees. He kept wishing that he, too, ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... me gaze again upon the moisture-laden sky, Let me see the rolling masses, let me hear the plover's cry, While enveloping the distant mountain-summits like a shroud, Like a head bent down and hoary, hangs a heavy wreath ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... 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 ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... they were on the opposite side, so that his voice might appear to come from the summit of the islet, and then began with the melancholy sound used to lure the plover on the moors. The men in the boat instantly observed that this was the same sound used when Erlingsen's boat was spirited away from them. It was rather singular that Rolf and Oddo should have used the same sound, but they ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... But she exclaimed over the lakes: dark water reflecting wooded bluffs, a flight of ducks, a fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide straw hat, holding up a string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge of Plover Lake had the air of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow in the crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house, reeds in thin black lines, arches of frosty grasses. It was an impression of cool ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... round a young lady, while she exhibits the nimbleness of her fingers in the execution of a darling waltz, or touches the hearts of the fond youths with a plaintive melody accompanied with false notes. Thus far, or but little further, does music extend, save in a few scattered instances. Like a plover-call, it is used to allure the fluttering tribe into the meshes; but when it has done its office in that kind, is laid aside for ever. POPE SEXTUS QUINTUS, when he was a cardinal, hung up a net in his room, to demonstrate his humility, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... which divided by numerous small creeks, and thickly fringed with the unfailing mangrove, stretched away in level and drear monotony, only broken towards the west by land of inconsiderable elevation. The circling flight of the ever-wary curlew, and the shrill cry of the plover, now first disturbed in their accustomed territory, alone vouched for the presence of animal life in that vast solitude, the effect of which they heightened, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... wild pigeons, squabs, young geese, young turkeys, plover, wild ducks, wild geese, swans and brant fowls, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... 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, ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Pheasant Snares Pheasant Skins Seized at Rangoon Deadfall Traps in Burma One Morning's Catch of Trout near Spokane The Cut-Worm The Gypsy Moth Downy Woodpecker Baltimore Oriole Nighthawk Purple Martin Bob-White Rose-Breasted Grosbeak Barn Owl Golden-Winged Woodpecker Kildeer Plover Jacksnipe A Food Supply of White-Tailed Deer White-Tailed Deer Notable Protectors of Wild Life: Madison Grant, Henry Fairfield Osborn, John F. Lacey, and William Dutcher Notable Protectors: Forbush, Pearson, Burnham, Napier Notable Protectors: Phillips, Kalbfus, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... tolerably successful, having before long killed seven large birds of the plover species, two ground doves of a beautiful plumage, three parrots, and a monkey, which the doctor said he preferred to any members of ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover's egg! The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and how the blush in her cheeks was not so red as the blood of kings' sons that was shed for her, and her sorrows had never gone out of mind; and he said it was maybe the memory of her that made the cry of the plover on the bog as sorrowful in the ear of the poets as the keening of young men for a comrade. And there would never have been that memory of her, he said, if it was not for the poets that had put her beauty in their songs. And the next time she did not well understand what he was saying, but as far ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... geographical position of Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea fog, drifting in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season, were fresh run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of plover ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... tread of the horses' 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 ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 them. Besides these noisy denizens ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... owls, plovers of two sorts, one very like the whistling plover of Europe; a large white pigeon; a bird with a long tail, whose colour is black, the vent and feathers under the wing (which is much longer than is usually seen in the generality of birds, except the birds of paradise) are yellow; and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... sexes is far from conspicuous. According to Professor Steenstrup, the male alone of P. fulicarius undertakes the duty of incubation; this is likewise shewn by the state of his breast- feathers during the breeding-season. The female of the dotterel plover (Eudromias morinellus) is larger than the male, and has the red and black tints on the lower surface, the white crescent on the breast, and the stripes over the eyes, more strongly pronounced. The male also takes at least a share in hatching the eggs; but the female ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... 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 look ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... no sound?" "No; nothing save The plover from the marshes calling, And in yon western sky, about An hour ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... 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 used to the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... 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
... themselves. The ring-tail dove, one of the most exquisite of table luxuries, he was very successful in liming; and he would bring home a dozen in a morning. He could catch turkeys with a noose, and young pigs to barbecue. He filled baskets with plover's eggs from the high lands; and of the wild-fowl he brought in, there was no end. In the midst of these feats, he engaged for far greater things in a little while—when the soldier-crabs should make their annual march down the mountains, on their way to the sea. In those days, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... were all engrossed in the gathering of mushrooms. But Thaddeus heeded them and kept glancing sideways; and, not daring to go straight on, edged along obliquely. As a huntsman, when, seated between two wheels beneath a moving canopy of boughs, he advances on bustards; or, when approaching plover, he hides himself behind his horse, putting his gun on the saddle or beneath the horse's neck, as if he were dragging a harrow or riding along a boundary strip, but continually draws near to the place where the birds ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... straining forward too eagerly. 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 a kind ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of every kind is surprising. Ravens too have become very scarce. A pair had a nest by Simmon's Rock this year (1857), but they are said to drive their young to a distance as soon as they can provide for themselves. The only kind of plover in the Forest is the green plover or lapwing, which were very numerous at one time in the wet greens. Woodcocks used to be thought never to breed in this country, but they certainly do so now. In this Forest and in other ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... on the barren moor, And call her on the hill: 'Tis nothing but the heron's cry, And plover's answer shrill; My child is flown on wilder wings Than they have ever spread, And I may even walk a waste That widen'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... I have been along the hillside, wondering much at idiotic sheep, and raising partridges at every second step. One little plover is the object of my firm adherence. I pass his nest every day, and if you saw how he flies by me, and almost into my face, crying and flapping his wings, to direct my attention from his little treasure, you would have as kind a heart to him as I. To-day I saw him not, although I took ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your hook, and, having so done, whip it three or four times about the hook with the same silk with which your hook was armed; and having made the silk fast, take the hackle of a cock or capon's neck, or a plover's top, which is usually better: take off the one side of the feather, and then take the hackle, silk or crewel, gold or silver thread; make these fast at the bent of the hook, that is to say, below your arming; then you must take ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... mountains rattling with echoes, and disturbing the water fowl on the lakes and the song-birds in the woods, the eagle in his eyrie, and the wild red deer, to say nothing of the innumerable grouse and partridges and black cock and plover and hares ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... its abundant fare, and the caribou were not again molested. Flocks of grouse and ptarmigan came out of the thick coverts, in which they had been hiding all summer, and began to pluck the berries of the open plains, where they could easily be waylaid and caught by the growing wolf cubs. Plover came in hordes, sweeping over the Straits from the Labrador; and when the wolves surrounded a flock of the queer birds and hitched nearer and nearer, sinking their gray bodies in the yielding gray moss till they looked like weather-worn logs, the hunting ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... their day. There were but a few leagues of cultivated ground to be passed before we reached the broad, undulating, solitary Pampas, where for some time the only visible signs of life were to be found in the Teru-tero birds (a sort of plover), who shrieked discordantly as we disturbed their repose; the partridges, large and small, put up by the retriever who accompanied us; some prairie fowls; a great many hawks, of all sizes; and the pretty little wydah-birds, with their two immense ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... kookooburras saluted the sun with rollicking laughter, the crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in chorus, or solemnly "popped" in deep vibrating tones, like the ring of a woodman's axe. Every now and then came the shriek of the plover, or the shrill cry of the peeweet; and gayer and more lively than all others was the merry clattering of the big bush ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... plover. AEGIALITIS MONTANA. Common summer resident; in spite of its name, a bird of the plains rather than the mountains; yet sometimes found in parks at an altitude of 8,000 and even 9,000 feet. Its numbers may be estimated from the fact that in one day of August a sportsman shot one hundred ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... o' 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Waited but signal from a guide, So late dishonored and defied. Ever, by stealth, his eye sought round The vanished guardians of the ground, And stir'd from copse and heather deep Fancy saw spear and broadsword peep, And in the plover's shrilly strain The signal whistle heard again. Nor breathed he free till far behind The pass was left; for then they wind Along a wide and level green, Where neither tree nor tuft was seen, Nor rush nor bush of broom was near, To hide a bonnet ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... grass. The Si-yo[59] clucks on the emerald prairies To her infant brood. From the wild morass, On the sapphire lakelet set within it, Maga 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 light-winged linnet, And the swallow sail in the sunset skies. The whippowil from her cover hies, And trills her song on the amber air. Anon to her loitering mate she cries: "Flip, O Will!—trip, O Will!—skip, O Will!" And her merry mate from afar replies: "Flip I will—skip ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... his counterfeits upon a ring plover, the fraud was detected. The plover hammered the shams with her bill "in the most skeptical fashion," and refused to sit down upon them. When two of the bird's own eggs were returned to the nest and left there with two wooden ones, the plover tried to throw out the shams, but failing to do ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... ships, and warehouses without goods, and quays overgrown with grass. Beyond Newport the country grows wilder. There is less cultivation, and behind every little shanty rises the great brown shoulder of the neighbouring mountain covered with rough, bent grass—or sedge, as it is called here. Grey plover and curlew scud across the road, a sign of hard weather, and near the rarer homesteads towers the hawk, looking for his prey. Now and again come glimpses of the bay, of the great island of Innisturk, ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... knows, in 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 may scarce espy the brook, although he ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... osiers or lurking 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 Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... of waste land, several acres in extent, consisting of bog, interspersed with tussocks of coarse grass, and straggling alders and birches, still known by the name of “The Bog’s Nook,” or corner. {34a} On this ground the common green plover—Vanellus cristatus—then commonly called the “Pyewipe,” {34b} bred in large numbers; the eggs were, as they are still, regarded as a delicacy, and old “Tabshag” used to make a considerable sum of money every year by sending hampers of these eggs by ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... intermingled with wild herds of deer and antelope, browsed on the meadows and slopes above the river where they stood. Wild ducks and geese and swan swam in the river, and grouse and wild turkeys and quail and plover roamed the forests and uplands. There was no promiscuous killing of wild animals allowed among the Tewana; they were shared in common like the domesticated animals. Innumerable canoes, used for fishing, were drawn up on the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... "trees of any size are few on the island. Except the shade trees in the town, I think some ragged, stunted pines are all you will find; but there are streams and ponds to fish in, to say nothing of the great ocean. There is some hunting, too, for there are plover ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... Pontius only gave him stronger wine to drink than he is used to. Let him be; he is sleeping with the pillow under his neck, as comfortably as a child. When he began just now to trumpet a little too loud I whistled as loud as a plover, for that often silences a snorer; but I could more easily have made those stone Muses ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he inhales the niopo by the nose, through the forked bone of a bird, the two extremities of which are applied to the nostrils. This bone, without which the Ottomac believes that he could not take this kind of snuff, is seven inches long: it appeared to me to be the leg-bone of a large sort of plover. The niopo is so stimulating that the smallest portions of it produce violent sneezing in those who are not accustomed to its use. Father Gumilla says this diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished by an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils (emboracha por ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... melanoptera, Eyt.), a species of goose. The plumage of the body is dazzlingly white, the wings green, shading into brilliant violet, and the feet and beak of a bright red. The Licli (Charadrius resplendens, Tsch.) is a plover, whose plumage in color is like that of the huachua, but with a sort of metallic brightness. There are two species of ibis which belong to the Puna, though they are occasionally seen in some of the lower valleys. One is the Bandurria (Theristocus ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... disturbed from a new hatched brood, and went only to a thicket about forty or fifty yards from the nest; and continued there as long as I staid to observe her, which was not many minutes. In the nest, which was barely a hole scratched out of the coal-slack in the manner of a plover's nest, I observed three eggs, but did not touch them. As I had labourers constantly at work in that field, I went thither every day, and always looked to see if the bird was there, but did not disturb her ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... mosses and orchids hang from the trees. Outside on the breezy downs one may drink in pure ozone from the Atlantic, and revel in an atmosphere untainted by microbes or bacilli. Wild duck, woodcock, and plover, resting in their migratory flight, crowd the marshes, ponds, and lagoons, and the sea is alive with fish." Such was the Tresco that Mr. Augustus Smith made his home; such it is still in the hands of Mr. Dorrien-Smith. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... 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, even the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... little that night; the exciting proximity of the unknown land was too much for me. But although I lay awake for hours, I heard nothing except the tinkle of water among the rocks and the plover calling from some hidden marsh. At daybreak I shot a ptarmigan which had walked into camp, and the shot set the echoes ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... 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
... my conductor, "save you, and give me a quart of three threads, or I faint. Body o' me, was ever green plover so pulled as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... infinite 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, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the Meewoon. The bed of the river continues wider, and more sandy: the water being in general shallow. The only acquisitions met with to-day are Grislea, an arborescent Capparidea, and a pretty Grewia. Of birds, I noticed the Avocet, or curved-billed Plover, the grey Kingfisher, the green Pigeon, and the snake-bird, Plutus Levalliantia. The plants occupying the banks and the bed of the river are the same, viz. Ehretia, Saccharum spontaneum, spirale; Kagara, Erythrina, Ficus, Gnaphalia, Podomolee, Bombax. Of fish, Cyprinus ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... sound passed softly round the room; there was a whirr and a flutter as when a flight of bees or birds goes down the sky, and a voice, a plaintive yet happy voice, like the plover who cry to each other on ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... gray gophers whistled, and the nesting plover quaveringly called. Blackbirds clucked in the furrow and squat badgers watched with jealous eye the plow's inexorable progress toward their dens. The weather was perfect June. Fleecy clouds sailed like snowy galleons from west to east, the wind was ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... 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 a prettier sight. The tall storks seemed to act like sentinels, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... tiny snake, green as the grass blades that it stirred, slipped from a pool of moonlight into a lake of shadow. Somewhere a small owl, tremulously melodious, called and called: and from the salt meadows, distantly, the elfin whistle of plover answered. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... them, and so bolt camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult. 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 ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... 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
... country is low, rich, and thickly wooded on each side of the Columbia; the islands have less timber, and on them are numerous ponds, near which were vast quantities of fowl, such as swan, geese, brant, cranes, storks, white-gulls, cormorants, and plover. The river is wide and contains a great number of sea-otters. In the evening the hunters brought in game for a ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... 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 their ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... only thorns, and thistles, and sere tufts of grass; and blustering winds rush over the unsheltered reaches, where the rough-haired goats huddle for warmth; and there is no melody save the many-toned voices of the wind and the plover's wild cry. There dwell the children of Coradine, on the threshold of the wind-vexed wilderness, where the stupendous columns of green glass uphold the roof of the House of Coradine; the ocean's voice is in their rooms, and ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... 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 ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... waves Still the lonely poplar-tree. Where the blue lake-water raves, Still the plover ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with that thick, damp sort of sound that smacks of black powder, somewhere down on earth, and a huge "herd" of green plover, alias peewits, which are lapwings, rose, as if blown up by an explosion, to meet them, their thousand wings flickering in the frost-haze like a shower of confetti, and the owl was so disconcerted by the disturbance that he dropped back ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 'lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvaise, hippocras, and aquavitae; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brisselcock, pawnies, black-cock, muir-fowl, and capercailzies'; not forgetting the 'costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry,' and least of all the 'excelling stewards, cunning baxters, excellent cooks, and pottingars, with confections and drugs for the desserts.' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... beginning to understand Gregorian music a little better. No plover's eggs, thank you," said Mr. Smith, who was totally without a sense of melody, but who assumed a complete musical authority, based on the fact that he ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... April 8th, Grey goose seen. April 11th, Catkins. April 12th, Barking crows. April 19th, Blackbirds and mosquitoes. April 21st, Plover, two hawks, and a butterfly. April 22nd, Gulls, white waveys, robins. April 28th, White cranes. April 30th, Frogs, most of snow gone. May 2nd, Dark butterfly, four purple crocuses. May 4th, Frogs noisy, bumble bees. May 5th, Nearly clear of ice. May 8th, Water from Peace River ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... great events of Mr. White's life, too, have that disproportionate importance which is always humorous. To think of his hands having actually been though worthy (as neither Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold a stilted plover, the Charadrius himaniopus, with no back toe, and therefore "liable, in speculation, to perpetual vacillations"! I wonder, by the way, if metaphysicians have no hind toes. In 1770 he makes the acquaintance in Sussex of "an old family tortoise," which had then been domesticated for ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell |
