"Kestrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the chase began. And the red deer and the red fox started from their covers; and the small rabbits stopped their kitten-play on the steep warrens of the Downs, and fled into their burrows; and birds whirred up in screaming coveys, and the kestrel hovered high and motionless on the watch. There was game in plenty, and many men were tempted and forgot the prize they sought. The hunt separated, some going this way and some that. And in the evening all met again in Amberley. And some ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... are to be seen ranged in long files upon the sand-banks, fishing and basking in the sun; suddenly the flock is seized with panic, rises heavily, and settles away further off. In hollows of the hills, eagle and falcon, the merlin, the bald-headed vulture, the kestrel, the golden sparrow-hawk, find inaccessible retreats, whence they descend upon the plains like so many pillaging and well-armed barons. A thousand little chattering birds come at eventide to perch in flocks upon the frail boughs ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... long hours, watching the butterflies or gazing wistfully towards those distant southern mountains which I proposed to visit later in the season. Once a spark of that old throttling instinct flared up. It was when a kestrel dashed overhead, bearing in its talons a captured lizard whose tail fluttered in the air: the poor beast never made a faster journey in its life. "Ha!" ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... saints. We have already seen Ciaran resuscitating a horse. Mo-Chua restored twelve stags (VSH, ii, 188); but perhaps the most remarkable feat was that of Moling, who, having watched a wren eating a fly, and a kestrel eating the wren, revived first the wren and then the fly (VSH, ii, 200). Saint Brynach's cow having been slain by a tyrannical king, was restored to life by the saint (Cambro-British Saints, pp. ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... his time among fashionable amateurs, feeding upon their flattery, and living on in the vain hope of patronage. Already the flight of his genius had been restrained, the force of his wing impaired; instead of soaring superior, he kept hovering near the earth; his "kestrel courage fell," he appeared to be almost tamed to the domestic state to which he was reduced—yet now and then a rebel sense of his former freedom, and of his present degradation, would appear. "Ah! if I were but independent as you are! If I had but followed a profession ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... which now feed on exotic plants, or exclusively on artificial substances. Of diversified habits innumerable instances could be given: I have often watched a tyrant flycatcher (Saurophagus sulphuratus) in South America, hovering over one spot and then proceeding to another, like a kestrel, and at other times standing stationary on the margin of water, and then dashing into it like a kingfisher at a fish. In our own country the larger titmouse (Parus major) may be seen climbing branches, almost like a creeper; it sometimes, like ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... (Milvus niger). Yet several species, namely, the Aquila fusca, Haliaetus leucocephalus, Falco tinnunculus, F. subbuteo, and Buteo vulgaris, have been seen to couple in the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Morris[354] mentions as a unique fact that a kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) bred in an aviary. The one kind of owl which has been known to couple in the Zoological Gardens was the Eagle Owl (Bubo maximus); and this species shows a special inclination to breed in captivity; for a pair at Arundel ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... bloated old man in vineleaves that might be Silenus. And over against the door of the parlour what I took to be a picture of Potiphar's wife, she looked out of the paint so bold and beauteous and craftily. Birds and fishes in cases stared glassily,—owl and kestrel, jack and eel and gudgeon. All was clean and comfortable as ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... had any luggage I had to invent a dressing-bag and dress-basket; I could always pretend that they had gone astray. I gave him the name of Smith, and presently he emerged from a confused pile of luggage and passengers with a dressing-bag and dress-basket labelled Kestrel-Smith. I had to take them; I don't see what else ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki |
