"Plover" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... to you,' sais I, 'and if dere be no fish (and dat white Yankee oberseer is so cussed lazy bout catchin' of dem, I must struct missus to discharge him). Den dere is two nice little genteel dishes, 'birds in de grobe,' and 'plover on de shore,' and den top off wid soup; and I ain't particular about dat, so long as I ab de best; and dat, Miss Phillis, makes a grand soft bed, you see, for stantials like beef or mutton, or ham, or venson, to lay down ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... partial to streams, and also to a gaudy fly. Smelts will rise at almost any moderate sized fly, but the three most killing, are a small black fly, with scarlet or crimson silk body, black fly, ribbed with gold, or silver twist, golden plover's speckled feather from the back, and gold twist. They are also rather fond of a fly made from a partridge's breast feather, and body of crimson floss silk. The flies must be fastened upon small hooks not larger than No. 1. Few Smelts are to ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... 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 Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Ages.] were simply the transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their vassals, and even of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The death of a hare," says our author, "was a hanging matter, the murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on those who spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal alive; and among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed game ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... verified by any one who crosses Gavin Muir. It was a moonlight night—a harvest moon—and Mr Lawson, having handed the Sacramental cup around, was in the act of concluding with prayer, when the note of a bird, seemingly a plover, was heard at a great distance. It was responded to by a similar call, somewhat nearer; and, in an instant, a messenger rushed in upon their retreat, out of breath, and exclaiming, "You are lost!—you are all dead men!—Clavers is within ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... on the front seat of Sir George's motor-car, in spite of enveloping furs, and of Bismarck, curled like a fried whiting, in her lap. The grey road rushed smoothly backwards under the broad tyres; golden and green plover whistled in the quiet fields, starlings and huge missel thrushes burst from the wayside trees as the "Bollee," uttering that hungry whine that indicates the desire of such creatures to devour space, tore past. Mrs. Alexander wondered if birds' beaks felt as cold ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... 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
... visited by a sort of woodcock in July and August; we have also a kind of grouse, plover, dove, and wild pigeon, snipe, wild fowl, and a wonderful variety of small birds; among which, the reed-bird [Footnote: So called from their note resembling the word reed.], or american ortolan, justly holds the first place: they visit us from the south, and are found at certain seasons ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... vent, which shows they are fat. In other respects, choose them by the same marks as other fowl. When stale, the feet are harsh and dry. They will keep a long time. There are three sorts of these birds, the grey, the green, and the bastard plover, or lapwing. Green plovers are roasted in the same way as snipes and woodcocks, without drawing, and are served on toast. The grey ones may be roasted, or stewed with gravy, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... with the sweet mournful music were ringing, The curlew and plover in concert were singing; But the melody died 'midst derision and laughter, As the host of ungodly rush'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... nightfall and hear what the grim folk said; perhaps they might read aloud the letter from China. And before he had time to repent of that promise a cold wind came one night and the woods turned golden, the plover went in bands at evening over the marshes, the year had turned, and there came the letter from China. Never before had Amuel felt such misgivings as he went his postman's rounds, never before had he so much ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... 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 ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... tree-fringed stream. Herds of horses and cattle and flocks of sheep and goats, 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 ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... guide, So late dishonored and defied. Ever, by stealth, his eye sought round The vanished guardians of the ground, 285 And still, 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 290 The pass was left; for then they wind Along a wide and level green, Where neither tree nor tuft was seen, Nor ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a peep once an hour will be sufficient; I will look out of the window and give you the result—five plover, a few fat cows, a good many rushes, and a canal bridge. At Amsterdam we dined at a regular Dutch table d'hote; about 20 people, all of them eaters, few talkers; the quantity of vegetables consumed was quite surprising. With the last ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... 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 sick. It is seven o'clock in the morning. Opposite the children are their parents, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... reach him before he sent off any or 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 it proved, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... 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, within ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... to this famous repast. It began with mandarin bird's-nest soup, with plover's eggs floating about in it. This is a most delicious and dainty dish, and is invariably given to strangers on their first arrival. I had no idea how expensive the nests were—54 dollars a 'pice,' weighing something under a pound, and it takes two or three ounces to make ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... spoil that hen, frust that chicken, unbrace that mallard, unlace that coney, dismember that hern, display that crane, disfigure that peacock, unjoynt that bittern, untach that curlew, allay that pheasant, wing that partridge, wing that quail, mince that plover, thigh that pidgeon, border that pasty, thigh that woodcock; thigh all ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... eye 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... dainties, and delicates sweet Were bought for the banquet, as it was most meet; Partridge, and plover, and venison most free, Against the brave wedding of ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... 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 fired at with pistols. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... 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
... 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
... in the prairie 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 ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... relaxation of the austere season in the return of bird and beast to their familiar haunts. As 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
... the wild morass, On the sapphire lakelet set within it, Maga [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 ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... was yet only five and a half years old, she had tried many times in her life, without success, to make the slat cage the home of some feathery pet. Snipes and plover, orioles and ovenbirds, bobolinks and meadow-larks, all had lived in it by turns for a few days. But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, and the bobolinks and meadow-larks had eaten ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... 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 Curlew Jack Curlew Hudsonian Godwit Sanderling Black-necked Stilt ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Madame Bonanni, as he set a plate before her containing three tiny porcelain bowls, in each of which a little boiled plover's ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 used to ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... melancholy in his heart. There was the great black coffin on three chairs in one corner; and then the mourning cloaks that he had stuck up against the windows moved backward and forward like living things; and outside, the wild cry of the plover as he flew past, and the night-owl sitting in a nook of the old church. 'I wish it was morning, anyhow,' said my father, 'for this is a lonesome place to be in; and faix, he'll be a cunning fellow that catches me passing ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Arctic regions; and if there be any chance of their existence, it is in the supposition that he proceeded in a westerly direction, and in such case we can only expect to hear from the missing adventurers by the Mackenzie detachment, or by her majesty's ship Plover, Commander Moore, by way ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 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
... first gate is guarded by a plover only. It sits on the third pinnacle over the gate, and when anyone comes near it rises up and flies round the Castle crying until its sharp cries put the ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 the other extreme, and affected a coldness which shocked ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... "plough"; the person, not having either of these words in his mind, would add "v"; the next player perhaps, not knowing the word of which the previous player was thinking, might challenge him, and would lose a "life" on being told the word was "plover." The player next in turn would then start a new word, and perhaps put down "b," thinking of "bat," the next, thinking, say, that the word was "bone," would add an "o," the next player would add "n"; the player whose turn it would now be, not wanting to lose a "life" by finishing the word, ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... Marsh was also melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power of written expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... your 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 ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... a general rule, any more than any other complete upsetting of the balance of nature. A great deal could be learnt from the excellent work already done all over the continent with regard to the farmer's and forester's wild friends and foes. A migrating flight of curlew, snipe, plover or sandpipers is worth much more to the farmer alive than dead. But by no means every farmer knows ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... shrubbery, a porch indistinct in leafy shadows. 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 ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... everywhere. If I went out to try and shoot plover or whistlers with my little rifle, there was Bozie tagging after me. So, you see when it came calf-branding time, I ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... 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. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Drum," quoth my conductor, "save you, and give me a quart of three threads, or I faint. Body o' me, was ever green plover so pulled ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a 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 ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... 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
... is 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 soft, are powerful, and may on a calm morning, before ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... scent 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 the snipe that was kilt an' lay close by on the grass; An' there ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Naisi along with Ainnle and Ardan, they that were the pride of Emain. (Throwing in clay.) There is Naisi was the best of three, the choicest of the choice of many. It was a clean death was your share, Naisi; and it is not I will quit your head, when it's many a dark night among the snipe and plover that you and I were whispering together. It is not I will quit your head, Naisi, when it's many a night we saw the stars among the clear trees of Glen da Ruadh, or the moon pausing to rest her on the edges of the hills. OLD WOMAN. Conchubor is coming, surely. I see the glare ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... too, of woodlands lover, Dusk October, berry-stained; Wailed about of parting plover,— Thou then, too, of woodlands lover. Fading now are copse and cover; Forests now ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... lad 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, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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 ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... it's the song of a lover; Now it's the lilt of a loafer,— Under the trees in a midsummer noon, Dreaming the haze into isles to discover, Beating the silences into a croon; Soon Up from the marshes a fall of the plover! Out from the cover A flurry of quail! Down from the height where the slow hawks hover, The thin far ghost of a hail! And near, and near, Throbbing and tingling,— With a human cheer In the earth-song mingling,— Mirth and carousal, Wooing, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... 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 ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... sunshine in the shady place"; also, their typical figure, which is a very lofty, straight, and branchless trunk, crowned almost at the summit by a mass of colossal gnarled boughs, slender plumy fronds, delicate thin leaves, and smooth cones scarce larger than a plover's egg. Perhaps the best idea of their figure may be obtained by fancying an Italian stone-pine grown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... caster-oil is made in the 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... 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 a fell. There was a road, but it would ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... adventure. The channel in a short distance became so shallow 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 here was still fresh, with only an insipid ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... "do you prefer our present mode of life to feasting in an old hall, covered with banners and battered shields, and surrounded by mysterious corridors and dark dungeons?" Aurelia was so flattered by the notice of Lady Madeleine, that she made her no answer; probably because she was intent on a plover's egg. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Shooting the prairie plover, which were numerous around the solitary shanty, gossipping with Mr. Connelly on Western life and Red River experiences—I passed the long July day until evening came to a close. Then came the time of the mosquito; he swarmed around the shanty, he came out ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... have thought it? Ah! The wicked are not to escape punishment. Three feet nearer Heaven—on a stake; and one's belly full of wind holes—from the spears. Go Shukke Sama, the crime was a dastardly one. Five thousand ryo[u]! Surely it means crucifixion on the embankment. We will furnish poles for plover—to roost upon."[25] Dentatsu made a sign of frightened repulsion. He could not speak. Jimbei seemed to catch an idea. "Ne[e]san! Ne[e]san! keep the honoured Shukke Sama company over his wine. There is a purchase to make.... By the house? No such trouble asked. It is for waraji, with ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Stanmer 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 Pandora ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... far and wide. Others keep to the cliffs, and many find all they need in the wide mud-flats. Such an army is there of these shore birds, that we cannot even glance at them all in this lesson. So we will take a few of them only—the Black-headed Gull, the Cormorant, the Ringed Plover, ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... battle. Every castle had its tale of Redcap, the sly spirit, or of the 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, might meet the Fairy Queen, and be taken ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... 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 found there in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... one find you here. In morning take time; when ready for breakfast walk back this way a hundred steps and whistle like plover. Then me come and ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... gallop, long June days, A rose-hedged lane and lovers' lays, The welcome smile on neighbors' faces, Cool, wide hills and open places, Breeze-blown fields of silver rye, The wild, sweet note of the plover's cry, Fresh spring showers and scent of box, The soft, pale tint of the garden phlox, Lilacs blooming, a drowsy noon, A flight of geese and an autumn moon, Rolling meadows and storm-washed heights, A fountain murmur on summer nights, A dappled fawn in the forest hush, Simple ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... glad to have your little girl here. I want to paint her. I'm just crazy about her face," said the girl, whose name she learned afterwards was Rosy Plover. Though she was undeniably pretty, and had just powdered her face with scented powder, she had a slovenly, unkempt appearance which Gabriella, from that moment, associated with art students. "If she'd only dress herself properly, she'd be a beauty," she thought, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Leo's favourite sporting-ground,—a long flat island with several small lakes on it which were bordered by tall reeds and sedges, where myriads of ducks, geese, gulls, plover, puffins, and other birds revelled in abject felicity,—Benjy asked his father what he had ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 intoned ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... among other things, half a dozen green and black 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 he found it, ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... sky-line. On a hot summer's day it is wearisome enough for the lonely angler to listen to the river crawling lazily through the rocks that choke his bed, mingled with the clocking of some water-moved boulder, and the chick-chick of the stonechat, or the scream of the golden plover overhead. But on a wild winter's evening, when day is fast giving place to night, and the mist shrouds the hill, and the wild wind is rushing hoarse through tor and crag, it becomes awful and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... from the prahayries, there is abundans of wild game in Boston, such as quails, snipes, plover, ans Props. (The game of "props," played with cowrie shells is, I believe, peculiar ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... so contrive it As oft to miss the mark they drive at, And though well aimed at duck or plover, Bear wide, and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the black partridge or francolin, the parrot, the 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 less ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... 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 ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... 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 ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... wing, and stood beside Mary V. He saw Bland turn his head and glance out along the right wing, then to the left. He caught a sense of Bland's tightening nerves, a mental and muscular poising for the flight. The thrumming jumped to a throbbing roar. The plane ran forward like a plover, gathering speed as it went. Fifty yards—a hundred—the little wheels left the sand, the tail sagged, the nose pointed slightly upward. The throb accelerated as distance dimmed the roar, until once more the droning ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... have required this proximity and nearness of access. The original five nations of the Iroquois were, theoretically, separated into eight clans or original families of kindreds, who are distinguished respectively by the clans of the wolf, bear, turtle, deer, beaver, falcon, crane and the plover. I find that there is a little difference in the clans of the Tuscaroras, which are the bear, wolf, turtle, beaver, deer, eel and snipe. It is contrary to the usage of the Indians that near kindred should intermarry, and the ancient rule interdicts all intermarriage between ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... along, he saw a plover, caught in the net that a hunter had laid on the sand, and he knew that it was a hen bird, for he saw the male fly to the net, and tear the meshes one by one with its beak, until it had made an opening by which its mate could escape. The ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... butterfly-back, only sheep and cows and little horses go about. Only lapwings and plover live here, and there are no buildings except windmills and a few stone huts, where we shepherds crawl in. But down on the coast lie big villages and churches and parishes and fishing hamlets and ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... parlour opens into your room. But what priest could that be? Canonico Casini? He only comes when we have a roast of thrushes, or some such small matter, at table: and this is not the season; they are pairing. Plover eggs might tempt him hitherward. If he heard a plover he would not be easy, and would fain make her drop her oblation before she had ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... enough to indicate the kind of place in which Theobald's lines were cast, and the sort of woman he had married. As for his own habits, I see him trudging through muddy lanes and over long sweeps of plover-haunted pastures to visit a dying cottager's wife. He takes her meat and wine from his own table, and that not a little only but liberally. According to his lights also, he administers what he is pleased to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... 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 only to come sneaking ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... peculiar and melancholy cry, ran 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
... course of the day we saw many geese, cranes, small birds common to the plains, and a few pheasants. We also observed a small plover or curlew of a brown color, about the size of a yellow-legged plover or jack-curlew, but of a different species. It first appeared near the mouth of Smith's River, but is so shy and vigilant that we were unable to shoot it. Both the broad and narrow-leaved ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... 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 him, came the chirping ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... 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, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... you. I wonder you and father don't turn to law books or rulings or something! I want you to take me out plover-shooting this afternoon. Long Prairie is just alive with them. Don't say no, please! I want to try my new twelve-bore hammerless. I've sent to the livery stable to engage Fly and Bess for the buckboard; they stand fire so nicely. I was sure you ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... friends were obviously 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
... with 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 ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... passed not uncomfortably for the party in the fort. The surrounding prairie swarmed with game, buffaloes, deer, turkeys, ducks, geese, and plover. The river furnished an abundance of turtles, and the bay of oysters. Joutel gives a very entertaining account of his killing rattlesnakes, which his dog was wont to find, and of shooting alligators. The first time that he went buffalo-hunting, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... 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
... and winds, All things well and proper; Trailer, red and white, Dark and wily dropper. Midges true to fling Made of plover hackle, With a gaudy wing, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... mingle with thy clamor; Bird, beast, and reptile take part in thy drama; Out-speak they all in turn without a stammer,— Brisk Polyglot! Voices of Killdeer, Plover, Duck, and Dotterel; Notes bubbling, hissing, mellow, sharp, and guttural; Of Cat-Bird, Cat, or Cart-Wheel, thou ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... boatman from the sight of the world and form innumerable nooks of quiet which have a class of scenery and inhabitants altogether their own. As the chaloupe glides around some unsuspected corner, the crane rises heavily at the splash of a paddle, wild duck fly off low and swiftly, the plover circle away in bright handsome flocks, the gorgeous kingfisher leaves his little tree. In the water different spots have their special finny denizens. In one place a broad deep arm of the river—which throws ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... of 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; ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... often readers will indulge Their wits a mystic meaning to discover; Secrets ne'er dreamt of by the bard divulge, And where he shoots a cluck, will find a plover; Satiric shafts from every line promulge, Detect a tyrant where he draws a lover: Nay, so intent his hidden thoughts to see, Cry, if he paint ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... up, over and over, Until there's not the least mistake. Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there's a plover! It's gone!) Who's that Saint by the lake? The red light from his mantle passes Across ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Road two women were walking, one elderly, florid and stout, with a yellow-brown Paisley shawl and a coarse serge dress, the other young and fair, with large grey eyes, and a face which was freckled like a plover's egg. Her neat white blouse with its trim black belt, and plain, close-cut skirt, gave her an air of refinement which was wanting in her companion, but there was sufficient resemblance between them to show that they were mother and daughter. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... '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 ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... into the pantry and looked about him to see if he could find something to appease his hunger. He saw a great venison pasty and two roasted capons, beside which was a platter of plover's eggs; moreover, there was a flask of sack and one of canary—a sweet sight to a hungry man. These he took down from the shelves and placed upon a sideboard, and ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... her 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... to mind the testimony in regard to the existence of Plover Island, between Herald Island and Wrangell Land, which he said was first made public through this academy. The evidence of Capts. Williams and Thomas Long were recited and highly praised. One of the officers of Admiral Rodgers' expedition climbed to near the top of Herald Island, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... man upon his tongue May break it, when his passion masters him, And she was ever praying the sweet heavens To save her dear lord whole from any wound. And ever in her mind she cast about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she fear'd In every wavering brake an ambuscade. Then thought again, "If there be such in me, I might amend it by the grace of Heaven, If he would only speak and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... But there still remained the other one, the really annihilating effect of the expense on the nest-eggs, and especially on Mrs. Wilkins's, which was in size, compared with Mrs. Arbuthnot's, as the egg of the plover to that of the duck; and this in its turn was overcome by the vision vouchsafed to Mrs. Wilkins, revealing to her the steps to be taken for its overcoming. Having got San Salvatore—the beautiful, the ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... 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
... muskets so contrive it As oft to miss the mark they drive at, And though well aimed at duck or plover, Bear wide and kick their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... after midnight the sportsmen returned, and Mr. Pennefather came to breakfast. He was much disappointed that the party could not stay for another day's shooting, and talked of the variety of game to be had—geese, ducks, widgeon, teal, coot, plover, quail, swans, turkeys, and bitterns, to say nothing of cockatoos, parrots, wallabys, kangaroos, and alligators. Yesterday the engine-driver, being a sportsman himself, kindly stopped the train and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... fear anything From her, whose losses are their pleasure; The plover with a wounded wing Stays not the flight that others measure; So there she waits, and while she lives, And death forgets, and faith forgives, Her memories go foraging For bits of ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... 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 ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... floods rolled up to keep me still A captive on my heavenly hill, And on their bright and dangerous glass Was written, Boy, you shall not pass! I laughed aloud, You shining seas, I'll run away the day I please! I am not winged like any plover Yet I've a way shall take me over, I am not finned like any bream Yet I can cross you, lake and stream. And I my hidden land shall find That lies beyond the sun and wind— Past drowned grass and drowning trees I'll run away the day I please, I'll run like one whom nothing harms With my ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... 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, ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... of 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 matter of unconscious faith ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 probably chose it as the most mournful they knew. Rolf, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... geese and 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 a ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... 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 to be a fox[508], till last year, when one was landed on it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... walked over the Plover Slough to see Mrs. Paine. She noticed the quantity of machinery which stood in the yard, some under cover of the big shingled shed, and some of it sitting out in the snow, gray and weather-beaten. The yard was littered, untidy, prodigal, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... At Chiselhurst, with the aid of a new, very costly, but highly instructive cook, they tried over everything they heard of that roused their curiosity and had any reputation for difficulty, from asparagus to plover's eggs. They afterwards got a gardener who could wait at table—and he brought the soil home to one. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... discomfort and depression. On each side of them were a variety of lonely lakes, abrupt precipices, and extensive marshes; and as our travellers went along, the hum of the snipe, the feeble but mournful cry of the plover, and the wilder and more piercing whistle of the curlew, still deepened the melancholy dreariness of their situation, and added to their anxiety to press on towards the place ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 toward him. How long he gazed at this ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... nor in the present instance was it a 'distinction without a difference'—opened the batteries with the precision of an artillery officer. 'O my eyes!' was the exclamation of Professor Shaw, 'my eyes! my eyes! my eyes!' It was a great era in his life time also when he shot a plover; that however has little to do with the present story, and must be told shortly. It was on the Big Plains, where not a tree nor shrub may be seen for miles around; where ambuscades are unknown, and it is very hard to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... 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 hears ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... had for a long time desired to be left alone with my lame and deaf grandmother and the Tall Clock, especially the Tall Clock. I went, therefore, to her old house on Plover street in a calm and lovely frame of mind and helped get my aunt ready ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... was a worley (native hut) large enough to shelter a dozen blacks; it was on the northern outskirt of the forest, and looked out across a marsh which is sometimes flooded by sea-water. Upon this were hundreds of wild geese, plover, and pelicans. After they crossed it they reached a channel through which the sea-water enters, and there passed three blacks, who silently and unasked pointed out ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before the coach-house. All beyond and about is the great field, of the hills; the plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... wild birds say Or hint or mock at, night and day,— Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May, And songless plover, Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker. They never say a word ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... ("Journal") no land-birds, except introduced, upon St. Helena. Beatson (Introduction xvii) mentions one (367/2. Aegialitis sanctae-helenae, a small plover "very closely allied to a species found in South Africa, but presenting certain differences which entitle it to the rank of a peculiar species" (Wallace, "Island Life," page 294). In the earlier editions of the "Origin" (e.g. Edition III., page 422) Darwin wrote ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... stunned for a moment by his fall, was soon recalled to life by the pain of the stings. He sat up and looked round. Already his face had about as much feature as a turnip. His eyes were closing fast, and a lump as large as a plover's egg hung on ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... number of Buffalow Elk & Goats feedg The Course from the gauge on the L. S. is S. 70 W. 41/2 Miles to the pt. of Ceder Timber on the L. S. pass Sands. worthy of remark the Cat fish not So plenty abov white river & much Smaller than usial, Great nunbers of Brant & plover, also goat and ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... 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 to her to tell ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... day; yet 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
... the Blue Ridge to the west. The country and scenery were not unlike, and equal to the prettiest parts of the Valley. Circling and hovering overhead, calling and answering one another in their peculiarly plaintive notes, as if disturbed by our presence, were the gray plover, a bird I had never before seen. All in all, the environment was strikingly peaceful and beautiful, and suggestive of the wish that the Federals, whom we had literally whipped out of their boots and several other articles of attire, and who had now returned to their ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... "boomp!" 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 ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Monsieur 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 ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... reflection, he quickened his pace, and shaping his course towards Black Nest, reached in a short time the borders of a wide swamp lying between the great lake and another pool of water of less extent situated in the heart of the forest. This wild and dreary marsh, the haunt of the bittern and the plover, contrasted forcibly and disagreeably with the rich sylvan ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth |
