"Bittern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fish have enemies enough besides such unnatural fishermen; as namely, the Otters that I spake of, the Cormorant, the Bittern, the Osprey, the Sea-gull, the Hern, the King-fisher, the Gorara, the Puet, the Swan, Goose, Duck, and the Craber, which some call the Water-rat: against all which any honest man may make a just quarrel, but ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... mud. Though it was but the hour of noon, it more resembled night, or the late gloaming of twilight—so dark were the shadows under this umbrageous wood. As if to strengthen the illusion, I could hear the cry of the bittern, and the screech of the owl, echoing through the aisles of the forest—sounds elsewhere suggestive of night and darkness. Now and then, light shone upon the path—the light that indicates an opening in the forest; but it was not that of a friendly clearing. Only the break caused by some ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in its solitary and stately watchfulness is occasionally seen, and again etches itself like a Japanese picture against the pure blue of the sky. The American bittern ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it.... They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... quacking hordes of them, nest in the tulares. Any day's venture will raise from open shallows the great blue heron on his hollow wings. Chill evenings the mallard drakes cry continually from the glassy pools, the bittern's hollow boom rolls along the water paths. Strange and far-flown fowl drop down against the saffron, autumn sky. All day wings beat above it with lazy speed; long flights of cranes glimmer in the twilight. By night ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... was created for man's sole delight will wonder why a flower so exquisitely beautiful as this dainty little orchid should be hidden in inaccessible peat-bogs, where overshoes and tempers get lost with deplorable frequency, and the water-snake and bittern mock at man's intrusion of their realm by the ease with which they move away from him. Not for man, but for the bee, the moth, and the butterfly, are orchids where they are and ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... approaching water, for she heard the deep pipe of the bittern in the reeds, and fancied she breathed a moister air. A few steps more, and her foot sank in mud; and she now perceived that she was standing on the edge of a wide ditch in which tall papyrus-plants were growing. The side path she had struck into ended at this plantation, and there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... She, whose feet were fleeter than the deer's, now walked feebly, and rested oft; she, whose tongue outchirped the merriest birds of the grove, and warbled sweeter music than the song-sparrow, now spoke in strains as gloomy and sad as the bittern that cries in the swamps when night is coming on, or the solitary bird of wisdom perched among the leaves of the oak. The father sat down by her, and ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones |
