"Goldfinch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he has been kindly scattering to the four winds, the goldfinch spreads his wings for a brief, undulating flight, singing in waves also as he goes to where tall, thick-set mullein stalks stand like sentinels above the stony pasture. Here companies of the exquisite little black and yellow minstrels delight to ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... mother in the drawing room and entreating her to comply with my wish to enter the Navy, she was so intent on listening to my importunities and her patchwork that she did not observe that the cat was running away with her favourite goldfinch; the cat, with the poor bird in its mouth, was near the door, waiting to escape. Seeing what had happened, I immediately ran to the poor little bird's assistance, but, alas! too late, as the cruel animal had torn off one of ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... have often been modified for protection. Should you grudge the trouble briefly to tell me whether you believe that the plainer head and less bright colours of [female symbol][73] chaffinch, the less red on the head and less clean colours of [female symbol] goldfinch, the much less red on breast of [female symbol] bullfinch, the paler crest of goldencrest wren, etc., have been acquired by them for protection? I cannot think so; any more than I can that the considerable differences ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the Indians heard the wood thrush as we hear him. Where did the bobolink disport himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to the open fields and so adverse to the woods,—we cannot conceive of their existence in a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the Finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song,—clear, ringing, copious, rivalling the Goldfinch's in vivacity, and the Linnet's in melody. This strain is one of the rarest bits of bird-melody to be heard. Over the woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. In this song you instantly detect his relationship to the Water-Wagtail ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... themselves. The male chaffinch, for instance, will place himself in front of the female that she may admire at her ease his red throat and blue head; the bullfinch swells out his breast to display the crimson feathers, twisting his black tail from side to side; the goldfinch sways his body, and quickly turns his slightly expanded wings first to one side, then to the other, with a golden flashing effect.[78] Even birds of less ornamental plumage are accustomed to strut and show themselves off before the females. Birds often assemble in large numbers ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... LINTER. Piano solo, 3s.: Duet, 4s. "Another of the admired sets by the author of the Canary Quadrilles and the Goldfinch Quadrilles, elegantly composed, as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... children, considered that he had a special genius in this direction. In his quiet prowls he came across the less common birds, but I fancy he used to conceal it from me, as a little boy, because he observed the agony of mind which I endured at not having seen the siskin or goldfinch, or whatever it might have been. He used to tell us how, when he was creeping noiselessly along in the "Big-Woods," he came upon a fox asleep in the daytime, which was so much astonished that it took a good stare at ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the old dame now carried in her hand a wicker-cage, containing a little captive of the goldfinch tribe, some home-bred favourite, whose simple notes will often call up the memory of father-land, when this family of humble adventurers shall be located, happily I trust, on some wild stream of the far west, for thither were they bound, and, with the appliances ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... in the green of my garden Blackbirds and throstle and wren, Wet your dear wings in the tears that are Spring's And so to your singing again! Birds in my blossoming orchard, Chaffinch and goldfinch and lark, Preen your bright wings, little happy live things; The May trees grow white in ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... who happened to be escorting Madame Steynlin to her villa just then—darted to his side; with the help of two lady-apostles known, respectively, as the "goldfinch" and the "red apple," they conveyed him out of that shelter into the deserted, moonlit garden. He leaned heavily on the arm of the youth; peevish sounds, quasi-human, proceeded from his colourless lips. And now he was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas |
