"Starling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ascend above 5500 to 6000 feet, and is therefore more properly an inhabitant of the warm valleys. I do not remember seeing it at Mussoorie, which is 6500 to 7000 feet, although at 5200 feet on the same range it is abundant during summer. Its notes and flight are very much those of the Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), and it delights to take a short and rapid flight and return twittering to perch on the very summit of the forest trees. I have never seen it on the ground, and its food appears to consist ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... or nets for the birds of the mountains,' she added, as if to turn the conversation; 'and once Margot found a young one caught, but she cried so bitterly about it that we took it home and nursed it till it got well. Did you ever see our starling, neighbour?' ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... interesting as connected with the principle of imitation to which languages in part owe their origin, but in the cases of forced imitation, the mere acquisition of a vocal trick, they only serve to illustrate that power of imitation, and are without significance. Sterne's starling, after his cage had been opened, would have continued to complain that he could not get out. If the bird had uttered an instinctive cry of distress when in confinement and a note of joy on release, there would have been a nearer approach to language than if it had clearly pronounced many sentences. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... The starling flew to his mother's window stane, It whistled and it sang, And aye, the ower word of the tune Was 'Johnnie tarries lang.' —JOHNNIE ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... get out!' cried the starling," which isn't in any prayer book of course, save the prayer book of a ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... pure pale blue from a greenish one, the colour of a starling's egg, to a grey ultramarine colour, hard to use because so full of colour, but incomparable when right. In these you must carefully avoid the point at which the green overcomes the blue and turns it rank, or that at which the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... all the characteristics of one. At Homburg or Aix-les-Bains you walk up a street, turn a corner and find yourself among pine-trees, or in a smiling valley with a blue lake blinking at the sun. Here the baths are in the centre of the town, and, like a certain starling, you feel you "can't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... cow by my side, and this grass at my feet, what can a bull wish for more?" Contentment! Nothing with vitality must, or ever will be contented, save a vegetable, or a toad in the centre of a rock, and he probably is sighing, with Sterne's starling, "I can't ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... his thoughts were always wandering. Learning did not interest him. He had other things to think about: would the last leaves in the garden have fallen when he got home from school at noon? And would the starling, for whom he had nailed the little box high up in the pine-tree, come again next spring? It had picked off all the black berries from the elderberry, and had then gone away screaming; if it did not find any ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... "higher, ever higher," hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steadily plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded dells ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in the first o' the day, Tweed had got a hold o' him and carried him off like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled, and raced wi' him, bobbing under brae-sides, and was long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynns under the castle, and at the hinder end of all cuist him up on the starling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a'thegither at last (for Dickieson had been brought in on a cart long syne), and folk could see what mainner o'man my brither had been that had held his head again sax and saved the siller, and him drunk!" Thus died ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... love those poplar trees; What tall and stalely things! See! on the top of one just now A starling sits and sings. He'll fall!—the twig bends with his weight! He likes that danger best. I see the red upon his wings,— Dark shining is the rest. I ween his little wife has built On that same ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... the small rain upon the tender herb," but with an orchestra of his own. Years of observation have shown that the weather does control the habits of some birds—birds of distinct and regular methods of life. Two such are common—the nutmeg pigeon and the metallic starling. Both species leave this part of the North during the third week of March, flying in flocks to regions nearer the equator. For several weeks the starlings train themselves for the long Northern flight and its perils, dashing with impetuous speed ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... father," said a young lad, Robby Starling, addressing another of the men. "You can't tell what beautiful things are said; and then there's praying and singing; it does one's heart good to hear them sing. ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... whence Pinch, Pinchin, and Pinches.] Horn is an old personal name, as in the medieval romance of King Horn, Shipp is a common provincialism for sheep, [Footnote: Hence the connection between the ship and the "ha'porth of tar."] Starr has another explanation (see Starling) and Bell has several (chapter 1). I should guess that Porteous was the sign used by some medieval writer of mass-books and breviaries. Its oldest form is the Anglo-Fr. Porte-hors, corresponding to medieval Lat. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... that?" exclaimed he, starling up from his kneeling posture, and turning anxiously in the direction whence the disturbance had proceeded, at the same time thoughtlessly relinquishing his grasp of the lid, which fell with a heavy crash upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... STARLING (Sturnus vulgaris).—Green bedropped with gold when seen closely, but at a distance looking more like a rusty blackbird, though its gait on the lawn always distinguishes it, being a walk instead of a hop. Though not tuneful, no ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... hence have to be put out of the way. The fish crow, a smaller cousin of the big black fellow, also nests here, easily known by his shriller, higher caw. A single pair of blue jays nest in the Park, but the English starling occupies every box which is put up and bids fair to be as great or a greater nuisance than the sparrow. It is a handsome bird and a fine whistler, but when we remember how this foreigner is slowly but surely elbowing our native birds out of their rightful haunts, we find ourselves ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... of great perceptions," she replied. "I am going to like you, I am sure. Come, there is Mr. Starling standing by the door. What do ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... water, both fresh and bitter, flow between the one who is addressing you and his native town of Yuen-ping, where the tablets at the street corners are as familiar to him as the lines of his own unshapely hands; for, as it is truly said, 'Does the starling know the lotus roots, or the pomfret read its way by the signs among the upper branches of the pines?' Out of the necessities of his ignorance and your own overwhelming condescension enlighten him, therefore, whether the destination of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... with a smile of gravity and with much candor in his blue eyes, "in China, such a one as you are as safe as a Javanese starling in a nest of hungry yellow snakes. You will travel by daylight, or not at all. You will go from Kowloon to your venerable grandmother by train. You will carry a knife, and you will use it without hesitation. Have ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... bird-call. Birds gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The King's ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Leaver are pronounced by Mrs. Starling, a widow lady who lost her husband when she was young, and lost herself about the same-time—for by her own count she has never since grown five years older—to be a perfect model of wedded felicity. 'You would suppose,' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... things that it touches except snow, Whether on mountain side or street of town. The south wall warms me: November has begun, Yet never shone the sun as fair as now While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough With spangles of the morning's storm drop down Because the starling shakes it, whistling what Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot That there is nothing, too, like March's sun, Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's, Or January's, or February's, great days: And August, September, October, and December Have equal days, all different ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... perhaps it was his smock—was the hero in an English melodrama. Nor, doubtless, did the English crisp bacon and eggs which a sleepy housemaid prepared know that they were theater properties. Why, they were English eggs, served at dawn in an English inn—a stone-floored raftered room with a starling hanging in a little cage of withes outside the latticed window. And there were no trippers to bother them! (Mr. Wrenn really used the word "trippers" in his cogitations; he had it ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... even a false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within it, with ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... THE starling is a trim little bird, measuring from seven to eight inches in length. He goes dressed in black, and his coat glistens like satin in the sunlight. In autumn, however, after moulting, he looks as ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. Hence Dante's simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, "Bird of God;" and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... The starling rolls his "r's" with unctuous joy And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy, Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl And next the "Be quick" of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... was borne by her; And now, though far away, My lonely spirit hears the stir Of water round the starling spur Beside ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... times, Urian, who was hasty and thoughtless, poor fellow, told Clement that he was afraid. 'Fear!' said the French boy, drawing himself up; 'you do not know what you say. If you will be here at six to-morrow morning, when it is only just light, I will take that starling's nest on the top of yonder chimney.' 'But why not now, Clement?' said Urian, putting his arm round Clement's neck. 'Why then, and not now, just when we are in the humour for it?' 'Because we De ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "I should like to see it—just to see it, as one looks through a grating into the king's grapehouses here. But I should not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and the chickens—and what would the garden do without me?—and the children, and the old Annemie? I could not anyhow, anywhere be any happier than I am. There is only one ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... ornithologists agreed that the curious starling-like bird known as the spotted-wing (Psaroglossa spiloptera) was a kind of aberrant starling, but systematists have lately relegated it to the Crateropodidae. At Mussoorie the natives call it the Puli. Its upper parts are dark grey spotted with black. The wings are glossy greenish black with ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... city, That for years with ceaseless din, Hath reverst the starling's ditty, Singing ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... STARLING.—Threepence was placed on the head of this destructive bird last year in many parts of England. The old way was to put salt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... pell-mell into the office, starling the great cat to that extent that he sprang from his red cushion on the window-ledge, and slunk, flattening his long body against the floor, under the table, came the boy Eddy Carroll. The boy stood staring at ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... never be killed except by a Prince called Lionheart; nor by him unless he can find the solitary tree, where a dog and a horse keep sentinel day and night. Even then he must pass these warders unhurt, climb the tree, kill the starling which sits singing in a golden cage on the topmost branch, tear open its crop, and destroy the bumble bee it contains. So I am safe; for it would need a lion's heart, or great wisdom, to reach the tree and overcome ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... inhabited for a fortnight or more, and where we spent Xmas Day, was a good cut above Dranoutre. Except for the first three days, when we lived with a doctor,—and his stove smoked frightfully till we discovered a dead starling in the pipe,—we dwelt in exceeding comfort, comparatively speaking. It was a brewer's house, about the biggest in the village—which was three times the size of Dranoutre,—with real furniture in it, ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... the kind that talk. That's no crow nor no starling neither," answered the man. "Better give it to me to kill. I'll pay you a ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... kindness the wolf and the zebra become docile as the spaniel and the horse; The kite feedeth with the starling under the law of kindness; That law shall tame the fiercest, bring down the battlements of pride, Cherish the weak, control the strong, and win the fearful spirit. Let thy carriage be the gentleness of love, not the stern front ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... wouldn't like," I remarked. At that moment the sun came out. We were keeping to the side of the road where it is soft going. Suddenly Swallow leaped like a stag into the middle of the road all over the pave. Panic terror. He had seen the shadow of a starling flit across ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... quills spring from a dash of scorn and defiance in the bird's make-up. By the aid of these, it can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and jerks out its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquant expression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, but a starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in its habits, being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color also allies it to the true lark. I believe there is no bird in the English or European fields that answers to this hardy pedestrian of our meadows. He is a true ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... her guards, and having killed them, or frightened them away, forcibly carry her off." Sometime it is the man who is shy. In such cases the girl "should bring him to her house under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks and rams, of hearing the maina (a kind of starling) talk.... she should also amuse him for a long time by telling him such stories and doing such things as he may take ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... children still, and Aldonza was of a nature that was slow to take offence, while it was quite true that Dennet had been free from jealousy of the jackdaw, and only triumphant in Stephen's prowess and her own starling. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge |
