"Teal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it. Slipping on as the wind grew warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... in one or two instances nested near a still-surviving pool within the last ten years; a nest was once found by the writer among the branches of a pollard willow, overhanging a pool, some five or six feet from the ground. He has also shot teal on odd occasions lying in the open; but both these birds are now rarely seen, and the same may be said of the snipe, “jack” and “full.” The latter were once plentiful, so that it was a common occurrence to put up a “whisp” of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... always clear. Fields and woods stretched away before the cottage, crimson and green as the frosts came on. Back of the cottage, forever gleaming through the scarlet of the autumn oaks, lay the lake, where duck and teal were beginning to lodge o' nights, in the rice-fringed nooks ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that floated on the water. Little islands dotted the surface, covered with rushes and date palms, the wild plum, and the babul—all growing thickly together. The air was full of the odour of decaying vegetation and the noise of jungle fowl, teal, and duck. The latter could be seen fluttering their pinions among the lotus flowers, and bobbing about on the surface of the water, thoroughly at home in their native element; occasionally a flock would rise and settle again not far from the same spot, vigilant with the instinct of approaching ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me; but at the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the present somehow went round to Highgate. To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of those things which I could never think of sending away. Teal, widgeon, snipes, barn-door fowls, ducks, geese—your tame villatic things—Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but self ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and when rains filled the maraises, and the cold nor'westers blew from Texas and the sod was spongy with much water, and he went out for feathered game, the numberless mallards, black ducks, gray ducks, teal—with sometimes the canvas-back—and the poules-d'eau—the water-hens and the rails, and the cache-cache—the snipe—were as likely to settle or rise just before his own house as elsewhere, and the most devastating shot that hurtled through those feathered multitudes was that sent ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... gentleman prepared in the oven, and sent to the National Institute at Paris. He informed me this bird was a non-descript. Hares, antelopes, woodcocks, snipes, plovers, bustards. There is an abundance of partridges, red ducks as large as geese, ducks, wigeon, and teal; curlews, in immense quantities, are found in the flat parts of the country on the coast; immense quantities of doves, wild pigeons, wood-pigeons, and large sand-larks. Every person is at liberty to shoot; but the princes and the great, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... be compelled to rise from time to time and tighten up my belt, until I must have resembled one of the ladies of fashion, so far as the waist was concerned. Again we came to marshy ground, filled with royal duck, teal, water-hens, snipe, etc, and forgot the pangs of past hunger. At such places we would fill our horns and drink the putrid water, or take off our shirts and wash them and our bodies. Mud had to serve for soap. Our washing, spread ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... belt along the horizon, he would hear the distant eerie whistle of wild wings. Nothing could be seen yet, but the sound multiplied. He could distinguish now the roar of a great flock of mallards, circling round and round high overhead, scouting for danger. He could hear the sweet flute-notes of teal and pintails, and the raucous, cautious quack of some old green-head. A teal would pitch suddenly down to the water before him and rest there, erect and wary, painted in black upon the golden water. Another ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... It is deadly lonely in these cloud-spaces. Once a great flight of some small water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the westwards. The quick whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we humans have become birds we must really learn to know our ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rich, though not deep; the sides of the hills covered with large trees of the evergreen kind, growing to a great height before they spread out into branches. There were several species of land birds; and the aquatic fowl were ducks, teal, and the sheldrake. An opossum was seen, and the excrement of another quadruped, judged to be of the deer kind. Sea fish were caught, but not in plenty. The lagoons abounded with trout and several ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... lack of birds. In the ponds which we passed earlier in the day we saw hundreds of mallard ducks and teal. The car often frightened golden plover from their dust baths in the road, and crested lapwings flashed across the prairie like sudden storms of autumn leaves. Huge, golden eagles and enormous ravens made tempting targets on the telegraph poles, and in ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... stream, the mountain springs were loosed in muddy torrents, and the river roared, swollen and turbid, past the "holt" under the trailing alder-twigs. The moorhens came back from the ponds where they had nested in April and May; the wild duck and the teal flew south from oversea, and in the night descended circling to the pool; a dabchick from the wild gorge down-river took up ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... close congener of the whitefish, but finer in flavour and very fat. Indeed, the best fed dogs we had seen were those summering here. The lake, where we struck it, was literally covered with pin-tail ducks and teal; but it is not a good moose country, and consequently the food supply of the ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... of canvas in the air. This hidden pond has a narrow grassy edge, where a few willows and poplars lend their fickle shade to a bank of turf which some lazy or pensive charcoal-burner must have made for his enjoyment. The frogs hop about, the teal bathe in the pond, the water-fowl come and go, a hare starts; you are the master of this delicious bath, decorated with iris and bulrushes. Above your head the trees take many attitudes; here the trunks twine down like boa-constrictors, there the beeches stand erect as a Greek column. The ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... came home, hungry and happy as a hunter ought to be, with perhaps half a dozen brace of spike-tailed grouse (the common "chicken" of the Northwestern States) or ten or a dozen duck—mallard, widgeon, pintail, two kinds of teal, with, it might be, a couple of red-heads or canvas-backs,—or, not improbably, a magnificent Canada ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... finger is on the trigger, and when too late to alter my intention, a duck and mallard rise from among the rushes and wheel round my head. One barrel is fortunately left, and the drake comes tumbling to the ground. Three or four pheasants, another couple of woodcocks, a few more snipes, a teal or two, and half a dozen rabbits picked up at various intervals, complete the day's sport, and I return home, better pleased with myself and my dogs than if we had compassed the destruction of all the hares in the county, or assisted at the immolation ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... drowsy contemplation, over distant pools; storks and herons, single, or arranged, as it were, in military array, accompanied them; and prodigious masses of white birds glittered in the sun on the verge of the marshy plain. Then the water was alive with cormorants, geese, ducks, divers, teal, coot, that swam about in amazing numbers, or, startled at the slightest noise, flew generally at a cautious distance overhead. Birds of prey were of course likewise numerous—hawks, kites, vultures; and whole flights of large, black crows went by now and then, cawing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... mighty pretty girl out in Jamaicy a-waitin' to be spliced as soon as he comes to port; and she's a cousin of his, with a fine property; and he'll invite all the officers of his ship to the wedding and take 'em teal shooting next ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... we made a march of twenty-four miles, and then halted at about 1 P. M. on the North Solomon River. This day we killed three buffaloes, two antelopes, two raccoons, and three teal ducks. Near our camp, which we named Camp Leonard Jerome, was a beaver dam some six feet high and twenty yards wide; it was near the junction of two streams, and formed a pond of ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... and you writ like a Jew; Which, good Mister Dean, I can't think so fair, Therefore turn about to the right, as you were; Then if with true courage your ground you maintain, My fame is immortal, when Jonathan's slain: Who's greater by far than great Alexander, As much as a teal surpasses a gander; As much as a game-cock's excell'd by a sparrow; As much as a coach is below a wheelbarrow: As much and much more as the most handsome man Of all the whole world is exceeded by Dan. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... pulling contrariwise; had a quarrel. So then I ran crying, to tell some gabbling fool like myself what I had no business to tell out o' doors except to the saints, and there was one of our precious canals in the way; do they take us for teal? Oh, how tempting it did look! Says I to myself, 'Sith he has let me go out of his door quarrelled, he shall see me drowned next, and then he will change his key. He will blubber a good one, and I shall look down from heaven' (I forgot ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... out one, "take dat; larn you for teal my wittal!"—then a sharp crack, as if he had smote the culprit across the pate; whereupon, like a shot, a black fellow, in a handsome livery, trundled down, pursued by another servant with a large silver ladle in his hand, with which he was belabouring the fugitive ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... bird was of a species, that at first sight appeared to be a teal. It went in small flocks, and as it got on the wing made a long shrill plaintive kind of note. The deep glossy rifle-green colour of their back, and the transparent streak of white across the wing, gave them a most beautiful appearance, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... for the matter of that, white men—do not like to ride in on a man who is cool and means shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping backwards, having altered their course as quickly as so many teal ducks. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... day before; he weighed with his hand a quarter, to make the cellarer admire its weight; near the buck lay two kids, a good number of hares and partridges; while another porter opened hampers filled with every species of marsh fowl and birds of passage, such as wild duck, woodcock, teal, plovers, etc. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... what de name is," answered the old woman, "but a lady cum to my cabin one night wid a berry sick gal chile and de leetle boy, and next day de gal die, and in de ebening some police come and take away de lady because 'she 'teal money,' and dey lef de dead chile and de libing ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... now bare, broken by numerous nullahs worn by the torrents in the rainy season, but now nearly dry. Here and there the party had to ford a jhil—an extensive shallow lake formed by the rains. Desmond tried a shot or two at the flights of teal that floated on these ponds; but they were so wild that he could never approach within range. Towards evening, after passing the little village of Amboa, they came to a grove of peepuls filled with green parrots and monkeys screaming ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... some observation to his daughter, from whence he glided into some commonplace though respectful remark to Owen, and at length engaging him in some slight, local conversation, he led the way to the account of a spot on the peninsula of Penthryn, where teal abounded, and concluded with begging Owen to allow him to show him the exact place, saying that whenever the young Squire felt so inclined, if he would honour him by a call at his house, he would take him across in his boat. While Owen listened, his attention was not so much absorbed as ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fowls, green geese, grouse, hares, larks, moor-game, partridges, pheasants, pigeons, rabbits, snipes, teal, turkey, wheat-ears, widgeon, wild ducks, wild ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Plutarch, and one or two more Of the best wits that lived in the age before; With a dish of roast mutton, not venison or teal, And clean, though coarse, linen at every meal. May ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... as amazingly indecent until she scurried through her magazines again and saw that its construction, as compared with others, was most conservative. Even so she shrank at sight of herself below the line of sunburn, for she was ringed about like a blue-winged teal, the demarcation being more pronounced because of the natural whiteness of her skin. The year previous Doret had brought her from the coast a Spanish shawl, which a salt-water sailor had sold him, and which had lain ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... compeers, Was Brian from his infant years; A moody and heart-broken boy, Estranged from sympathy and joy Bearing each taunt which careless tongue On his mysterious lineage flung. Whole nights he spent by moonlight pale To wood and stream his teal, to wail, Till, frantic, he as truth received What of his birth the crowd believed, And sought, in mist and meteor fire, To meet and know his Phantom Sire! In vain, to soothe his wayward fate, The cloister oped her pitying gate; In vain the learning of the age Unclasped the sable-lettered page; ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... got high cheek bones and teeth like a squirrel. Alla was pensive all through the first act, and while she was making her change from a lady-in-waiting to a bathing girl she remarked that she was going to write an ode—past tense of I O U, I guess—entitled 'Thoughts on Hearing Ben Teal Conduct a Chorus Rehearsal.' They won't let ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... amber channel into a shallow lagoon lined on each side by the high tufted reeds, but the reeds were so thin we could see through them to lakes on each side. A whirr above our heads and a flock of teal almost touched us with their wings. Simultaneously all three dropped paddles—all three were speechless. The air was full of voices. You could not hear yourself think. We lapped the canoe close in hiding to the thin lining of reeds. I asked, "Have those ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... dash on Antwerp shipyards, destroy one German submarine and damage another; German aviators aim bombs and arrows at British freighter Teal, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and a second later two shots rang out in rapid succession. Quite a bunch of teal had swung into the avenue, heading for the marsh. They were just everlastingly hurrying, as Ralph said, and while Bones succeeded in knocking down a couple, one only wounded, which he never did find, he declared he ought to be ashamed for not ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... account of the birds of which drawings or specimens have been obtained from Port Jackson or from Norfolk Island. Wild ducks, teal, quails, and other common species are numerous in both places, and the variety, as well as number of the small birds is considerable. Birds of the Cassowary or Emu kind have very frequently been seen; but they are so ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... coffee and tea, were regularly distributed to the sailors morning and evening; and as it was important to live on meat, they shot ducks and teal, which abounded ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... she had explained, "is short of taxes on his Fawquear lands. It's a desperate moment with him." Yet in two days the Judge was shooting blue-winged teal at the mouth of the Acco-tink, and his entire indifference to his family set Reybold to thinking whether the Virginia husband and father was anything more than a forgetful savage. The boarders, however, made very merry over the absent unknown. If the beefsteak was tough, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... hour 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 allowed them to have a shot, or rather ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the morning after Stanley's departure, leaving the troopers lounging in camp, started out with a shot-gun to look for ducks. He passed the first bend up-stream, and working his way toward a small pond thickly fringed with alders, where he had often seen teal and mallards, attempted to crawl ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Nesonetta) and the Blue Mountain Duck (Hymenolaemus). Among the most interesting of the non-endemic forms, are the Paradise Duck or Sheldrake (Casarca variegata), the Brown Duck (Anas chlorotis), the Shoveller or Spoonbill Duck (Rhynchaspis variegata), and the Scaup or Black Teal (Fuligula Novae-Zealandiae)." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... lips, hymning the marshlands. And into her song came crying her yearning for home, and for the sound of the shout of the North Wind, masterful and proud, with his lovely lady the Snow; and she sang of tales that the rushes murmured to one another, tales that the teal knew and the watchful heron. And over the crowded streets her song went crying away, the song of waste places and of wild free lands, full of wonder and magic, for she had in her elf-made soul the song of the birds and the roar of the organ ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... off just under the window, and Jeanne gave a little cry. It was the comte shooting teal, and his wife called him in. There was the splash of oars, the grating of a boat against the stone steps and then the comte came in, followed by two dogs of a reddish hue, which lay down on the carpet before the door, while the water ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... to work, talking all the time about wild duck and teal, and the price of guns; but by the time he had put last night's blunders straight, the front door bell rang, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... New Scotland Yard in London took a little more time, and several arguments with bored overseas operators who, apparently, had nothing better to do than to confuse the customers. But Malone finally managed to get Assistant Commissioner C. E. Teal, who promised to check on Malone's ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... at a time when it was dry, quantities of earth were dug up from the bottom and thrown on the mound inside. It was in appearance something like a prehistoric earthwork. In winter as a rule it became full of water and was a favourite haunt, especially at night, of flocks of teal, also duck of a few other kinds—widgeon, pintail, and shoveller. In summer it gradually dried up, but a few pools of muddy water usually remained through all the hot season and were haunted by the solitary ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... bear—a sluggish creature looking like a small bear; the bandicoot, a small animal with a pig's head and snout; the native cat; cockatoos, parrots, eagles, hawks, owls, parroquets, wild turkey, quail, native pheasants, teal, native companions, water-hens, and the black swan and the opossum. Of these the wild turkey affords the best fun. You have to stalk them in a buggy, and drive in a gradually narrowing circle round ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... noise they made. What is most remarkable in these is, that the end of their beaks is soft, and of a skinny, or more properly, cartilaginous substance. The fourth sort is something bigger than a teal, and all black except the drake, which has some white feathers in his wing. There are but few of this sort, and we saw them no where but in the river at the head of the bay. The last sort is a good deal ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... of the deeper water, are fleets of the Anatidae, the Coromandel teal[1], the Indian hooded gull[2], the Caspian tern, and a countless variety of ducks and smaller fowl—pintails[3], teal[4], red-crested pochards[5], shovellers[6], and terns.[7] Pelicans[8] in great numbers resort to the mouths of the rivers, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... had risen, and it was a bright day with a blue sky, and we were thinking of taking our departure, when two birds with extended necks and outstretched wings, glided rapidly over our heads. I fired, and one of them fell almost at my feet. It was a teal, with a silver breast, and then, in the blue space above me, I heard a voice, the voice of a bird. It was a short, repeated, heart-rending lament; and the bird, the little animal that had been spared began to turn round in the blue sky, over our heads, looking ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Englishman's compradore, who charges his master, on a moderate calculation, four times what he gave; so that, by the time the Englishman's dinner is on his table, it costs him no trifle. Game is plentiful only in winter, which sets in in November. Wild ducks, teal, pheasants, partridges, snipe, with an occasional deer, are to be had, all fat and in prime order, at this season. The Chinese bullock is a compact little animal, and, when fattened, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... up a list of game that had already been shot for ration purposes, nearly all by Hedley, who was our chief reliance as a hunter, and the following is the account up to 11th December:—50 parrots (corellas and galars), 350 ducks (black ducks, teal, whistling ducks, wood ducks and widgeons), 150 pigeons (principally flock), 11 geese, 4 turkeys, 8 spoonbills, 7 water hens, 2 shags, 1 emu, 1 native companion, making a total of 584 birds, and in addition we had consumed 100 fish. All of them were shot for actual ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Hooded Merganser Mallard Pintail Black Duck Widgeon Green-winged Teal Blue-winged Teal Shoveler Wood Duck Redhead Canvas-back Broadbill Lesser Scaup Duck Whistler Buffle-head Ruddy Duck Old Squaw Harlequin American Eider King Eider Black Coot Sea Coot White-winged Scoter Canada Goose Greater Snow Goose Blue Goose ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis |
