"Wagtail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Crow, the Woodpecker, The Wren and the Eagle, The Blackbird and Swallow, The Jackdaw and Starling, And the wonderful Peacock; The Lapwing and Peewit, The bold Yellowhammer, The bad Willy-wagtail, The Raven so awful, And the Cock with his Hens; Stone-checker, Hedge-sparrow, And Lint-white and Lark, The Tom-tit and Linnet, And brisk little Sparrow, The King-fisher too, And my ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... feather from his beard—apparently a water- wagtail's—and appeared to reflect a moment. He held the soft feather tenderly between a thumb and finger that were thick as a walking-stick and stained with roadside mud and yellow with ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... take a hearty draught of the best, despicando grenovillibus, in despite of the frogs, whose fair coarse bebuskined stockings shall be set apart for the little green geese or mewed goslings, which, fattened in a coop, take delight to sport themselves at the wagtail game, waiting for the beating of the metal and heating of the wax by the slavering drivellers ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... stricken by them, striding along between the whin bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water to pluck the wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms perfumed the air as he crushed them, now stopping to watch the water-wagtail by the ponds as he descanted upon the powers of that enchanted bird—powers, like many human endowments, more glorious than pleasant, if it is sober truth, as Borrow would gravely tell, that the gipsy lad who knocks a water-wagtail ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Wagtail, Gelid, and Bangs, three British officers, stationed at the West Indies, capital fellows, who finding their time hang heavy on their hands, had procured leave of absence, and accompanied me in my cruise, which though somewhat dangerous it is true, still offered ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... of the tail-feathers certainly give half the force to his leap. It is in this action that he is put among the motacillae, or wagtails; but the ornithologists have no real business to put him among them. The swing of the long tail feathers in the true wagtail is entirely consequent on its motion, not impulsive of it—the tremulous shake is after alighting. But the robin leaps with wing, tail, and foot, all in time, and all helping each other. Leaps, I say; and you check at the word; and ought to check: you look at a bird hopping, and the motion is ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... same afterwards in Scotland, where an old Highland gillie, describing his experience of the Yule brothers, said: "I was liking to take out Sir George, for he takes the time to enjoy the hills, but (plaintively), the Kornel is no good, for he's just as restless as a water-wagtail!" If there be any mal de l'ecritoire corresponding to mal du pays, Yule ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
