"Humming bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earth—the flowers sent up a grateful fragrance on the evening air—the few singing birds of the woods poured forth their notes of melody—the blue jay screamed among the crimson buds of the maple, and the humming bird gleamed through the emerald sprays of the ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... search for a cooler retreat. The mockbird of Carolina is a fine bold creature, which mimics the various voices of the forest, both in captivity and in the enjoyment of natural freedom. The red bird is exceedingly beautiful, and has a soft melodious note, but with few variations. The humming bird is remarkable for its small size, flies from flower to flower like a bee, and is sometimes caught by children while lying buried in a large flower it is sucking out the juice. Its nest is very curious, and discovers amazing art and contrivance. These are some of the feathered inhabitants ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... Tea, etc., prepared by the young folks, and the young ladies serve it out; only one service. Engaged to visit at Mr. Clarke's whose daughter is engaged to Jonathan Bowker, she is a pleasing unaffected person. On returning from Chapel I expressed a very great wish to see a humming bird. Mr. B. said they were often about some flowers near the pump; just coming to the house I observed one not much larger than a large bee, going into one of the red flowers ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... source,[7] a lake, on the banks of which he saw innumerable swans, geese, and ducks. Wild parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the diet of the travellers. As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever beheld in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... a chauffeur who gets drunk the one day of the year when you need him most!" he muttered under his breath, as with the same exquisitely sensitive fingers that could have dissected like a caress the nervous system of a humming bird, or re-set unbruisingly the broken wing of a butterfly, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds of infuriate brute-strength against the calm, chronic, mechanical stubbornness of that auto crank. "Damn!" he swore on the upward pull. "Damn!" he gasped on the downward ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... fastened on his acorn helmet, with its beautiful plume from the humming bird's breast; then he donned his close-fitting vest, made of the skin of the prickly-pear—the sharp points bristling terror to invaders. On his left arm he carried his trusty shield, made of the back of the golden beetle, and his right hand grasped his sharp blade, fashioned ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... dad, Bentley, and he'd do almost anything I asked him so long as it was honest ... and he could switch the noses of a mosquito and a humming bird so skillfully that the humming bird would go looking for a sleeping cop and the mosquito would start building a ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... serious one, from the quiet, unquestioned care of a schoolgirl, to the guardianship of a bright, full-winged butterfly of humanity. That does not half express it. For to the airy uncertainty of butterfly motions, his ward certainly added the intense activities of a humming bird, and the jealous temper, without the useful proclivities, of a honey bee. I think Mr. Falkirk likened her to all these in his meditations; and his brows knit themselves into a persistent frown as he walked. For all that, when the wheels of Mme. Lasalle's carriage grated on the gravel sweep, Mr. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... of course in profile, is in the ghth [sic: eighth] notes. This gives meaning to the decorative pattern of the passage. And what charm, buoyancy, and sweetness there is in this caprice! It has the tantalizing, elusive charm of a humming bird in full flight. The human element is almost eliminated. We are in the open, the sun blazes in the blue, and all is gay, atmospheric, and illuding. Even where the tone deepens, where the shadows grow ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Dunkelbergs left us I stood looking down the road on which they were disappearing and saw in the sky and the distant, purple hills and sloping meadows the beauty of the world. The roaring aeroplane of a humming bird whirled about me and sped through the hollyhock towers. I followed and watched the tiny air-ship sticking its prow in their tops, as if it would have me see how wonderful they were, before it sped away. Breast deep in the flowers I forgot my loneliness for a few minutes. But ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... largest confectionery stores in Stuttgart; and, true enough, though Lent was but half over, there they were, a pretty show. Eggs, of course, in quantities and of all sizes, from that of an ostrich to a humming bird's, made of chocolate or of sugar, and gayly decorated with little ribbons and pictures. Then there were fat little unfledged chickens, some just emerging from their shells, some not an inch long, and others large as life; pure white lambs, with ribbons and bells round their necks; ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Lark Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole Whip-poor-will Night Hawk Pigeon Hawk Sparrow Hawk Mourning Dove Rose-breasted Grosbeak Evening Grosbeak Purple Finch Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Bobolink Mocking Bird Starling Purple Grackle Humming Bird Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush Wilson Thrush Water Thrush Chimney Swift Bank Swallow Rough-winged Swallow Cliff Swallow Barn Swallow Song Sparrow Tree Sparrow Blue ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... in Barlow's mind since he had seen the big gun going forth at night; that perhaps the plot that was just a whisper, fainter than the hum of a humming bird's wing, was moving ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... humming bird is said to run this risk for the purpose of picking the crocodile's teeth. The same circumstance is related of the lapwing, as a fact to which he was witness, by Paul ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... insects and reptiles—lizards, spiders, snakes,—with vast tortoises which seem of immemorial age, and are coated with seaweed and the slime of the ocean. If there are any birds, it is the strange and heavy penguin, the passing albatross, or the Mother Cary's chicken, which has been called the humming bird of ocean, and here finds a place for its young. By night these birds come for their repose; at earliest dawn they take wing and hover over the sea, leaving the isle deserted. The only busy or beautiful life which always surrounds it ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... save him. They demonstrated, with a Pencil and a Piece of Paper, that she was just an ordinary, everyday Baby Doll with a Second Reader intelligence and the Spiritual Caliber of a Humming Bird. They proved that exactly the same kind were scattered through every Department Store, working for ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... satisfy. There is no hope, however vague, that the soul cannot define, and no aspiration, however high, that the wings of the spirit cannot reach. Therefore be patient and strive. To others I would say: Be content. All birds cannot be eagles. The nightingale has a song and the humming bird a plumage the eagle can never possess. The nightingale may sing to the stars, the humming bird to the flowers, but the eagle, whose tireless eyes gaze into the heart of day, is uncompanioned in its lofty loneliness amid the ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... exclaimed the gentleman who frequently blessed himself, some article of his apparel, or some other object. "There he goes now, flying over the house in that Humming Bird airship of his. He said he was going to try out a new magneto he'd invented, and it seems to be working all right. He said he wasn't going to take much of a flight, and I guess he'll soon be back. Look at him! Isn't ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... much to look at, but it is the very first I have seen here. He also describes another moth he saw to-day as fluttering in front of a flower without alighting on it, but hovering and thrusting its proboscis into a long-tubed flower. I once saw a similar moth at Torphins (this had been the Humming bird moth which I have ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... idols of the market-place, contemptuously indifferent to the tyranny of public opinion, with the fixed principle in his mind—almost his only fixed principle—that the majority is always wrong, Remy de Gourmont goes upon his way; passionately tasting, like a great satin-bodied humming bird, every exquisite flower in the garden of human ideas. The wings of his thoughts, as he hovers, beat so quickly as to be almost invisible; and thus it is that in reading him—great scholar of style as he is—we do not think of his words but only of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... had been caught and sent back to toil in other and various hells. He had been triced up and lashed till he fainted, had been revived and lashed again. He had been in the dungeon ninety days at a time. He had experienced the torment of the straightjacket. He knew what the humming bird was. He had been farmed out as a chattel by the state to the contractors. He had been trailed through swamps by blood hounds. Twice he had been shot. For six years on end he had cut a cord and a half of wood each day in a convict ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... horrible yell from the hole. Daggett held up what seemed like a yaller potato. "Hooray!" says he. "Ain't that a humming bird?" ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... no perishing ones conveniently near for me to save. I am of little more use in the world than a humming bird." ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... Lincoln, Hermit Thrush, Vesper Sparrow, Robin Redbreast, Song Sparrow, Scarlet Tanager, Summer Redbird, Blue Heron, Humming Bird, Yellowbird, Whip-poor-will, Water Wagtail, Woodpecker, Pigeon Woodpecker, Indigo Bird, Yellowthroat, Wilson's Thrush, Chickadee, Kingbird, Swallow, Cedar Bird, Cowbird, Martin, Veery, Chewink, Vireo, ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... beautiful parrots and parroquets; a new species, apparently, of the coote, and also of the rail, and magpie; and a most beautiful small bird, brown, with a yellow breast and yellow on the wing; it seemed to be a species of humming bird: there was also a black bird, like a sheerwater, with a hooked bill, which burrows in the ground. Numbers of ants were seen, which appeared the only insect at this place, except the common earth worm. The soil is of a sandy nature, and fresh water extremely ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... from a honeysuckle growing over the very door. But, indeed, all my birds look upon me as if I were a mere tenant at will, and they were landlords. With shame I confess it, I have been bullied even by a hummingbird. This spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree of its lichens, one of these little zigzagging blurs came purring toward me, couching his long bill like a lance, his throat sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off from ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... perceived a post, and something waving on it, which was the scalp. Now and then the air was rent with the Sau-sau-quan, for they were dancing the war dance around it. Before he could be perceived, he turned himself into a No-noskau-see (hummingbird), ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... a first class hotel, and a luxurious bed aided the ministrations of nature, so that it was after ten o'clock in the morning when he whistled his way to his bath and then carefully selected a clean outfit for the day's work. He hummed like a particularly lucky hummingbird while he shaved, and felt like hoppity-skipping down to the grill room, where his healthy appetite might have full play. He found himself a nicely cushioned alcove through whose window he could look out on the clear, brilliant morning with its dazzle of snow, and at the same ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... length as if she were a hummingbird lighting upon a flower, she began to circle slowly around the fire and sing. The melody was in a minor key and full of weird pathos. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... safe," thought Rebecca, remembering all these unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. "It's just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
