"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
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