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Bird's-nest   Listen
noun
Bird's-nest, Bird's nest  n.  
1.
The nest in which a bird lays eggs and hatches her young.
2.
(Cookery) The nest of a small swallow (Collocalia nidifica and several allied species), of China and the neighboring countries, which is mixed with soups. Note: The nests are found in caverns and fissures of cliffs on rocky coasts, and are composed in part of algae. They are of the size of a goose egg, and in substance resemble isinglass.
3.
(Bot.) An orchideous plant with matted roots, of the genus Neottia (Neottia nidus-avis).
Bird's-nest pudding, a pudding containing apples whose cores have been replaced by sugar.
Yellow bird's nest, a plant, the Monotropa hypopitys.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bird's-nest" Quotes from Famous Books



... understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh—whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a cloudy day 'longside ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... light canoes; In one placed Christian and his comrades twain— But she and Torquil must not part again. She fixed him in her own.—Away! away! They cleared the breakers, dart along the bay, And towards a group of islets, such as bear The sea-bird's nest and seal's surf-hollowed lair, They skim the blue tops of the billows; fast They flew, and fast their fierce pursuers chased. 230 They gain upon them—now they lose again,— Again make way and menace o'er the main; And now the two canoes in chase divide, And follow different courses o'er the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... high-built cities rise around you; Here the cliffs that tower east and west, Honeycombed with human habitations, Have no hiding for the sea-bird's nest: Here the river flows begrimed and troubled; Here the hurrying, panting vessels fume, Restless, up and down the watery highway, While a thousand chimneys ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... age. I got it good an' high, so's it could straddle stumps good. They's so many tree-stumps in our woods, an' I know Sonny ain't a-goin' to drive nowhere but in the woods so long ez they's a livin' thin' to scurry away at his approach, or a flower left in bloom, or a last year's bird's nest to gether. An' the little Sweetheart, why, she's got so thet she's ez anxious to fetch home things to study over ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest—I wish they had been addled, I do indeed—we may expect to have the whole place turned topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, faith (as Tanty says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent school—and of these, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... birds and animals revived. He had favourite dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird's nest upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went round watching the progress which the birds made with their building, carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted with the habits of British birds, the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... not considered safe for them to carry the money to their own home—he brought also some small token for "Jim's second young lady," whereby I was understood; now a couple of daisies, a rose, or two or three violets, or a few sprigs of mignonnette, begged from Dutch Johnny; now a bird's nest, manufactured by himself out of twine and a few twigs; and once a huge turnip which he had seen fall from a market-cart as it passed on its way down the avenue, and picking it up, after vainly trying to make the carter hear, had laid it ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... drawn toward the abate Crescenti; and the afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls, like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a ruined bastion. This interior, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... pretty hamlet at Manitou stands a cottage half hidden like a bird's nest among the trees. I saw only the peaks of gables under green boughs; and I wondered when I was informed that the lovely spot had been long untenanted, and wondered still more when I learned that it was the property of ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... at this juncture, while he looked over the edge of his cot on the stramash below, "saw ever any man the like of that? Why, see there—there, just under your candle, Tom—a bird's nest floating about with a mavis in it, as ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... now explained. The man had undoubtedly possessed the bird's nest which communicates its charm of invisibility to its possessor, though not equally so to his shadow; and this nest he had now thrown away. I looked all round, and soon discovered the shadow of this invisible nest. I sprang ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... begin. Did you ever see the little village of Newbury, in New England? I dare say you never did; for it was just one of those out of the way places where nobody ever came unless they came on purpose: a green little hollow, wedged like a bird's nest between half a dozen high hills, that kept off the wind and kept out foreigners; so that the little place was as straitly sui generis as if there were not another in the world. The inhabitants were all of that respectable ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Lawrence' cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife: Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark: I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go; I'll to dinner; hie you ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... by a spot for the hundredth time, he found a bird's nest. It must have been there for long, and yet he had not seen it; and so he learned how blind he was, and he exclaimed: "Oh, if only I could see, then I might understand these things! If only I knew! ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... basket full of leaves and flowers, and together we have dressed it to perfection. There are four vases of roses, a bowl full of chrysanthemums, and red leaves round all my pictures. The leaves are Virginia creeper. It doesn't last long, but is lovely while it lasts. Helen also brought a bird's nest which the gardener found in a hawthorn-tree on the lawn. It hangs on a branch, and she has tied it to one side of my bookshelves. On the opposite side is another nest quite different,—a great, gray hornets' nest, as big as a band-box, which came from the mountains a ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... is certain, that the sight of a bitch nursing her puppies, a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, screaming, with their open mouths and their enormous ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... as he said this, to a little tuft floating round and round in a small eddy, made by a turn of the brook, just above where they had crossed. He turned his horse towards it. "It is a bird's nest," said he. ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott

... man, having been endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving. A bird's nest is, indeed, a perfect structure; yet the nest of a swallow of the nineteenth century is not at all more commodious or elegant than those that were built amid the rafters of Noah's ark. But if we compare the wigwam of the savage with the temples and palaces ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... how can I let you go?" Says sweet Greane, weeping "Who will climb with me The rocks to find the bird's nest? who will play At arms, forgetting that I am a girl, And ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... Sassafras, Precautions against Fire, Precipitate Ointment, Preserves, Candied, Preserves, Jellies, &c., Pudding of Corn Meal. Pudding of whole Rice, Pudding, Apple, Pudding, Arrow Root, Pudding, Baked Beef, Pudding, Baked, Pudding, Balloon, Pudding, Beef Steak, Pudding, Bird's Nest, Pudding, Boiled Indian, Pudding, Boiling, Pudding, Bread, Pudding, Butter, Pudding, Chicken, Pudding, Coaco nut, Pudding, Custard Bread, Pudding, Custard Hasty, Pudding, Elkridge, Huckleberry, Pudding, Huckleberry, Pudding, Lemon, Pudding, New England Hasty, ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... fall, probably of some heavy stones. There are several indentures in the walls for fire-places, which are built of cut masonry; from the angle of one a song sparrow flew out uttering an anxious note. We searched and discovered the bird's nest, with five spotted, dusky eggs in it. How strange! in the midst of ruin and decay, the sweet tokens of hope, love and harmony! What cared the child of song if her innocent offspring were reared amidst these mouldering relics of the past, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... who says, "Thy mercies extend to a bird's nest," or, "for goodness be Thy name remembered," or he who says, "we give thanks, we give thanks,"(29) is to be silenced. If a man pass up to the ark (where the rolls of the Law are kept) and make a mistake, another must pass up in his stead; nor may he in such a moment refuse. "Where does he ...
— Hebrew Literature

... now," said her father, "might as well climb back and finish your dinner. You can't find a bird's nest after dark—and you can see that it's almost dark now. You wait till morning and I'll show you ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... a few years ago a woman was living who professed to have been down there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand woman of rank, who was lucky enough to come back from the abode ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. (See ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... want to run about there? Afterwards you will be tired, and no longer able to raise your arm; stay here, and sit down beside me." The son, however, went into the forest, ate his bread, was very merry and peered in among the green branches to see if he could discover a bird's nest anywhere. So he went up and down to see if he could find a bird's nest until at last he came to a great dangerous-looking oak, which certainly was already many hundred years old, and which five men could not have spanned. He stood still and looked at it, and thought, "Many ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... at the quarry. She went for pennyroyal long ago and then Phares came and he went over after her, but I saw him go on the way to town a bit ago, so I guess she's still over there. Guess she's stumbling around after a bird's nest or picking some weeds that ain't no good. I don't see why she stays ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... at the head of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and dragged him out to see the bird's nest behind ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... Spinney," said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a slope at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the opposite slope; "the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end. And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and look at it ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... which show so plainly the marks of Reason that some degree of intelligent adjustment to the environment must be allowed to the animal in the acquiring of these functions. For example, we are told that some of the muscular movements involved in the instincts—such, for example, as the bird's nest-building—are so complex and so finely adjusted to an end, that it is straining belief to suppose that they could have arisen gradually by reflex adaptation alone. There is also a further difficulty with the reflex theory which has seemed ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... second day, some rashes recently torn up, were seen near the vessels. A plank, evidently hewn by an ax, a stick skillfully carved by some cutting instrument, a bough of hawthorn in blossom,—and lastly, a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs, on which the parent bird was sitting amid the gently-rolling waves,—were seen floating past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living and inanimate witnesses of their approach to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... went to see her cousin the hare. And there came a hunter, and the cat scrambled up the hill, further up, up a tree, and there she found a bird's nest. But the hare ran down the hill, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... off her nest in an orange-tree,—till my hands were full. It is too bad I have forgotten how many pecan-trees he had planted, and how many sheep he kept. A well-regulated memory would have held fast to such figures: mine is certain only that there were four eggs in the mocking-bird's nest. Mr. G. was a man of enterprise, at any rate; a match for any Yankee, although he had come to Florida not from Yankeeland, but from northern Georgia. I hope all his crops are still thriving, especially his white roses and ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... of wild flowers, seven various specimens of fungi, nine different sorts of berries, twelve species of birds noticed, also rabbits and squirrel, one bird's nest and one perfect fossil—not a bad record for an autumn foray!" said Linda, proudly ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give her a ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... wild bird's nest From every prying e'e, With fairy fingers ye invest In woven flowers the lea; Around the lover's blissful hour Ye draw your leafy screen, And shade those in your rosy bower, Who love to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and the seashore for those small treasures, without money and without price, with which nature is lavish toward the poor who love her and attend her carefully, such as the first flowers of the season, nuts and seed-vessels, and sometimes an empty bird's nest and a stray bright feather and bits of bright stones, which might, for her baby fancy, be as good as my brother's gold and silver, and shells, and red and russet moss. All these I offered her from time to time as reverently ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... Georgetown," she wrote, "and I am glad that it is so, praying daily that you may be as happy with Dr. Grant as to remember the sad past only as some dream from which you have awakened. I thank you for your invitation to visit Linwood, and when my work is over I may come for a few weeks and rest in your bird's nest of a home. Thank God the war is ended; but my boys need me yet, and until the last crutch has left the hospital, and the last worn figure gone, I shall stay where duty lies. What my life will henceforth be I do not know, but ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... making a dash upon her; for her frock was unfastened, and slipping off at the shoulders, and her head looked like a last year's bird's nest. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May

... been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom's persistent coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird's nest without caring to show it to Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself, without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, "Maggie, shouldn't you like one?" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest; Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused, To soar above the clouds and front the stars? Descend from your high venture, and to scenes Of the heart's common history ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... Oh, no! He chose the very steepest places to slide down. And as he went slipping down the steepest cliff of all he came upon something that gave him a great surprise. For he saw, built right in the crack of a ledge, a big bird's nest made of sticks. It was the biggest bird's nest Cuffy had ever seen; and in it were two great white eggs. They were the greatest white eggs Cuffy ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey

... the edge of the barb-wire, and what looked like part of a tree trunk turned into a man-sized bird's nest. The sentry in the nest had his back to us, and was peering intently down through the branches of the tree tops. He remained so long motionless that I thought he was not aware of our approach. But he had heard us. Only it was no part of his orders to make abrupt movements. With infinite ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... he is tempted to lie, to conceal his fault and avoid punishment; and here again we see how one sin leads to another. The temptations to cruelty are many. Sometimes they appear in the form of a bird's nest, placed by a fond and loving mother on the high bough of a tree, to secure her ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... they gamboled in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild grasses—and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes they found a bird's nest—but they only peeped into it, they never touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain they loved the wild birds who made the spring and summer weather ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people here, but they haven't drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder who they are and ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie

... bursting from our hearts. We long watched abstractedly the green and slimy water as it was slowly swept beneath the narrow arch of the bridge. It carried along on its surface sometimes the white petals of the lily, and sometimes an empty and downy bird's nest which the wind had blown from a tree. We soon saw the body of a poor little swallow, turned on its back, and with extended wings, floating down. It had, doubtless, been drowned when skimming over the water before its wings were strong enough to bear it on the surface; it reminded us of the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... 1792, I was attending some labourers on my farm, when one of them said to me, "There is a bird's nest upon one of the Coal-slack Hills; the bird is now sitting, and is exactly like a cuckoo. They say that cuckoo's never hatch their own eggs, otherwise I should have sworn it was one." He took me to the spot, it was in an open fallow ground; the bird ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... equally among the sons, the eldest perhaps getting a little more than the others. The girls divide the old beads, cloth, bead-boxes, and various trifles. The male slaves go to the sons, the female slaves to the daughters. Bird's nest caves and bee trees might be divided or shared among all ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... no trace of a garden, but here and there was a fenced in space in which the Roumanians are wont to unload their hay, with a long pole sticking up in the midst of the hay ricks to prevent the wind from carrying it away, or else the hay was piled up on the branch of a living tree like a bird's nest. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... should wonder at myself if it were so. Have we not been all in all to one another from the time when we first peeped into the bird's nest, waded in the brook, ran after the butterflies, and prattled to each other that we would marry fine gentlemen, and played at being ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... dearly like to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed him to approach close enough to ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... and ingeniously arranged with seats in tiers upon an inclined plane that quite a numerous audience can find room within it. The "fauteuils d'orchestre," or orchestra-chairs, are the front row of benches, nearest the stage. The "parterre" is the back rows. There is a little bird's nest of a gallery at the rear of the room, where the spectators cannot stand up without striking the ceiling with their heads. At the sides of the space set apart for the musicians are two queer little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... toy, His sisters' sport, his wild bird's nest; And climbing to his mother's breast, Enjoys ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... oppressed for twelve long years by a semi-barbarian despot, now breathed again, and hailed Sargon as its deliverer, while he on his part was actively engaged in organising his conquest. The voluntary submission of Upiri, King of Dilmun, who lived isolated in the open sea, "as though in a bird's nest," secured to Sargon possession of the watercourses which flowed beyond the Chaldaean lake into the Persian Gulf: no sooner had he obtained it than he quitted the neighbourhood of Dur-Yakin, crossed the Tigris, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... on the second day rushes recently torn up were seen floating near the vessels. A plank hewn by an axe, a carved stick, a bough of hawthorn in blossom, and lastly a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs on which the parent-bird was sitting, were seen swimming past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living witnesses of their approach to land. They were ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... prey. It moves with wonderful stealth and activity, and is enabled by its rapid and silent approach to steal unnoticed on many an unfortunate bird or squirrel, seizing it in its deadly grip before the startled creature can think to escape. Coming across a bird's nest, it makes sad havoc with the eggs or young, often adding the parent bird to his list of victims. Rabbits, partridges, and mice also fall into the marten's "bill of fare," and the list is often further increased by a visit to a poultry yard, when the animal murders and eats all it can and kills ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... funny, snarly head, with fine shreds of hair laced over a smooth shell. Ah, what gleams of colored light shoot through the hair! Here is a bird's nest on a bar, lying side of a wide fan, shaped like a palm leaf; in the plaitings are curled all colors, pink, blue, ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... young rook goes without saying. An older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its glitter drew him too strongly for resistance. I am inclined to suspect that at some time, during the growth of his family tree, there must have occurred a mesalliance, perhaps worse. Possibly a strain of magpie blood?—one knows the character of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one—the only one—the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... Miss Letitia about the fall of the bird's nest which she had noticed on her trip to get Arethusa, and Miss Letitia agreed with her sister that it was a blessing that the wind had blown it down before it rained, else the gutter would surely have flooded again. They discussed with zeal ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's Nest." ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... varied with a pretty baby bunnie, or perhaps a bird's nest of helpless fledglings, but Mary's pet ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... though Riches and Death had a' th' same right to enter a poor man's house without knocking. And saith she to me, saith she, a-filling up o' the room with her finery, like a cuckoo ruffling out its feathers in another bird's nest, saith she, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... of the Rhine, and Clara. Lewis, the Little Emigrant. The Easter Eggs, and Forget-me-not. The Cakes, and the Old Castle. The Hop Blossoms. Christmas Eve. The Carrier Pigeon, the Bird's Nest, etc. The Jewels, and the Redbreast. The Copper Coins and Gold Coins, etc. The Cray-Fish, the Melon, the Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. Godfrey, the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... the highest merit. They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." ... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of whether they rule well or ill, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... give several instances of various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to emigrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of another species than when reared by ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... our sitting-room and shook her turbaned head, saying, "I sure would be afraid to live in this house." "Why," I asked, curious to know what fearful thing she saw in her glance. "Oh, it's so big, and has so many rooms." Our cozy home, so snug, with not an inch of unused room, that we call our "Bird's Nest!" Alas for the people that do not feel at home save in a one-roomed cabin, and do not feel the necessity of work unless they are hungry. I long so, sometimes, for something that will make this people hungry ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various

... Nest Hunting.—A thoughtful person will, of course, be careful in approaching a wild bird's nest, otherwise much mischief may be done in a very short time. I have known "dainty eggs" and "darling baby-birds" to be literally visited to death by well-meaning people, with the best of intentions. The parents become discouraged ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... lecture, any reader who cares for a clue to the farther significances of the title, may find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than mine: and ladder enough also,—if there be either any heavenly, or pure earthly, Love, in his own breast,—to guide him to a pretty bird's nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the Sermons of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... that Mr. Jerome was standing when Sally found him. He had set down the basket of strawberries on the gravel, and had lifted up little Lizzie in his arms to look at a bird's nest. Lizzie peeped, and then looked at her grandpa with round blue eyes, and then ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... hang almost in mid-air. Between Yale and Lytton it hugged the mountain-side on what looked like a shelf of rock directly above the wildest water of the canyon. Crib-work of huge trees, resembling in the distance the woven pattern of a willow basket, projected out over the ledges like a bird's nest hung from some mountain eyrie. The traveller almost expected to see the thing sway and swing to the wind. Then the train would sweep through a tunnel, or swing round a sharp bend, and far up among the summits might be seen a mule-team, or a string of pack-horses ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... would look for a bird's nest in the cliff," suggested Ned. And that was the plan ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... chains as they rankle, thy blood as it runs, But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons— Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird's nest, Drink love in each life-drop that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... Shark's Fins Fine Shell Fish Mandarin Bird's Nest Canton Fish Maw Fish Brain Meat Balls with Rock Fungus Pigeons stewed with Wai Shan ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... dwelling is carpeted in the warmest and softest manner. Even in the same region there is great diversity in the style, neatness, and finish of the nests, as well as in the materials used. Skeins of silk and hanks of thread have frequently been found in the Baltimore Bird's nest, so woven up and entangled that they could not be withdrawn. As such materials could not be obtained before the introduction of Europeans, it is evident that this bird, with the sagacity of a good architect, knows how to select the strongest and best materials for his work. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in flames. I do not think any other ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... roads, whistling as he went, and occasionally tossing his battered cap in the air. He often lingered on his way, now to cut down a particularly tempting switch from the hedge, now to hunt for a possible bird's nest. It was very nearly six o'clock when he reached the back avenue, swung himself over the gate, which was locked, and ran softly on the dewy grass in the direction of the laurel bush. Old Betty had given him ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... of mystery as he replied: "I am not permitted to reveal everything concerning us, dear Leo. Our private life is of no public interest; but I may tell you that our children are bred entirely in the open air. Many an empty bird's nest is used as an elf cradle, for so highly do we esteem pure air, sunshine, and exposure as a means of making our children hardy, that we even accustom them to danger, and let them, like the birds, face the ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... other day we had a snow-storm. It was the first time I ever saw snow. We have a large garden, and there are a great many birds in it. Last summer there was a bird's nest in the ivy, and now the little birds which were born there are coming back. We have beautiful flowers in California, but I would like to see some of the Eastern flowers. I am ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... that the inns were always full of travelers, and that they being hungry, there had sprung up, near by, the shops of butchers, bakers, charcoal dealers, and bird's nest sellers. Since these worthy men could not go naked, tailors, shoemakers and umbrella and fan dealers had settled there, and as they do not sleep in the open air, even in the Celestial Empire, carpenters, masons and thatchers congregated there. Then came ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... little nook almost that can be found in England. A thatched cottage suggests a very rude dwelling indeed; but this had a pleasant parlor and drawing-room, and chambers with lattice-windows, opening close beneath the thatched roof; and the thatch itself gives an air to the place as if it were a bird's nest, or some such simple and natural habitation. The occupants are an elderly clergyman, retired from professional duty, and his sister; and having nothing else to do, and sufficient means, they employ themselves in beautifying this sweet little retreat,— planting new shrubbery, laying out new walks ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... memory drawing him on, he climbed the tree once more. The round moon was getting low now, and the shadows she cast out across the corn were long and weird. But the downpour of her light was still mysterious in its clarity, and in its sheen the porcupine, rolled up like a bird's nest, swung himself luxuriously ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... this is not really "Back Home" we gaze upon when we go there by the train. It is a last year's bird's nest. The nest is there; the birds are flown, the birds of youth, and noisy health, and ravenous appetite, and inexperience. You cannot go "Back Home" by train, but here is the magic wishing-carpet, and here is your transportation in ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... name. Jeanne and Julien would look where he pointed, but see nothing, until at last they discovered something gray, like a mass of stones fallen from the summit. It was a little village, a hamlet of granite hanging there, fastened on like a veritable bird's nest and almost invisible on ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... inner lining is made of the silky down on dandelion-balls woven together with horse-hair. In this dainty nest are laid four or five creamy white eggs, speckled with lilac tints and red-browns. The unwelcome egg of the Cow-bird is often found in the Yellow-bird's nest, but this Warbler builds a floor over the egg, repeating the expedient, if the Cow-bird continues her mischief, until sometimes a third ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various

... displayed by Saloo in the construction of his singular ladder, bethought him of ascending it. He was led to this exploit partly out of curiosity to try what such a climb would be like; but more from a desire to examine the odd nest so discovered—for to him, as to most boys of his age, a bird's nest was a peculiarly attractive object. He thought that Saloo had not sufficiently examined the one first plundered, and that there might be another bird or an egg behind. He was not naturalist enough to know—what the ex-pilot's old Sumatran experience ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... every berry; often ruining a fine bunch, or a number of them, in a short time. I have therefore been compelled to wage a war upon some of the feathered tribe, although they are my especial favorites, and I cannot see a bird's nest robbed. However, there are some who do not visit the vineyard, except for the purpose of destroying our grapes, and these can not complain if we "won't stand it any longer," but take the gun, and retaliate on them. The oriole, the red bird, thrush, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... name for an aboriginal's hut. For other words expressing the same thing, see list under Humpy. In the dialect of the South-East of South Australia oorla means a house, or a camp, or a bird's nest. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... the bird, but we will try to find something instead," said Kallolo, giving me his blowpipe and bow to hold. He then climbed up the tree till he reached the bird's nest, from which he extracted two eggs, and brought them down safety. They were considerably larger than a duck's egg, white and granulated all over, though the bird itself did not appear to be above the size of an ordinary duck. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... Katy. Whisky Jim come plaguey near to gittin' that claim. He got Shamberson on his side, and if Shamberson's brother-in-law hadn't been removed from the Land Office before it was tried, he'd a got it. I'm going to pre-empt and build the cutest little bird's nest for you. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... that Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they assumed to have participated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with unique effect; and Grandma Keeler spoke ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... skirt and the new cap. Annie Bouman is there, too. Even Janzoon Kolp's sister has been admitted, but Janzoon himself has been voted out by the directors, because he killed the stork, and only last summer was caught in the act of robbing a bird's nest, a legal ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... Wilkinsons, they are sittin' there on the sofa keepin' a close eye on each other, and Alex is givin' 'em everything he's got in the line of chatter. They're both payin' the same undivided attention to him that the Board of Aldermen in Afghanistan pays to the primaries in Bird's Nest, Va. Them babies is too busy gazin' on each other and bein' happy, and while that stuff gets silly at times—they is worse ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... from the heaps of these wires commonly set aside by the native servants until they amount to a saleable quantity." Four is the normal number of eggs laid, but I often have found five, and on two occasions six. It is in this bird's nest that ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... buttons and boxes of spools in partnership; and when they would go up the Seine on little excursions on Sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. Then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. That was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up a strip of cloth. And all the things in that corner belonged to Ernest—his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... where you please, I'm in the following mood. Do you know where any of these birds live? Do you think any of them are at home on their nests? If so, we'll call and pay our respects. When I was a horrid boy I robbed a bird's nest, and I often have a twinge of remorse for it." "Do you want to see a robin's nest?" asked ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... collection is a specimen of the taylor bird's nest, composed of a single large leaf, of a fibrous rough, texture, about six inches long independent of the stalk, five inches and a half in breadth, and ending in a point. The sides of this leaf are drawn together so as to meet within three-quarters ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various

... have understood, but he was not listening. He interrupted with a story that had nothing to do with what Feitel was talking about. He told Feitel that last year he saw a bird's nest in a high tree. He tried to reach it, but could not. He tried to knock it down with a stick, but could not. He threw stones at the nest, until he brought down ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... (pl. IV) and the star-like fronds and ruddy drupe of the ie-ie (pl. II) and its kindred, the hala-pepe (pl. III); the scarlet pompons of the lehua (pl. XIII) and ohi'a, with the fruit of the latter (the mountain-apple); many varieties of fern, including that splendid parasite, the "bird's nest fern" [Page 20] (ekaha), hailed by the Hawaiians as Mawi's paddle; to which must be added the commoner leaves and lemon-colored flowers of the native hibiscus, the hau, the breadfruit, the native banana ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... little birds' eggs. Doubtless cuckoos have been shot with eggs in their mouths, perhaps broken in the fall, but I think the eggs they carried were their own, which, after laying, they were on their way to put in some other bird's nest to be hatched, as it is an established fact they do; and because they are very small eggs people think they are those of some other bird that the ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... assisting in spinning. Mothers of three or more children were not compelled to work, as the master felt that their children needed care. From early childhood boys and girls were given excellent training. A boy who robbed a bird's nest or a girl who frolicked in a boisterous manner was severely reprimanded. Separate bedrooms for the two sexes were maintained until they married. The girls passed thru two stages—childhood, and at sixteen they became "gals". Three years later ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... There are entire crow-folk who lead honourable lives—that is to say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... dandelion, but has dark spots in the centre of the disc, and the flower shuts at noon. The wild carrots were forming their "birds' nests"—so soon as the flowering is over the umbel closes into the shape of a cup or bird's nest. The flower of the wild carrot is white; it is made up of numerous small separate florets on an umbel, and in the centre of these tiny florets is a deep crimson one. Getting down towards the sea and the houses now I found a shrub of henbane by the dusty road, dusty itself, grey-green, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... fortress watches, but all else, from Mexia to the last muleteer, think themselves as safe as in the lap of the Blessed Virgin. The plate-fleet stays at Cartagena, because of the illness of its Admiral, Don Juan de Maeda y Espinosa.... I show you, sirs, a bird's nest ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... of a schoolboy; who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest shows it his companion, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... serve a twofold purpose: they not only render the nest beautiful, but they also serve to protect it by making it resemble the limb on which it is placed. It takes a very acute and discriminating eye, indeed, to locate a humming-bird's nest. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... dreadfully sad, others it was so determined a little child could see the force in it, and once he was radiant. That day the Swamp Angel was with him. I can't tell you what she was like. I never saw any one who resembled her. He stopped close here to show her a bird's nest. Then they went on to a sort of flower-room he had made, and he sang for her. By the time he left, I had gotten bold enough to come out on the trail, and I met the big Scotchman Freckles lived with. He saw me catching ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... of a woman who has never in her life suffered from those doubts and fears as to her social position which spoil the manners of most middling people. She is tall, slender, and strong; has dark hair, dressed so as to look like hair and not like a bird's nest or a pantaloon's wig (fashion wavering just then between these two models); has unexpectedly narrow, subtle, dark-fringed eyes that alter her expression disturbingly when she is excited and flashes them wide open; is softly impetuous in her speech and swift in her movements; and is ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the score, are permitted to ply their trade unchecked. I mean to say that there is ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screw and nuts, which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented the wheel. It is only ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... said it must be a field-mouse's nest that some birds had stolen. But in the fall I took the nest home and I saw it was a real bird's nest, all woven round of strong grass with finer kinds for a lining; and there were dead leaves on the outside, so that the top looked like all the rest of the ground. I had often heard that loud singing before, but this was the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... "No bird's nest found so high a spot That he for her could find it not; The eagle's nest from clouds he sundered, And eggs and young he ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... dark wash took them and carried them into streaks of lesser, more fluid light. Even so, if there could have been country silence for five minutes at a time, the running river, the hills so disturbed with light beyond, might have worn some aspect of peace. But even in the high bird's nest of the apartment there was no real silence, only a pretending at silence, like the forced quiet of a child told to keep still in a corner—the two people dining together could talk in whispers, if they ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... A bird's nest in the middle of a meadow is as isolated as if on an island; for the most eager bird student, though he may look and long afar off, will hesitate before he harrows the soul of the owner of the fair waving sea of grass by trampling it down. In such a secure place, among scattered old apple-trees, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... it became a 'rotating haze,' as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The 'haze' now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of the nest. The eggs all disappeared ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... curved stalk, like a miniature Bo-peep crook, enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above the ground, often at only half that height. When there ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Island of Breke—but to give too many details would spoil the intending-reader's pleasure. So, as Hamlet observes, "Breke, Breke my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" The Earth Girl first sees the light, such as it is, in a cavern, and is brought up on raw eggs fresh from the sea-bird's nest, uncooked herbs, and raw fish. No tea, coffee, milk, or liquors of any description, were within reach of this unhappy family of three, consisting of Pa, Ma, and the Infant Phenomenon. How they slaked their thirst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various

... out alone," said she; "I have such a prize;" and she held in her hand a bird's nest, with its three little ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... the least about it you went on, contrariwise, to tender me the advice you did. This makes it evident that I have laboured under a mistaken idea! Had I not made this discovery the other day, I wouldn't be speaking like this to your very face to-day. You told me a few minutes back to take bird's nest congee; but birds' nests are, I admit, easily procured; yet all on account of my sickly constitution and of the relapses I have every year of this complaint of mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, with ginseng and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... I love the best, A little brown house like a ground-bird's nest, Hid among grasses, and vines, and trees, Summer retreat of the birds ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... of the pointed fir tops and shone full upon a tall spruce tree in the wilderness, a dark object, looking not unlike a great bird's nest upon one of the branches, suddenly came to life. Kagh, the porcupine, had awakened from his dreamless slumber and, though scarce two hours had elapsed since his last satisfying meal upon tender poplar shoots, he decided that it was time to eat. With a dry rustling of quills and scratching ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... next morning some one of the sailors picked up a branch of a strange tree, lodged in the midst of which was a tiny bird's nest. This was sure evidence that they were indeed near land; for branches of trees do ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... or superstition as to lightning-stroke is its photographic properties. In this connection Stricker of Frankfort quotes the case of Raspail of a man of twenty-two who, while climbing a tree to a bird's nest, was struck by lightning, and afterward showed upon his breast a picture of the tree, with the nest upon one of its branches. Although in the majority of cases the photographs resembled trees, there was one case in which it resembled a horse-shoe; another, a cow; a third, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... is May? May! May! No going home without her. May! Here she comes galloping, the beauty!'—(Ellen is almost as fond of May as I am.)—'What has she got in her mouth? that rough, round, brown substance which she touches so tenderly? What can it be? A bird's nest? Naughty May!' ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... sizes, and wood-peckers. Besides these there are falcons, owls, or "spectre birds," sweet-voiced butcher birds, storks, fly-catchers, and doves, and the swallow which builds the gelatinous edible nest, which is the foundation of the expensive luxury "Bird's Nest Soup," frequents the verdant islands on the coast. [*Mr. Newbold is ordinarily so careful and accurate that it is almost presumptuous to hint that in this particular case he may not have been able to verify the statements of the natives ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... along the wire rope swung from precipice to precipice and over intervening gulfs was the only condition of their continued survival. The post itself clung to the extreme summit of the mountain as a bird's nest clings to the cranny of rock in which it is built; while huts, devised to the exact and difficult contours of the last crags and hidden as best they might be from direct observation and fire from the enemy below, stood here perched in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... varieties, each sufficiently individualized in size and other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas. The nest was a marvel of perfection, the cotton being bound cunningly ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... bush lingers still, that will urge me to stop— (What heart can such fancies withstand?) Where Susan once saw a bird's nest on the top, And I reached her the eggs with my hand: And so long since the day I remember so well, It has stretched to a sizable tree, And the birds yearly come in its branches to dwell, As far from a ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... apple-blossoms, for which he ought to have been whipped. Indeed, the old tree did its best, for it caught him by the leg, and tore a hole in his new trousers, which was shocking to think of. Then he found an old bird's nest; and on the whole, the tree seemed so very "jolly" that he decided to stay there; so that was why Uncle Jack did not see him when he looked round. Brighteyes, after seeing her brother safely up in the tree, flew off like a bird, here and there and everywhere. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... thoughtless cruelty of too many of our youth. It was scarcely two weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had lectured him severely for the ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... spiders whose troublesome webs were apt to come in contact with his spectacles. The gardeners had severest instructions not to approach their nests. It was one of the minor griefs of his life that, being so short-sighted, he could never discover a bird's nest; no, not even as a child. Memories of boyhood began to flit through his mind; they curled upwards in the scented wreaths of his Havana. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Robin. The boat is there as bright as ever, scarlet within and white outside; but the name is painted off, because the little dears are in their graves. Two nicer children were never seen, clever, and sprightly, and good to learn; they never even took a common bird's nest, I have heard, but loved all the little things the Lord has made, as if with a foreknowledge of going early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children got into the boat and pushed off, in imitation of their daddy. It came ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Wo," "Sun Loy," and "Kum Lum," come "Witkowski," "Bukofski," "Rowminski,"—who keep Russian caviar, etc. Some day, when we feel a little tired of our ordinary food, we think of trying the caviar, or perhaps a gelatinous bird's nest, for variety. ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... of the Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by means of moorings that ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... your finger into a bird's nest," observed Elsie, with a sapient shake of the head. "The eggs always addle if you do, or the young birds refuse to hatch out; and of course in the case of turtle-doves it would be all the more so. 'Lay low, Bre'r Fox,' ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... department of a newspaper we find a recipe for making "bird's nest pudding," which would surely make the pigtail of a JOHN Chinaman stick straight up on end. The component parts of the pudding are apples, sugar, milk, five eggs, and vanilla. Perhaps the inventor of the pudding once found a bird's nest with five ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... nothing will happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... when the train reached the lovely little village of Lee, nestling like a bird's nest amid the ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... our fill of bird's nest soup, sharks' fins and bamboo cells, we were taken in motors to see the five-storied Pagoda, the City of the Dead, and the monument to the Chinese revolutionary heroes (donated by the Chinese all over ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer

... filled with large flies. As Davy took this out of his pocket, the cork came out with a loud "pop!" and the flies flew away in all directions. Then came, one after another, a tart filled with gravel, two chicken-bones, a bird's nest with some pieces of brown soap in it, some mustard in a pill-box, and a cake of beeswax stuck full of caraway seeds. Davy remembered afterward that, as he threw these things away, they arranged themselves ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl



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