"Crows" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 2: The passage quoted refers to the knowledge that birds have about things concerning them; and in order to know these things it is not unlawful to observe their cries and movements: thus from the frequent cawing of crows one might say that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... gale drew from the pines as it crowded by, but never once did its fiercest gusts disturb the serenity of the sanctuary beneath. A foot or two down from their topmost boughs was shelter for the crows, snugged down on a lee limb, close to the trunk, their feathers set to shed such rain as might strike them, their long black beaks thrust beneath their wings, rocked in the cradle of the deep woods, sung to sleep ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... things in order, her mother said to her, "Now, my pigeon, see if you can't catch the little white hen, and the red rooster, and the turkey. The red rooster crows so sweetly I shall miss him when he is put in the pot, but he is not long for this world! He is so greedy there's no satisfying him with food. He has no usefulness at all, except to wake ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... they skipped and ran so swiftly along the wall, or from branch to branch, or up and down the trees. Their chattering made a fine accompaniment to the bird-songs. And here I learned to indulge a fondness for the very crows, which to this day I have never outgrown. Though they have been denounced as mischievous, and bounties have been set upon them, I never could find it in my heart to indulge in the warring propensity against them. They always seemed to me such social company—issuing from some edge of the woodland, ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... filled with bird music. It began with the larks, closely followed by the robins, and then the noise of the crows. No change in the program since the days of Shakespeare's ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... and ease, to provide liberally and expensively for their own recreation and refreshment. A bald utility has been the anticipated genius of our public policy. Our national Mercury was to be simply the god of the post-office, or the sprite of the barometer,—our Pan, to keep the crows from the corn-fields,—our Muses, to preside over district-schools. It begins now to appear that the people are not likely to think anything too good for themselves, or to higgle about the expense of whatever ministers largely to their tastes and fancies,—that political freedom, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... flew before the eyes of the travellers at every step, as they wended their way pleasantly, beneath a bright morning sun, over the hills and through the lesser valleys of the great vale of the Sacramento. And all of these creatures, excepting the crows and magpies, fell before the unerring and unexpectedly useful blunderbuss of Captain Bunting, passed a temporary existence in the maw of the big iron pot, and eventually vanished into the carnivorous jaws of Ned Sinton and ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wimp on the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was going to make a greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to do, then I forgave you. I let you walk about the earth—and drink—freely. Now it is Wimp who crows—everybody pats him on the back—they call him the mystery man of the Scotland-Yard tribe. Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged, and all through your ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... they must be "running out." Few plants of the garden need high feeding more, and no others are more generally starved. I will guarantee that there are successful farmers who no more think of manuring a currant bush than of feeding crows. This fruit will live, no matter how we abuse it, but there are scarcely any that respond more quickly to generous treatment; and in the garden where it is not necessary to keep such a single eye to the margin of profit, many beautiful ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... was a succession of charming tableaux, in which sparkling streamlets, tiny waterfalls, frisky squirrels gleaming amid the foliage like a flash of red light, quails with their pretty gray plumage flecked with ivory, dandy jays, great awkward black crows, pert little lizards, innumerable butterflies, and ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... rousing will, and the echoes must have alarmed some of the shy denizens of the snow forest, for a fox was seen to scurry across an open spot, and a bevy of crows in some not far distant oak trees started to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... embers had been raked together, watch set, and for the most part the little party dropped asleep at once, to be awakened by the chiming notes of birds, the peculiar whistle of the piping crows, and the shrieks of a flock of gloriously painted parrots that were busy over the ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... began in a long rain and ended in a heavy snow which lay for a week over the country. In the chill mornings while she dressed, Molly watched the blue-black shadows of the crows skimming over the white ground, and there was always a dumb anxiety at her heart as ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... say that this same Scarlet Pimpernel is mightily ill-favoured, and that's why no one ever sees him. They say he is fit to scare the crows away and that no Frenchy can look twice at his face, for it's so ugly, and so they let him get out of the country, rather than look ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the matter with you, little pigeons?" said the old merchant and his wife. I would not say "little pigeons" to such bad ones. Black-hearted crows is ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... believed himself to be useful. In fact, he could not remember when he had been so happy. High on his hill, he heard October's skyey gales go by above his head, and in the noonday drowse, watched, from the shade of a tree, the crows fly out across the valley, with creaking wings and harsh, discordant cries. In the early morning, he came tip-toeing down the stairs; from the open doorway he marked day rise above the east in bands of yellow ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... two neighbors of hers, one Paul Hungerford and one Peter Rainham. We further learn that Brilliana accompanied the Queen—in whom Mr. Marfleet traces a remarkable likeness to Jezebel—to France in 1644, after which "flight of kites, crows, and other carrion fowl"—the words are Mr. Marfleet's—the estate of Harby came, through the good offices of General Cromwell, into the hands of Colonel Evander Cloud, much to Mr. Marfleet's satisfaction, a satisfaction which the school-master ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... were so difficult to remember, and which nobody ever could want to use in polite conversation; the ruined castles and dilapidated windmills, the perpetual stumpy pieces of fallen timber and jagged posts, executed with a BBB pencil; the chalky expanse of sky, with that inevitable flight of crows scudding across it:—why must there be always crows scudding across a drawing-master's sky, and why so many jagged posts in a drawing-master's ideal of rural beauty? Charlotte was inexpressibly weary of all the stereotyped studies; but she liked Hyde Lodge better than the gothic ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... our oak in size and appearance. The Arabs call them "Batoum." They do not seem to have yet received their proper botanical classification. Desfontaines describes the tree as the Pistacia Atlanticis. It greatly resembles the Pistacia lentiscus of Linnaeus. A few solitary birds, a flight of crows, lizards and beetles on the ground; no other ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... little for his word, and took any means to gain his ends. All this is shown in his treatment of his brother Robert—Robert, who had suffered him to be refreshed with water, and who had sent him the wine from his own table, when he was shut up, with the crows flying below him, parched with thirst, in the castle on the top of St. Michael's Mount, where his Red brother would have let ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... two fat black crows," laughed Aunt Barbara, though she had been very angry at the time. "All the fringes of those thin best shawls were catching and snapping as you came down. Oh, dear me, I couldn't think what the old ladies would say. None of your mischief now, Miss Betty!" and she held up a warning forefinger. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... considered soldierly, or the bravest of the brave, or even good. You will see a town which resembles the fields in time of pestilence," he continued, "in which there is nothing but carcasses to be torn at and carrion crows tearing ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... their aid. From the evening till the morning the sky was illuminated by the ascending flames of the batteries, and by the fire of the garrison and gun-boats. At five o'clock in the morning, one of the batteries blew up, and soon after, the whole of them were one vast conflagration. Many of their crows now threw themselves into the sea; and touched by the sight, the British showed themselves to be as humane as they were brave. The guns in the fortification ceased, and Curtis and his gallant crew exerted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of Alencon, hearing this, said, "This is what one gets by employing such scoundrels, who fall off when there is any need for them." During this time a heavy rain fell, accompanied by thunder and a very terrible eclipse of the sun, and before this rain a great flight of crows hovered in the air over all those battalions, making a loud noise. Shortly afterward it cleared up and the sun shone very bright, but the Frenchmen had it on their faces and the English on their backs. When the Genoese were somewhat in order and approached the English they set up ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Peanut-planter has to contend with many enemies. In many cases moles are exceedingly destructive to the planted seed, burrowing along the rows, and eating the seed, hill by hill. Often raccoons, foxes, and squirrels grabble them up. And everywhere the larger birds, such as crows, doves, and partridges come in for a share of the seed, and annoy and hinder the farmer very much. There is no remedy but ceaseless vigilance. The planter must go armed at every turn to protect his crop. Sometimes planters tar the seed to prevent the moles, etc., from ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... found dead." So for two or three pages he goes on telling of the cruel suffering and of the various substitutes for nourishing food, such as bark ground and boiled; bones that had lain about the camp, picked clean by dogs and crows, now carefully gathered and boiled; then "the skins that weare reserved to make us shoose, cloath, and stokins," and at last even the skins of the tents ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... my lad," the hermit continued, being evidently on a favorite subject, "the average boy can walk through a mile of forest and hardly notice anything around him. In fact, he may even decide that it's only a gloomy place, and outside the cawing of the crows or perhaps an occasional squirrel at which he shies a stone he has heard and ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... flocks, I assure you, and do no little mischief at times." "I never understood that gulls were birds of prey," said I.—"Only in Oxford, sir; and here, I assure you, they bite like hawks, and pick many a poor young gentleman as bare before his three years are expired, as the crows would a dead sheep upon a common. Every thing depends upon your obtaining an honest scout, and that's a sort of haro ravis (I think they call the bird) here." Suppressing my laughter at my host's Latinity, I thought this a fair opportunity to make some inquiries relative to this ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... all certain whether this decrease is general through the province; but I feel quite convinced that, as civilization increases, all kinds of birds and wild animals will become less numerous, with the exception of crows and mice, which are greatly on the increase. Rats also have been imported, and appear to thrive well in the towns; though, I am happy to say, they have not found their way into my township yet—and long may they ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... tasks, and even when they laboured hardest, flogged and reviled them, till more and more John Rawlins became resolved to recover his liberty and surprise the ship. So he provided ropes with broad spikes of iron, and all the iron crows, with which he could, with the help of the others, fasten up the scuttles, gratings, and cabins, and even shut up the captain himself with his companions; and so he intended to work the enterprise, that, at a certain watchword, the English being masters of the gunner-room ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... sheep, the ganders hiss, Crows the cock upon the wall; Ove Hals was sore beset, Must to ...
— Niels Ebbesen and Germand Gladenswayne - two ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game make the game plentiful. The keeper has the right by law to shoot any stray dog or cat found a hundred yards from a village. I ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... berg life and behavior, etc. Yesterday and to-day a solitary small flycatcher was feeding about camp. A sandpiper on the shore, loons, ducks, gulls, and crows, a few of each, and a bald eagle are all the birds I have noticed thus far. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... understand your philosophy, pa. A boy is a half-grown man; therefore a boy may take half as much wine as a man, and it will do him good. And as to imitation, I think that is a sort of practical obedience. Jacob Glen says, 'As the old cock crows, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... moment all was gaiety in the palace, and everybody inside ran to the windows to watch the fairies' carriages, for no two were alike. One had a car of ebony, drawn by white pigeons, another was lying back in her ivory chariot, driving ten black crows, while the rest had chosen rare woods or many-coloured sea-shells, with scarlet and blue macaws, long-tailed peacocks, or green love-birds for horses. These carriages were only used on occasions of state, for when they went to war flying dragons, fiery serpents, lions or leopards, ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles; half-way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... find the whole nest, sides and bottom, lined with a thick covering of down; while the eggs are covered by what I can best describe as a thick movable quilt, which protects them from the cold, and the prying eyes of carrion crows and other poachers. ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... rapidly followed revolution that history has ceased to count them; and it may be said of them what Milton wrote of the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, "that they are not more worthy of being recorded than the skirmishes of crows and kites." The Grand Plaza, the heart where all the great arteries of circulation meet and diverge, is where the high tides of Quito ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... most interesting of his bird friendships was that which existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, "Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... and the bison; to the pale-faced son he gave the horse to carry him, because his legs were weak, the cow, the hog, the sheep, and the cat. The white son took, of the feathered tribes, the fowl which crows at the glimmering of light, the duck and the goose, which love to dabble in mud, and the turkey, which sings a song that is none of the best; and the red man took the eagle, the owl, and all the rest of the birds. The fishes were not divided, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... one does not eat sufficient, they do him much harm. For that reason it must be that birds do not breed there; for, since the first is lacking to them, those that can escape do not await their destruction. Only certain little birds like linnets are seen, and at times some crows, which must be foreign ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... in the language of their tribe, "hath lost the trail of his friends. We thought the crows of the pale-men were picking ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... leavings. The Indians, as well as the whites, have observed this, for when one of them, who has learned a little English, sees the king, and wishes you to have a proper notion of the bird, he says: "There is the governor of the carrion-crows." ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... is the sound o' the driven steers And sweet the gleam o' the moonlit spears, When the red cock crows o'er byre and store And the Borderer rides ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... saying, "I can quite fancy your laughing, but scarcely so loud as I must have done had I heard you!" He further said (what is the fact) that the music in the Emperor's private apartments is enough to frighten the crows. I replied, that whenever I heard such music, if I did not quickly leave the room it gave me a headache. "Oh! no; it has no such effect on me; bad music does not affect my nerves, but fine music never fails to give me a headache." I thought to myself again, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... out with our walk. I named this mountain Mount Musgrave. It is nearly 1700 feet above the level of the surrounding country, and over 3000 feet above the sea. The next day Mr. Carmichael went out to shoot game; there were kangaroos, and in the way of birds there were emus, crows, hawks, quail, and bronze-winged pigeons; but all we got from his expedition was nil. The horses now being somewhat refreshed by our stay here, we proceeded across the little plain towards another high bluff hill, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... striking his flagon on the board until the dishes danced again. "What, in the name of the devil, hath come over the folk? Why sit ye all moping by the fireside, like crows round a dead horse, when there is man's work to be done within a few short leagues of ye? Out upon you all, as a set of laggards and hang-backs! By my hilt I believe that the men of England are all in France already, and that what is left ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... front of the chateau the old vegetable vendor still sold her products seated beneath her patched red cotton parasol; the Great Dane watchdog lay in exactly the same place on the tinker's doorstep. Around the high church tower the crows circled and cawed as usual, while the bell of its clock which, as we passed, slowly struck three, was echoed by the distant hills ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... you upon the highest branches. 'Fore God, it will be so; and I shall laugh To see you dangling to and fro i'the air, With the honest crows pecking your ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Nature is not. A forest of oaks burns down or is cut down, and do oaks spring again? No. Pines. Logic, is baffled, but the land is bettered. A field of corn is planted, and Nature does not set herself to protect it, but sends a flock of crows to devour it; the farmers grumble, but the crows are saved alive. Freezing water contracts awhile, and then without any provocation turns right about face and expands; if your pitcher stands in the way, so much the worse for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... K}anze gens was divided into at least two subgentes, the Keepers of the pipe and the Wind people. Lion, of the Deer-head gens, said that there were four subgentes, but this was denied in 1882 by Two Crows of the Hanga gens. ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... building, their chairs placed in what would have been the gutter of the street if the thoroughfare had been paved, their feet braced with probably more comfort than grace against the low sidewalk, a row of men was stationed, like crows on a fence. There must have been twenty or more of them, in various stages of undress from vest down to suspenders, from bright cravats flaunting over woolen shirts and white shirts, and striped shirts and speckled shirts, to unconfined necks laid ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... an incredible tradition connected with this place Ffinant, Trefeglwys. It is said that an old barn stands on the right hand side of the highway. One Sunday morning, as the master was starting to church, he told one of the servants to keep the crows from a field that had been sown with wheat, in which field the old barn stood. The servant, through some means, collected all the crows into the barn, and shut the door on them. He then followed his master to the Church, who, when he saw the servant there, began to ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... When crows take salmon in woods and parks, And be take with swifts and snails, And camels in the air take swallows and larks, And mice move mountains by wagging of their tails, And shipmen take a ride instead of sails, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... came round the doors and windows begging alms, not to mention crows and magpies, who fought with the little birds for the crumbs provided for all, and proved themselves intolerable bullies, ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... off a piece of the pasty and wrapped it in a handkerchief—and memory recalled, as with a small shock of surprise, that the handkerchief was clean. The old man, though ragged enough to scare the crows, was clean from his bare head to his bare sea-bleached feet. He munched the rest of the pasty, talking between mouthfuls. To his discourse Dicky paid no heed, but slipped away for a scamper on ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... I said, "grabs off such hints As butter, whether pats or prints, Receives and holds all unaware Small strands of drifting, golden hair. But have YOU thought, O Maiden fair, O, have you thought profoundly of The psychic consciousness in crows? Or why the Malay when in love Wears ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... in personal appearance. If so, it is not surprising that he should be subject to fits of discouragement and silence. Aiming at the sun, though a good and virtuous exercise, as we have all heard, is apt to prove dispiriting to sensible marksmen. Crows (fish crows, in all probability, but at the time I did not know it) uttered strange, hoarse, flat-sounding caws. Everv bird of them must have been born without a palate, it seemed to me. White-eyed chewinks were at home in the dense palmetto scrub, whence they announced themselves unmistakably ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the chief, with a written order from the king. (To the fisherman.) Now you will see your family, or else you will feed the crows and jackals. (Enter ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... more of that diabolical 'tootum-too,' I swear by Allah I'll take your life, and give your body to the crows and vultures." ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Bourne was the late Joseph Jefferson, the veteran actor, whose palatial residence "Crows' Nest" on Buttermilk bay was one of the show places of the section. In a little cemetery, just over the town line in Sandwich his body now reposes, marked with a huge bowlder which he picked out during his life time to mark his ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... all temperate regions, and is a fowl of sober aspect, although a Rogue in Grain. Crows, like time-serving politicians, are often on the Fence, and their proficiency in the art of Caw-cussing entitles them to rank with the Radical Spoilsmen denounced by the sardonic DAWES. In time of war they haunt the battle-field with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... odd-lookin' party, with that bucket-shaped lid decorated with pale green satin fruit, and the piles of thick blondine hair that was turnin' gray, and her foolish big eyes with the puffy rolls underneath and the crows'-feet in the corners. And of course anybody with ankles suggestin' piano legs really shouldn't go in for high-tide skirts and white silk stockin's with black butterflies worked on ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... pleasure, as if you would always enjoy them, both places and men and conversation; and now you sit and weep because you do not see the same persons and do not live in the same places. Indeed you deserve this, to be more wretched than crows and ravens who have the power of flying where they please and changing their nests for others, and crossing the seas without lamenting or regretting their former condition. Yes, but this happens to them because they are irrational ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... that seemed to bear this out. Strange tracks through untrodden grass suggested footsteps of the unseen. Flattened spaces of peculiar shape in the standing rye, where human beings could not have intruded, looked marvellously like human visitation. Or I lay concealed and watched the crows in a road-side field. What was it caused them to look up suddenly and flap away on sooty-fringed wings? No bird, beast, or man came. Then the rats, scampering about under a dock like so many gaunt Virginia swine: all at once came a flurry of whisking tails, and they were off! Yet I had not stirred, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Nebuchadnezzar was really translated into a beast, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt; Ulysses' companions into hogs and dogs, by Circe's charms; turn themselves and others, as they do witches into cats, dogs, hares, crows, &c. Strozzius Cicogna hath many examples, lib. iii. omnif. mag. cap. 4 and 5, which he there confutes, as Austin likewise doth, de civ. Dei lib. xviii. That they can be seen when and in what shape, and to whom they will, saith Psellus, Tametsi nil tale viderim, nec optem videre, though ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... all planted, how zealous we used to be about the crows! What benevolent but idiotic old scarecrows we used to construct, and how extremely anxious we were to be intrusted with guns, that we might disperse, at once and forever, these black marauders! For well we knew that a few dead crows, stuck up here and there on stakes, would frighten ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Crows, the birds of destruction, were cawing and gossiping outside in the park. At dusk the fragile new moon rose for a brief while. The frosty night was crisp and sparkling. The stars shone diamond-bright in the vast, all-embracing ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... a dozen or more hazel shoots came up, and to-day a new patch of hazel bushes is growing in the yard. Doubtless many acorns are carried from place to place and dropped in an aimless way by woodpeckers, blue jays, and crows; also beechnuts by these birds, and by nuthatches, and by pigeons, before the latter became nearly extinct. Woodpeckers and blue jays place beechnuts and small acorns in the crevices of bark on standing ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... villains stalked where only saints should have trod. The irregular warfare of the border, from fifty-four on, while it may, to military history as a whole, be as unimportant as the quarrels of kites and crows, was yet a big part of the life of the frontiersman and frightful in its possibilities. Sherman's march to the sea or through the Carolinas, disgraceful to modern civilization as each undeniably ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... also a singular fact that war, another scourge has met with similar treatment. We have the pretty, spotless grenadiers and cuirassiers of Meissonier in plenty; Vereshchagin is still alone in the grim starkness of his wind-swept, snow-covered battle-fields, with black crows wheeling over the crumpled masses ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... will sleep till they disappear. And then, praising himself, Heine adds: "But old age has weakened them, and there are good marksmen who know right well how to bring them down. I know one of these archers, who now lives in Paris, and who knows how, even from that distance, to hit the crows which fly about the Kyffhauser. When the Emperor returns to earth, he will surely find on his way more than one raven slain by this archer's arrows. And the old hero will say, smiling, 'That man carried a good bow.'" In my note to this ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 115 ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the inhabitants to severe reprisals; the gulls are an institution of the place, to be grumbled at sometimes but always to be tolerated. And all the grumbling is not on one side, as one may judge from the noise the birds sometimes make. At times the sharp cawing of black crows mingles with the croaking, and of course other birds have their say as well, in the bright mornings and dreamy eves. Out beyond the mouth of the harbour there are curlews and puffins on the lonely sea-washed crags; and in quiet weather there are more of the gulls seaward than up among ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... "There are no poorer people in all the world, for we have ropes about our necks and are soon to be hanged. To-morrow we shall not have even our flesh left, for the crows will ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... of a fine morning; the spring season is in its full: the sun in his splendour is all there on the blue sky. Nature all around is life. The landscape is superb. It reminded me 'della Bella Cara Itallia'. The bush around was crammed with parrots, crows, and other chattering birds of the south. They were not prevented from singing praises each in its own language to the Creator, and all was joy and happiness with them. Unfortunately those lands lay uncultivated by the hand of man; but were not left idle by ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... poll, and in true fear They gave us our demands:'— Thus we debase The nature of our seats, and make the rabble Call our cares fears; which will in time Break ope the locks o' the senate and bring in The crows to peck the eagles.— ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... had a poetic streak, and was morbidly sensitive about any one seeing its product. The Kingbird episode of their long evening walk was but one of many similar. He had learned to delight in these daring attacks of the intrepid little bird on the Hawks and Crows, and so magnified them into high heroics until he must try to record them in rhyme. It was very serious to him, and to have his sentiments afford sport to the others was more than he could bear. Of course Guy came out and grinned, taking his cue from Sam. Then he remarked in colourless tones, ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hunt without having eaten any food and will hunt fill late in the afternoon. In addition to the fish, eels, and crayfish of the streams, the wild boar and wild chicken of the plain and woodland, he will eat iguanas and any bird he can catch, including crows, hawks, and vultures. Large pythons furnish especially toothsome steaks, so he says, but, if so, his taste in this respect is seldom satisfied, for ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... him. And I should so love to watch the squirrels running up and down the trees and along on top of the fence; and the little ground-squirrels slipping from one hollow log to another; and the little birds building their nests; and the big crows flopping their wings about the limbs of the old dead trees. And then, too, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... felt as if I looked like an oaf, but how I appeared God knows. I turned the discourse, as you may suppose." And here is a peep of a gambling party at faro. "I went last night to White's, and stayed there till two. The Pharo party was amusing. Five such beggars could not have met; four lean crows feeding on a dead horse. Poor Parsons held the bank. The punters were Lord Carmarthen, Lord Essex, and one of the Fauquiers; and Denbigh sat at the table, with what hopes I know not, for he did not punt. Essex's supply is from his son, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... as if the old days had returned," said Toussaint; "the days of Columbus and his crows. We are as the unhappy Indians to the rapacity of Europe. No wonder, if mulattoes and blacks speak of the colony as if it ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... the air above that little household. But once more the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows so permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered among their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled Felix to quietude, and the faint far muttering of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this out. They considered him as a fallen man; and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of what happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I meet with a great noise of some that endeavor to peck out the crows' eyes; that is, to blind the doctors of our times and smoke out their eyes with new annotations; among whom my friend Erasmus, whom for honor's sake I often mention, deserves if not the first place yet certainly the second. O most foolish instance, they cry, and ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... not have harsh voices like the guinea-hen or the old black crows which steal the corn from the field when Mr. Scarecrow gets tired and goes to sleep. (We will introduce you to Mr. Scarecrow some evening very soon.) But the voices of the pigeons are soft and low like mother's, especially when Hepzebiah is sick and ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... Johnnie, with a touch of reluctant admiration at such an outflow of eloquence; and then, by way of set-off, "I sec six black crows, 's mawn'n." ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... passing through a ravine an eagle rose from a jutting scarp; and looking up the rocks, two or three hundred feet in height, Owen wondered if it was among these cliffs the bird built its eerie, and how the young birds were taken by the Arabs. Crows followed the caravan in great numbers, and these reminded Owen of his gamekeeper, a solid man, six feet high, with reddish whiskers, the most opaque Englishman Owen had ever seen. "'We must get rid of some of them,'" Owen muttered, quoting ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... The crows and vultures, which, emboldened by the deathly silence, had been circling nearer and nearer to the tree tops, suddenly and with one accord shot upward, now seeming mere specks in the blue ether. Then the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the young of the same species, are exhibited. The third Cut is the Aviary for small and middle-sized birds, at the north-eastern corner of the Garden. Here are kept various British Birds, as the different species of Crows and Song Birds. The bamboo ornaments of the building are not, therefore, of the appropriate character that we so much admire elsewhere in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... think nothing of sitting whole hours on the top of a post—maybe a little thicker than an ordinary telegraph post. They also feel perfectly safe with their toes twisted round a thin branch and their bodies resting on nothing, as if they were crows perched on a ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... wise prelate, "that you will root Popery out of England till you destroy Oxford. If you want to get rid of the crows, you must pull down the rookery." The words of wisdom flashed suddenly over my mind as I walked across the silent Piazza at midnight; and I exclaimed—"Yes! here is the true remedy for the evil. With two hours of a gunboat and four small Armstrongs the thing is done; batter down Chiavari, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the meal first—such are their rules of propriety-already were sitting upon the haystacks of the neighbourhood and kept watch, while the younger ones were continuing the meal, surrounded by bands of crows. From this and like observations, Syevertsoff concluded that the white-tailed eagles combine for hunting; when they all have risen to a great height they are enabled, if they are ten, to survey an area of at least twenty-five miles square; and as soon as any one has discovered something, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... sprouting, "Crows and Scarecrows" was announced as a topic, and one Irish lad, giving rein to his ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... magical changes until she found resistance useless, and returned to her true form. In a modern Cretan tale the hero, by the advice of an old woman, seizes at night a Nereid by the hair and holds her until the cock crows, in spite of her changes successively into a dog, a snake, a camel, and fire. The process of disenchanting Tam Lin, in the ballad of that name, was for his lady-love to take him in her arms and hold ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... club and his bearskin, and left him to the kites and crows, and went upon his journey down the glens on the further slope, till he came to a broad green valley, and saw flocks and herds sleeping beneath ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... to a whole republic of wrens. See! on the top of the wood-shed, how proudly the old rooster struts along the weather-board, enjoying the discomfiture of his wives, who have been trying for this half-hour from the corn-house steps to reach the same desirable elevation. And ever and anon he crows to answer the tumultuous cackle of the plebeian fowl in the barn-yard, with whom he never mingles, save when a hawk threatens them with common danger; and then, forgetting all his aristocracy, he seeks the same sheltering apple-tree or clump of briars in the fence-corner, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... 565 And let revenge and honour stir Your spirits up: once we fall on, The shatter'd foe begins to run: For if but half so well you knew To use your victory as subdue, 570 They durst not, after such a blow As you have given them, face us now; But from so formidable a soldier Had fled like crows when they smell powder. Thrice have they seen your sword aloft 575 Wav'd o'er their heads, and fled as oft. But if you let them recollect Their spirits, now dismay'd and checkt, You'll have a harder game to play Than yet y' have had to get the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Abou Nabout's assertion, is very unwholesome for these animals. The more probable cause was the trying journey it made in a basket on a camel's back. There are only a few street dogs in Khanyunis; but, as a compensation, any quantity of kites, kestrels, and crows, which alight in hundreds on the loftier sidr or sycamore trees in the neighbourhood, and may often be seen hovering over the village on the look-out ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... scarecrows protected from the sparrows, pigeons, ravens, and other voracious birds. On the branches of the cedars were perched large eagles; amid the foliage of the weeping willows were herons, solemnly standing on one leg; and on every hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild birds, and a multitude of cranes, which the Japanese consider sacred, and which to their minds symbolise ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... sweet, too late! What nightingale will sing to thee? The empty nest, the shivering tree, The dead leaves by the garden gate, And cawing crows for thee will ...
— Landscape and Song • Various
... in the house of Major MANDRAKE. Fox has successfully assumed the character of JACK GOSLING, and is having a pleasant chat with the family, when the gardener enters to inform the Major that a flock of crows is in sight. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... heart good to hear him tell a story, as how he lay alongside of the French, yard-arm and yard-arm, board and board, and of heaving grapplings, and stink-pots, and grapes, and round and double-headed partridges, crows and carters. Lord have mercy upon us! he has been a great warrior in his time, and lost an eye and a heel in the service. Then he does not live like any other Christian land-man; but keeps garrison in his house, as if he were in the midst of his ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... boys, children of the family, the finest and manliest little fellows I ever saw, who, dressed in a complete Mexican costume, like three miniature rancheros, rode boldly and fearlessly over everything. There was a great deal of firing at crows and at the wild duck on a beautiful little lake, but I did not observe that any one was burdened with too much game. We got off our horses to climb through the wooded hills and ravines, and passed some hours lying under the pine-trees, listening to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... brown from the plough, and borne Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky Washing the ridge, a clamor of crows that fly In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn; A line of gray snake-fence, that zigzags by A pond, and cattle, from the homestead nigh The long deep summonings of the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... monasteries of Dumferling, Lindore, St. Andrew's, or Colrosse, or Courose, Pettinuime, Balmure, and Petmoace; and two stately nunneries: Aberdaure and Elcho. All these noble buildings they levelled to the ground with incredible fury, crying, "Pull down, pull down: the crows' nest must be utterly exterminated, lest they should return and attempt again to renew their ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that would not touch the food. And the unsought omens were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched a brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such violence that blood flowed from his sandal; he had hardly advanced on his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the true object of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one of them from a roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck frightened his boldest comrades; ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Pacific to the Caucasus Mountains and the Pamirs. It gave me a great thrill but I have had so many to-day, that I had almost forgotten that one. For two days we jogged along through a level country with meanthatched huts and black crows flying continually and peasants in sheepskin coats, full in the skirt and tight at the waist, with boots or thongs of leather around their feet. The women wore boots too and all the men who were ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... ill-temper, at not having just the pleasant thing one happens to like. That is a state of mind which is a bird-call for all the devils; and when they see a man in that temper, they flock to him, I believe, as crows do to carrion. It is astonishing, humbling, awful, my friends, what horrible thoughts will cross one's mind if once one gives way to that selfish, proud, angry, longing temper; thoughts of which we are ashamed the next moment; temptations to sin at which we shudder, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... Isobel, very common among them, and the forms of crows, cats, hares, and other animals, were on such occasions assumed. In the hare shape Isobel herself had a bad adventure. She had been sent by the devil to Auldearne in that favourite disguise, with some message ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... good. About All-hollantide (and so till Frost comes) when you see men ploughing up heath-ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards, then follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm, as big as two Magots, and it hath a red head, (you may observe in what ground most are, for there the Crows will be very watchful, and follow the Plough very close) it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is in Norfolk, and some other Countries called a Grub, and is bred of the spawn or eggs of a Beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the ground under ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... the Dean and the Canon come in by their door on the north, and then I see my father, and old Palmer, and a couple of their best men, and Palmer stood a talking for a bit with the Dean in the middle of the choir. He had a coil of rope and the men had crows. All of 'em looked a bit nervous. So there they stood talking, and at last I heard the Dean say, 'Well, I've no time to waste, Palmer. If you think this'll satisfy Southminster people, I'll permit it to be done; but I must say this, that never in the whole course of my life ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... old hands signified their assent to this suggestion by a grunt, although to unaccustomed eyes the objects in question looked more like crows than horsemen, and their motion was for some time ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that the crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows which were effectual fifty yeara ago are no longer respected by the plunderers of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... repeated. This the crier did, and a shout rose from the people (who all stood up) that was heard from Corinth to the sea, and there was no further thought of the entertainment that usually engrossed so much attention. Plutarch says gravely that the disruption of the air was so great that crows accidentally flying over the racecourse at the moment fell down dead into it! Night only caused the people to leave the circus, and then they went home to carouse together. So grateful were they that they freed the Romans who had been captured by Hannibal and had been ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... hour before sunrise, the rooks are the first birds to strike up at early dawn. One often notices this fact on sleepless nights. About 2.30 o'clock on a May morning a rook begins the grand concert with a solo in G flat; then a cock pheasant crows, or an owl hoots; moorhens begin to stir, and gradually the woodland orchestra works up to a tremendous burst of song, such as is never heard at any ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... will come to us! But you are welcome! For Christmas or carnival you are invited. The girls await you with knots in their handkerchiefs, your head will swell. You will do well to dress as the devil; we shall say a prayer, and you will disappear when the cock crows. Do better, remain at home, play hide and seek or blind man's buff. Enough of such farces! don't you see that your soldiers are cripples, dandies? They have no touloupes, no mittens, no onoutchi (wrappings around the legs in place of stockings). How ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... the two sober citizens. He thrust himself into the conversation of the latter, to observe he had heard in Paul's, that the bankrupt concern of Pindivide, a great merchant,—who, as he expressed it, had given the crows a pudding, and on whom he knew, from the same authority, each of the honest citizens has some unsettled claim,—was like to prove a total loss—"stock and block, ship and cargo, keel and rigging, all lost, now and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... observed, it had MEN in it. Mr. Davies suggested the speech of Juliet, in which she figures herself awaking in the tomb of her ancestors. Some one mentioned the description of Dover Cliff. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; it should be all precipice,—all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good descriptions; but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on by computation, from ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... as nice for the reader to nose As any old garbage of carrion crows; Our mystery-mongers are full of resource; There's a bigamy boom and a vogue of divorce; To the licence of flappers we freely allude, And we do what we can with the cult of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... coming on—a Russian winter, in all its bitter severity. The snow began to fall, the rivers to freeze, and crows and other birds ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... [Sidenote: Vultures, beares and crows come vpon the drift Ice into Island.] They are gulltie of the same crime also who haue found out rauens, pies [Footnote: Magpies.], hares and vultures, all white in Island for it is wel knowen that vultures come very seldome together with the Ise of the sea, vnto vs, as beares also (but ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... gold, silver, beryl, crystal, red pearls, diamonds, and corals as the seventh. They are full of water which possesses the eight good qualities,(145) their waters rise as high as the fords and bathing-places, so that even crows(146) may drink there; they are full of golden sand, and of vast extent. And in these lotus lakes there are all around on the four sides four stairs, beautiful and brilliant with the four gems, viz. gold, silver, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads against the dismal sky; the crows with their draggled wings are silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river is ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... a landing, and then the mystery was explained. The dead oak, to which some of its last year's foliage still clung, was the abiding place of thousands of crows that had built their nests in it. There were hundreds of the big nests, made of dried sticks, mostly, and these made an ideal fuel ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... flushed resentfully. "If you wish to go around looking like a scarecrow, that's no reason why I should," she said. "The corn is too large for the crows to pull now, so if I were you I would touch myself up a little. I don't wonder that Miss Jocelyn mistook ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Andrew. "The old woman has a very queer cock, I know, that always roosts on the top of her bed, and crows like no cock I ever heard crow. Or it might be Wandering Willie—he goes to see her sometimes, and the demented creature might strike up his pipes at any ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... May, somewhere in these latitudes. There were about nine hundred of them in all, 'tis said, counting the women and children; and not one of them escaped. The bodies of dead and wounded were alike hung upon a tree for the crows——" ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... eminence, it looked more snaky than ever. Huge great loops with the lovely pale sedges on either side. The almost yellow hills are dotted with junipers. I long to see it to-morrow morning. There's no doubt it's one of the most fascinating rivers I've seen. Hooded crows sailing over the uplands, and I met a flock of bright sweet goldfinches near some guns, and a tree-creeper ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... unmarried man in the township shall kill six blackbirds or three crows while he remains single; as a penalty for not doing it, shall not be married until he ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to the door and crows, if he is standing with his head towards the door, somebody is coming, if he is standing with his tail towards the door, it is a sign of death, according to Uncle Henry. It is good luck for birds to build ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... scoffed. "I should think Johnnie Green might better spend his time doing something worth while. Butterflies, indeed! Now, if he would only collect Crows there'd be some ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... seem to be a branch of the Sheep Eaters who afterwards intermarried with the Mountain Crows, a tall race of people who gave to the Shoshones a taller and better physique. From what can be gleaned, the Sheep Eater women were most beautiful, but resembled the Alaskan Indians in their shortness ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... where we took him. He'll be kept there until they can try him. And they'll make short work of him. He'll be food for crows directly." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the river. I stood up in the boat and looked over the waste of ice and snow. Under the leaden sky lay the lifeless Hulk. About the entrance and on the bridge were black dots of figures, standing out in clear relief like crows on the unbroken snow. ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I'll guarantee at ease.— But why dismiss?—their wishes are to please: And, truly, no necessity appears For solitude:—consider well your years. I HAVE, and feel convinced they do you wrong, Who think no virtue can to such belong; White crows and phoenixes do not abound; But lucky lovers still are sometimes found; And though, as these famed birds, not quite so rare, The numbers are not great that favours share; I own my works a diff'rent sense express, But these are ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... happiest tunes; and the oriole sang a lullaby to her hanging cradle that rocked in the wind. I heard the twitter of skimming swallows and the scattered covey's piping call; I heard the robin's gay whistle, the croaking of crows, the scolding of blue-jays, and the melancholy cooing of a dove. The swaying tree-tops seemed vocal with bird-song while he played, and the labyrinths of leafy shade echoed back the chorus. Then the violin sounded the hunter's horn, and the deep-mouthed pack of fox hounds opened loud and wild, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... right, boss. I just ketched sight of a couple of those owry birds coming along, and if it hadn't been for the trees they would have been at work before now. I'd bet a pipe of tobacco that a pack of those laughing beauties the hyaenas are following the crows and will be hard at work as soon as we ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... setting fire to the baker's chimneys opposite, and then playing upon them, by way of cleaning them; where Tatars, soldiers, goats, cows, pet herons, rude peasant carts, policemen, and inhabitants share the middle of the road with the liveried equipages of royalty and courtiers; where the crows and pigeons assert rights equal to those of man, except that they go to roost at eight o'clock on the nightless "white nights;" and where one never knows whether one will encounter the Emperor of all the Russias or a barefooted Finn when one ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... hours after sun-rise which Anglo-Indian gentlemen devote to riding, and Anglo-Indian ladies to sleeping off the arrears of the sultry night. Regularly, every morning, his studies were broken in upon by the arrival of his baby niece, who came to feed the crows with the toast which accompanied his early cup of tea; a ceremony during which he had much ado to protect the child from the advances of a multitude of birds, each almost as big as herself, which hopped and fluttered ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... public property. He would be tried for his life. Themistocles would turn against him. The jury would hardly wait for the evidence. He would drink the poisonous hemlock and his corpse be picked by the crows in the Barathrum,—an open pit, sole burial place for ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... well," said the Scarecrow, with a smile, "for it is very tedious being perched up here night and day to scare away crows." ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... The crows go by, a noisy throng; About the meadows all day long The shore-lark drops his brittle song; And up the leafless tree The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings; The bluebird dips with flashing wings, The robin flutes, the sparrow sings, And ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman |
