"Catbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood motionless in the center of the room, where the atmosphere was heavy with the fragrance of camphor and tea-roses. A broad strip of sunshine was at his feet, and in the twisted aspen beside the window a catbird was singing. These remained with him for years afterward, and with them the memory of the blind woman sitting stiffy erect and staring ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... religion are like the catbird. When it is away from its nest, it is one of the sweetest of the northern warblers, and so it is often called the northern mocking-bird; but when it is close to its nest, you will hear only a harsh, discordant ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Diedrich proceeded in his researches up the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian. All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... almost human halloo, the "hoo! hohoo, hoo!" that comes out from the clustering foliage of an ancient hemlock. It is the solemn call of the owl, as he sits among the limbs, looking out from between the branches with his great round grey eyes. Listen again and you will hear the voice of the catbird, the brown thrush, the chervink, the little chickadee, the wood robin, the blue-jay, the wood sparrow, and a hundred other nameless birds that live and build their nests and sing among these ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... gone before Jasper Jay had four callers. There was Bobbie Bobolink, Jolly Robin, Miss Kitty Catbird and Buddy Brown-Thrasher. ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... less gay. Great preparations were going on under the Lilac-Bush. Beetles had been at work all day clearing the grass and putting things in order. At nightfall the Turtles and the Frogs sounded the chimes, and a merry noise they made of it. The Catbird rang only one bell. Something evidently was to occur. A little later the glow-worms began to collect, and the place was illuminated. The Lilac-Bush was hung with quantities of them, and others darted about in the air as if they were on the most important business. The Cherry ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... Shelley have wasted powder upon the skylark; for never such "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" issued from living bird before. Skylark! pooh! who would rise at dawn to hear the skylark if a catbird were ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... The catbird does not come to our vines on the veranda to nest from considerations of safety, but because her line of descent runs through such places. The catbirds and robins and phoebe-birds that were reared far from human habitations doubtless return to such localities ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... a small bird today which I do not recollect ever having seen before. it is about the size of the blue thrush or catbird, and it's contour not unlike that bird. the beak is convex, moderately curved, black, smoth, and large in proportion to its size. the legs were black, it had four toes of the same colour on eah foot, and the nails appeared long and somewhat ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... with prose. His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the main chance which calls forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He never has these fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he has not wholly forfeited that superiority which belongs to the children of nature. He ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... of the wood thrush or hermit thrush. I certainly do not think that the blackbird has received full justice in the books. I knew that he was a singer, but I really had no idea how fine a singer he was. I suppose one of his troubles has been his name, just as with our own catbird. When he appears in the ballads as the merle, bracketed with his cousin the mavis, the song thrush, it is far easier to recognize him as the master singer that he is. It is a fine thing for England to have such an asset of the countryside, a bird so common, so ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... know and love the birds of hedge and field and woods. The martins that built in his gourds on the tall pole had opened his eyes. The red and bluebirds, the thrush, the wren, the robin, the catbird, and song sparrows were ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Peggy come tearing along the road without father, she fainted away, and Polly Jane caught her as she was falling, and helped her on the bed in the spare room. I was sitting on a little chair in the hall, stringing beads; I thought Calanthy was dead, and commenced screaming like a catbird; and poor Polly Jane was almost distracted, and didn't know which way to turn. Race Miller was a boy about fourteen at that time, and as strong as a lion; he happened to be driving down the hill just as the accident happened, and he and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... singing his Wait-a-bit song Mister Catbird came rushing over from the edge of a tangled swamp, and perched himself near Robert Robin, in the top of the tall butternut tree. When Robert Robin was through with his song, Mister Catbird said: ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came. Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse call of a catbird where no bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... an article on the catbird several years ago in the Atlantic Monthly, and wanting to know more of the woman who had observed a pair of birds so closely, and could make so charming a story of their love-affairs and housekeeping experiences, and thinking ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... no specially definable character. There are times when he sings with more than his wonted force, and it is then that his tune bears the strongest likeness to the eastern towhee's. But his alarm-call! It is no "chewink" at all, but almost as close a reproduction of a cat's mew as is the catbird's well-known call. Such crosses and ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... fin from one hollow to another. The shadow lifted a degree, the eye penetrated to farther regions; a bird piped warily, then freely, a second and a third answered, a fourth took up the tale, blue-jay and thrush, catbird and bobolink; wings began to dart about them, the world to rustle overhead, near and far the dark prime grew instinct with sound, the shores and heavens blew out gales of melody, the air broke ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various |
