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noun
Curlew  n.  (Zool.) A wading bird of the genus Numenius, remarkable for its long, slender, curved bill. Note: The common European curlew is Numenius arquatus. The long-billed (Numenius longirostris), the Hudsonian (Numenius Hudsonicus), and the Eskimo curlew (Numenius borealis, are American species. The name is said to imitate the note of the European species.
Curlew Jack (Zool.) the whimbrel or lesser curlew.
Curlew sandpiper (Zool.), a sandpiper (Tringa ferruginea or Tringa subarquata), common in Europe, rare in America, resembling a curlew in having a long, curved bill.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Curlew" Quotes from Famous Books



... and variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and sweetly off the hills, pure from the elevation, and rustically scented by the upland plants; and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy forelands, the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream together in the same field by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the barking-bird and little owlet; no native dog is howling round our camp in the chilly morning: the cricket alone chirps along the water-holes; and the musical note of an unknown bird, sounding like "gluck gluck" frequently repeated, and ending in a shake, and the melancholy wail of the curlew, are heard from the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... thus a hundred times, as aimlessly blinking at the vast possibilities of the shining sea beyond, turning his back upon the nearer and more practicable mountains, lulled by the far-off beating of monotonous rollers, the lonely cry of the curlew and plover, the drowsy changes of alternate breaths of cool, fragrant reeds and warm, spicy sands that blew across his eyelids, and succumbed to sleep, as he had done a hundred times before. The narrow strips of colored cloth, ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... Cambridge, and all the hounds of Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skein of terrified wild-fowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings, while clear above all sounded the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... the sea-winds began to rise, and I felt a chill strike through me from my wet shooting-boots. High overhead gulls were wheeling and tossing like bits of white paper; from some distant marsh a solitary curlew called. Little by little the sun sank into the plain, and the zenith flushed with the after-glow. I watched the sky change from palest gold to pink and then to smouldering fire. Clouds of midges danced above me, and high in the calm ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... Curlew is another "early free-cropping purple plum, habit erect, vigorous," also raised by Francis Rivers. Monarch is a late, good, and very saleable plum. It is said that 75 per cent. or more of the plums ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... look on yon circle of stones which, grey with the lapse of ages, stands in lonely majesty upon the dreary moor, near which no sound is ever heard, save the distant and sullen roar of the ocean, as it breaks in sheets of foam on the rock-bound coast—the fitful cry of curlew, as it wings over them its solitary way—or the occasional low moaning of the wind, as, stealing through amidst the rocks, it seems to pour forth a mournful dirge for the shades of departed greatness:—when we look on a scene like this, we have before our gaze all that is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... hear a pig having its nose ringed, or the grinding of an axe. Cuckoos are all right; they sing in tune. Rooks are lovely; they do not pretend to tune. Seagulls again, and the plaintive creatures that pity themselves on moorlands, as the plover and the curlew, or the birds that lift up their voices and cry at eventide when there is an eager air blowing upon the mountains and the last yellow in the sky is fading—I have no words with which to praise the music of these people. Or listen to the chuckling ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... winter'. Then, after that, the sky soon becomes mottled with flying birds of many kinds: gray geese, laughing geese, waveys, and white geese, as well as great flocks of ducks of many kinds; also mud-hens, sawbills, waders, plovers, curlew, pelicans, swans, and cranes, both white and gray. Then another great flight of little birds as well as loons. And last of all may come the little husky geese that travel farther north to breed their young than do those ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... straight, thin and sensitive at the tip, a beautiful instrument, but good for no purpose except extracting worms from soft ground. If frost or drought hardens the ground, the snipe must starve or travel. Among the many "lang nebbit" birds that follow the same profession as the snipe, some, like the curlew and the ibis, have curved bills of prodigious length. I do not know the comparative advantages of the two forms, but no doubt each bird swears by its own pattern, as every golfer does by ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... He whistled shrill, And he was answered from the hill; Wild as the scream of the curlew, From crag to crag the signal flew. Instant, through copse and heath, arose 200 Bonnets and spears and bended bows; On right, on left, above, below, Sprung up at once the lurking foe; From shingles gray their lances start, The bracken ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Joe went to sleep—HOW, I don't know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... first sent me off to learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a cousin that'd made a lot of money tailoring out in Dakota, and he said tailoring was a lot like drawing, so he sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew, to work in a tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months' schooling a year—walked to school two miles, through snow up to my knees—and Dad never would stand for my having a ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... there was a great solitariness—the murmur of a land where no man had come since the making of the world. Down in the sedges by the lake a blackcap sang sweetly, waesomely, the nightingale of Scotland. Far on the moors a curlew cried out that its soul was lost. Nameless things whinnied in the mist-filled hollows. On the low grounds there lay a white mist knee-deep, and Ralph Peden waded in it as in a shallow sea. So in due time he came near to the place of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... pallid sand, their sharp angles, miniature cliffs, and their crests crowned with coarse grasses. But now, beneath the dull pall of the winter sky, no spot in the world could have been more lonesome or more desolate, for never a sign of man was to be seen upon them and save for a solitary curlew, whose sad note reached Adrian's ears as it beat up wind from the sea, even the beasts and birds that dwelt there had hidden themselves away. Only the voices of Nature remained in all their majesty, the drear screams and moan of the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... White-headed Eagle Meadow Lark Great Horned Owl Bluejay Snowy Owl Ruffed Grouse Red-headed Woodpecker Great Blue Heron Golden-winged Woodpecker Bittern Barn-swallow Wilson's Snipe Whip-poor-will Long-biller Curlew Night Hawk Purple Gallinule Belted Kingfisher Canada Goose Kingbird Wood Duck Woodthrush Hooded Merganser Catbird Double-crested Cormorant White-bellied Nuthatch Arctic Tern Brown Creeper Great Northern Diver Bohemian Chatterer ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... cushat and the curlew have left the hill, and yet ye are abroad. 'Tis time the maiden were at home ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... and there in the turf cuttings, and watch the transparent vapour rising from the red-brown of the purple-shadowed bog fields. Dinnis Rooney, half awake, leisurely, silent, is moving among the stacks with his creel. How the missel thrushes sing in the woods, and the plaintive note of the curlew gives the last touch of mysterious tenderness to the scene. There is a moist, rich fragrance of meadowsweet and bog myrtle in the air; and how fresh and wild ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... I wonder that the stone-curlew, Charadrius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... harkened an' all, an' kept wavin' t' wand aboon her head. I doubted 'twere t' lass that had wakkened t' larks an' gotten 'em to sing so canty. Efter a while shoo lowered t' wand a bit an' pointed to t' moors, an' then, by t' Mess! curlews gat agate o' singin.' Soom fowks reckons that t' song o' t' curlew is dreesom an' yonderly, but I love to harken to it i' t' springtime when t' birds cooms back to t' moors frae t' sea. An' so did t' lass. When shoo heerd t' curlews shoo started laughin' an' dashed t' watter about wi' ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... before and behind and on either side of you, very sombre-hued, yet less black-a-vised than more frequent bergs," where in the distance the mountains "loom up on its borders much less substantial, apparently, in fabric than so many spirals of blue turf smoke," and where the curlew's cry "can set a whole landscape to melancholy in one ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... laughing jackass, (or settler's clock, as he is called,) as he takes up his roost on the withered bough of one of our tallest trees, acquaints us that the sun has just dipped behind the hills, and that it is time to trudge homewards; while the plaintive notes of the curlew, and the wild and dismal screechings of the flying squirrel, skimming from branch to branch, whisper us to retire to our bedchambers. In the morning, again, the dull monotonous double note of the whee-whee, (so named from the sound of its calls,) chiming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various

... the top of the plate? Is there no defendant of the haughty Seignior of Beauport, Rob. Gifart, to give us his biography, and tell us of his sporting days; of the black and grey ducks, brant, widgeon, teal, snipe, and curlew, etc., which infested the marshy banks of the stream—the Ruisseau de l'Ours, on which he had located, first his shooting box, and afterwards his little fort or block-house, against Iroquois aggression? Dr. Gifart was a keen sportsman, tradition ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... tide swings round in the Race, and they're whistling whisht and low, And they come from the lonely heather, where the fur-edged fox-gloves blow, And the moor-grass sways to and fro, Where the yellow moor-birds sigh, And the sea-cooled wind sweeps by. Canst hear the curlew's whistle through the darkness wild and drear,— How they're calling, calling, calling, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... A curlew's note broke the silence, wild, mournful, unearthly. Meg shivered, and sat up straight. Judy's brow, grew damp, her eyes dilated, her ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... its black, white, and red plumage, in the bright light of the morning. It haunted the reach for some days, and was not shot. Among other visitors to this part of the river and its island during spring were a curlew, which fed for some time on the eyot during the early morning, and a pair of pheasants, one of which, an old-fashioned English cock bird, was subsequently captured unhurt. A flock of sandpipers remained there for some weeks, and during the ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... marshes and out upon the sands was a favorite sport, and when not with the fishermen Grenfell was usually to be found with his gun stalking curlew, oyster diggers, or some other of the numerous birds that frequented the marshes and shores. Barefooted, until the weather grew too cold in autumn, and wearing barely enough clothing to cover his nakedness, he would set out in ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... predominated, however, in their faces and legs. The very birds seemed to shun these wastes, and no wonder, since they had an easy method of escaping from them;—at least I only heard the monotonous and plaintive cries of the lapwing and curlew, which my companions denominated the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... ground? Bernaldez led the way, and we climbed up into the mountains in the morning mist. Somewhere above us there was a little waterfall singing its eternal song. In the cloud, where we could not see him, a curlew hung on his heavy wings, and gave forth his low warning whistle. 'Have a care—have a care,' he seemed to cry. Presently Bernaldez stopped, and looked around him. It was a desolate place. 'This will do,' he said. 'And he who drops may be left here. The ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... Stained the leaves with red and yellow; He it was who sent the snow-flake, Sifting, hissing through the forest, Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, Drove the cormorant and curlew To their nests of sedge and sea-tang In the realms of Shawondasee. Once the fierce Kabibonokka Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts From his home among the icebergs, And his hair, with snow besprinkled, Streamed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... that was being swallowed up by the riotous living and gambling debts of Jim. It was then that the querulous crane rose, and testily protested against the selling of his favorite haunt in the sandy peninsula, which only six months of Jim's excesses had made imperative. It was then that a mournful curlew, who, with the preface that he had always been really expecting it, reiterated the story that Jim had been seen more than once staggering home with nervous hands and sodden features from a debauch with the younger officers; it was the same desponding fowl ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... triple-plated with silvern glory pilfered from a splendid moon; on the left the riding lights of a visiting squadron of American warships; on the right the myriad slanted sails of the coral-fishers' boats, beating out toward Capri, with the curlew-calls of the fishermen floating back in shrill snatches to meet a jangle of bell and bugle from the fleet; in the immediate foreground a competent and accomplished family troupe of six Neapolitan troubadours —men, women and children—some of them playing guitars and all six of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... moors, broken up by great masses of limestone rock and occasional clumps and coverts of fir and pine; nothing but the blue line of the hills in the west; nothing but the grey northern skies overhead; nothing but the cry of the curlew and the bleating of the mountain sheep. It was in the midst of this that he met his senior employer—at the corner of a thin spinney which ran along the edge of a disused quarry. Mallalieu, as Stoner well ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... the limbs of trees on which they lighted. From Maine to Virginia these vast flocks were seen. Some years pigeons were so plentiful that they were sold for a penny a dozen in Boston. Pheasant, partridge, woodcock, and quail abounded, plover, snipe, and curlew were in the marsh-woods; in fact, in Virginia every bird familiar to Englishmen at home was found ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... of land between the shore and the hills, Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three, The lovely visible earth and sky and sea, Where what the curlew needs ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... warnings. The great auk and the Labrador duck have both become utterly extinct within living memory. The Eskimo curlew is decreasing to the danger point, and the Yellowlegs is following. The lobster fishing is being wastefully conducted along the St. Lawrence; so, indeed, are the other fisheries. Whales are diminishing: the Cape Charles and Hawke Harbour establishments ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... calls her the Petrel. It's not that I'm superstitious, but to give a boat a name of bad augury to sailors appears to me . . . however, I 've argued it with him and I will have her called the Curlew. Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, Petrel would be thought the proper title for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... holding-ground for the tent-pegs. I quickly instructed them in making faggots of tamarisk-boughs which, tied to the ropes and buried in the sand, were much more secure than pegs in the hardest soil; and the tent was at length arranged. A small species of curlew tempted its fate by visiting the fresh-water margin just before our dinner-hour; I bagged it; and as the cook was in a bad humour, I made a fire of driftwood, with which the beach was strewed, and when the glowing embers ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... her sleep, and uttered a cry of guilt in his spirit; his face became ghastly, and his eyes full of horror: his lips quivered, and he' was about to upbraid his daughter with more harshness than usual, when a low whistle, resembling that of a curlew, was heard at a chink of the door. In a moment he gulped down another glass of spirits, and was on his feet: "Go, Denis, an' get the arms," said he to his brother, "while I let ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... the birds that way were flying, Heron and curlew overhead, With a mighty eagle westward floating, Every ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... of the bush stirred the vast silence. For the first time, Lady Bridget heard the wail of the curlew—a long note, weirdly melancholy. It startled her out of her husband's arms. There were uncanny swishings of wings in the great gum tree on the other side of the creek. And now the clanking of the horses' hobbles which had ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... in sawce. Partrych. Young Pocock. Venson baked. Coney. Fryed meat in paste. Pigeons. Lesh Lumbert. Byttor. A Frutor. Curlew. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... more fast gunboats of the Curlew and Landrail type. I trust that the next estimates for the Navy will contain an ample provision for building ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... harmless happiness lay in seeing the wild-fowl splashing where nothing splashes now except beer and the bathing rabble. If progress is happiness—where is mine? Gone with the curlew and the wild duck! Therefore, there is no progress. Quod erat, my ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... walked on the top of the cliffs it struck my right cheek viciously, and then screamed away past through the furze-bushes. The light was coming up slowly over the leaden sea, and the waves seemed cowed by the steady flogging of the sleet. I heard the woods complaining from afar off, and the whistling curlew as he called overhead made me think of messengers of evil. Presently I came to a great range of rounded hills, which were covered by withered bracken. Certain gaps led through these hills to the beach, and along the beach I determined to ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... the sedgy grass and the curlew continued to circle, vanishing and reappearing from behind the trees, always uttering those shrill cries. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... or two of these watching us from a distance, but soon we passed into utter loneliness, and nought but the cries of the nesting curlew which we startled, and the wail of the plover round our heads, broke the solemn stillness of the grey rocks on every side. Even our men grew silent, and the ring of sword on stirrup seemed too loud to be natural at last. We were ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... Then all the Jinn went away, whereupon Tuhfeh rose to her feet and Iblis said, 'Go ye up with Tuhfeh to the garden for the rest of the night.' So Kemeriyeh took her and carried her into the garden. Now this garden contained all manner birds, nightingale and mocking-bird and ringdove and curlew[FN204] and other than these of all the kinds, and therein were all kinds of fruits. Its channels[FN205] were of gold and silver and the water thereof, as it broke forth of its conduits, was like unto fleeing serpents' bellies, and indeed it was as it were the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... weeks, three weeks goes by, an' since a dead Mexican more or less ain't calc'lated to leave no onefface'ble scars the incident is all but forgot, when a second uprisin' takes place in the Votes For Women S'loon. This time it's that sickly curlew-voiced Oscar who's the shriekin' center of eevents. Most of us is jest filin' out of the O. K. Restauraw, pickin' our teeth after our matootinal reepast, when we beholds this yere Oscar boilin' fo'th from the Votes For Women S'loon, all spraddled out. As he goes t'arin' down the street ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... dance, spread their tails, chase one another, and perform many strange courting parades. A careful observer of birds, Mr. E. Selous, who is quoted by Havelock Ellis,[63] has found that all bird dances are not nuptial, but that some birds—the stone-curlew (or great plover), for example—have different kinds of dancing. The nuptial dances are taken part in by both the male and female, and are immediately followed by conjugation; but there are as well other dances or antics of a non-sexual character, which ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... upsetting of the balance of nature. A great deal could be learnt from the excellent work already done all over the continent with regard to the farmer's and forester's wild friends and foes. A migrating flight of curlew, snipe, plover or sandpipers is worth much more to the farmer alive than dead. But by no means every farmer knows the ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up there,—a flight of lapwings now and then—a lone curlew. The long, squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to be happy in his own land among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so that their hearts were broken and they died. I hardly hear the curlew cry, Nor the grey rush when wind is high, Before my thoughts begin to run On the heir of Ulad, Buan's son, Baile who had the honey mouth, And that mild woman of the south, Aillinn, who was King Lugaid's heir. Their love was never drowned ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats

... yon lone vale his early youth was bred, Not solitary then—the bugle-horn Of fell Alecto often waked its windings, From where the brook joins the majestic river, To the wild northern bog, the curlew's haunt, Where oozes forth its first and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... is Uncle Mansie," said Jessie, as the two men climbed over the ship's rail and swarmed down into the boat. Then up went the brown sail, and the little Curlew sped blithely past the whaling ships and across the broad bay, and it was not long ere she was moored alongside our jetty ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... wind of winter Turns us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir-forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! The brave North-easter! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over heath ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... Rock could turn out to resist a sudden attack by a powerful iron-clad fleet. The supposed enemy was represented by the Channel Squadron, under the command of Vice-Admiral Baird, and consisting of H.M.S. Northumberland (flag ship), the Agincourt, Monarch, Iron Duke, and Curlew. The "general idea" of the operations was that a hostile fleet was known to be cruising in the vicinity, and that an attack on the Rock might be made. The squadron left Gibraltar and proceeded to the westward, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... wild selector's children fly before a stranger's face. Home of tragedy applauded by the dingoes' dismal yell, Heaven of the shanty-keeper — fitting fiend for such a hell — And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the curlew's call — And the lone sundowner tramping ever ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... "Curlew," replied Dave in a low voice, whose tones were imitated by the lads as the boat was softly punted along. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... look in upon you and bring you some of the delicacies of the tropical clime, waterm[e]lions, as the "inhabitants" call them, rich and red; huge, mellow figs, seedy but succulent; plump quails, sweet curlew, delicate squirrels, fat rabbits, tender chickens. We fare well here. If the wretched country only had more rocks and less sand, better horses, more tolerable staff officers,[54] and just a little more frequent communication ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... midnight, take his stand upon Blentford's Bluff and peer into the dark and sombre depths of Kinder, when he will hear the hooting of the barn owl on Anna rocks, the unearthly screech of the landrail as he ploughs his way through the unmown grass in search of his mate, the scream of the curlew and chatter of the red grouse as they take their flight from peak to peak, and see the fairy queen come forth from the mermaid's cave in a shimmering light, followed by her maids, who dance a quadrille to the music of the spheres, and hear the wild blast of the hunter's ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet

... barred by a rail, so they had to stop, and he put his arm round her, and she laid her head on his shoulder; and the murmur of wind and water was in her ears, and she became as the lark that sang above them, the curlew that piped, the quiet cattle, and all inanimate things—untroubled, natural, complete. All intellectual interest being suspended, she had begun to yearn for a companion, a mate. Her delicate mind refused to account for the tender sensation; but it was love, or rather the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... earth—consecrated a great passion, to lift him out of himself. He sat and smoked, spiritually bemused, his brain running like a fountain with melodies of music and poetry, notes and words that sang in his ears and murmured on his lips without his hearing them. So a distant curlew thrilled him to a more ecstatic melancholy with its call through the moon-transfigured world, and he did not notice it. All the influences of the gentle night contributed to his inspired mood, but Love was the first violin in that orchestra under Nature's conductorship—Nature, whose hour it was, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... liked ... But come, I'll set Your chair outside, where you can feel the sun; And hearken to the curlew; and be the first To welcome Jim and Phoebe as man and ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... where the shadows of a tuft of marram grass above my head lay as thin black wire on the sand, were the dunes caught in part of their secret. There was no sound. I heard the outer world from which I had come only as the whistle of a curlew. It was far away now. To this place, the news I had heard on the quay that morning would have sounded the same as Waterloo, which was yesterday, or the Armada, which was the same day—wasn't it?—or the day before, or as the whistle of a curlew. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... In north-eastern Illinois the Avocet generally occurs in small parties the last of April and the first of May, and during September and the early part of October, when it frequents the borders of marshy pools. The bird combines the characteristics of the Curlew and the Godwit, the ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... Johns, except that it was studded with islands, and was twice its width. On the largest of the islands is an extensive orange-grove. As there were no difficulties in the navigation of the lake, Cornwood called Buck to the wheel, and joined the party on the outer deck. He pointed out the herons, curlew, cranes, paroquets, and other birds. When he said it was fine fishing in the lake, our sportsmen had their trolling lines overboard. Ten fine black bass were taken; and at "seven bells," a portion of them were on the breakfast table. We all took our meals ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... treated in like manner by O'Connor Slygah; who, upon the protestants quitting their holds, promised them quarter, and to convey them safe over the Curlew mountains, to Roscommon. But he first imprisoned them in a most loathsome jail, allowing them only grains for their food. Afterward, when some papists were merry over their cups, who were come to congratulate ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... "it wa'n't just the weather I'd pick to take the old Curlew out in; but when I see through the glasses what the white thing was that's poundin' around on Razor Back Ledges, and seen the distress signal run up—why, I couldn't stay ashore. There was others would have gone, I guess, if I hadn't. But there ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... suddenly when at dusk Geoffrey rode home. In forecast of winter, a bitter breeze sighed across the heather and set the harsh grasses moaning eerily. The sky was somber overhead; scarred fell and towering pike had faded to blurs of dingy gray, and the ghostly whistling of curlew emphasized the emptiness of the darkening moor. The evening's mood suited Geoffrey's, and he rode slowly with loose bridle. The bouquet of the brandy had awakened within him a longing that he dreaded, and though, hitherto, he had been ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... grass-grown paths. The prairie dogs play sentinel by day And backward slips the badger to his den; The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake, A staring buzzard floating in the blue, And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call,— Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore. All else is mute and dormant; vacantly The sun looks down, the days run idly on, The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls Smothering the records of the westward ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... of destruction - viz. that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I would on a goat or turtle; and have thought it no more crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I would unjustly slander myself if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged, with great humanity, all these unknown deliverances ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... think it is funny to pretend that you think I said curlew you are very much mistaken. I have a very great many things to do, more things than a little boy like you can count, and I can't spend all the morning with you. So I am going to write on this slate: "The curfew bell was rung at eight o'clock every night as a sign that people were ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... ay, the year's awaking, The fire's among the ling, The beechen hedge is breaking, The curlew's on the wing: Primroses are out, lad, On the high banks of Lee, And the sun stirs the trout, lad, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... you, you are alone with the lonely hills and the wide sky and the elemental things that have been from the beginning and will outlast all the tortured drama of men. The very sounds of life—the whistle of the curlew, the bleating of the mountain sheep—add to the sense of primeval solitude. To these sounds the crags have echoed for a thousand and ten thousand years; to these sounds and to the rushing of the winds and the waters they will echo ten thousand years hence. It is as though you have ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... home. As we emerged from the trees, a rattlesnake, as large as a man's arm, and more than four feet long, lay coiled on a rock, fiercely rattling and hissing at us; a gray hare, double the size of those in New England, leaped up from the tall ferns; curlew were screaming over our heads, and a whole host of little prairie dogs sat yelping at us at the mouths of their burrows on the dry plain beyond. Suddenly an antelope leaped up from the wild-sage bushes, gazed eagerly at us, and then, erecting his white tail, stretched away like a greyhound. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... the stream they were following. Deer broke from the willow copse and bounded away, while grouse rose on whirring wings from under the horses' hoofs as they emerged upon the plain where the wild cry of the curlew rang clear and sharp on the morning. They were free and breathed deep of the spirit of freedom; listened to the old primeval song of nature's myriad voices; gazed long upon the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... saddle ain't built like these yere Eastern hulls, nohow. The stirrup is set two inches further back for one thing, an' it's compiled a heap different other ways. Bein' onused to cow saddles, an' for that matter cow ponies, this Todd lops over for'ard an' beats with his elbows like he's a curlew or somethin' flyin', an' I reckons it's sech proceedin's makes Jaybird allow he's goin' to be funny an' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... like the deer to move but slowly, but in reality running their hardest with a swinging relentless stride. There was something almost dreamlike in this strange procession as it moved on between green earth and blue heaven, with none to see it, as it appeared, but the white-winged curlew which whistled mournfully overhead. But presently a little group of horsemen appeared on the far side of the hounds, just six of them in all. The old huntsman was leading them, in his long skirted coat and double-peaked cap, as Dick had often seen him, with his little ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... Duck Island were in keeping with its general appearance, melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of the passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, were all beyond powers of written expression. The aspect of these mournful fowls was not at all cheerful or inspiring, as the boat containing the Irishman and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... Black-bellied Plover Golden Plover Semi-palmated Plover Belted Piping Plover Wilson Plover Piping Plover Killdeer Willett Greater Yellow Legs Summer Yellow Legs Turnstone Red Phalarope Northern Phalarope Avocet Oyster Catcher Long-billed Curlew Jack Curlew Hudsonian Godwit Sanderling Black-necked Stilt Dowitcher Knot Stilt Sandpiper Solitary Sandpiper Spotted Sandpiper Red-backed Sandpiper White-rumped Sandpiper ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... city are ringing in the night; High above the gardens are the houses full of light; On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free; And the broom is blowing ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the folds of his surplice caught the words and carried them far out to sea over the heads of the living—the sea where the others lay who had fought their last fight in that grim battle of the mist. A curlew circled low down overhead, calling again and again as if striving to convey some insistent message that none would understand. From the rocky shore near-by came the low murmur of the sea, the sound that has in it all the sorrow and gladness ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... come, 'tis sure they will plant outposts and sentinels within the green, so be ye wary to smite outpost and sentinel suddenly and that none may hear within the camp nor take alarm; when 'tis done, cry you thrice like unto a curlew that we may know. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... flocks of wild-fowl at that season. We rowed into the bay while it was still high tide, then left the boat; and our men made little huts of boughs some distance from the shore, where we could sit without being perceived. As the tide ebbed the birds arrived—tall storks, fishing eagles, gulls, curlew, plover, godwits, and many others we did not know. They flew in long lines, till they seemed to vanish and reappear, circling round and round, then swooping down upon the sand where the receding waves were leaving their supper. I never saw ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... this opinion he was probably in part led by the article Donia or Clianthus, in Don's System of Gardening and Botany, vol. 2. p. 468, in which a third species of the genus is introduced, founded on a specimen in Mr. Lambert's Herbarium, said to have been discovered at Curlew River, by Captain King. This species, named Clianthus Dampieri by Cunningham, he characterises as having leaves of a slightly different form, but its principal distinction is in its having racemes instead of umbels; at the same time ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... psalm-tune which our fathers called "Complaint," and the cracked, wavering voices of the women, with the deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain, rose in the uproar of the storm with a ghostly, strange wildness, like the scream of the curlew or the wailing of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... it," said Uncle Jimmy. "The Curlew is about even with her, but they ain't one o' ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... shadow beneath a larchwood which as yet had not wholly lost its vivid vernal green, he disturbed the paddling moor-hens and put up a mallard from a clump of swaying reeds. Then he dressed and turned homeward, glowing, beside a sluggish stream which wound through a waste of heather where the curlew were whistling eerily. He had no cares to trouble him, and it was delightful to feel that he had nothing to do except to enjoy himself in what he considered the fairest country in the ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... rise of the hills was a long dreary waste—treeless, awesome, desolate. Whiles, as we ran, a curlew would rise, and its long whirling cry rose in the night, filling the ears and leaving an emptiness afterwards in the silence, for things not canny to be filling. Once we startled a herd of red-deer feeding round the mossy lips ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... O, curlew, cry no more in the air, Or only to the waters of the West; Because your crying brings to my mind Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair That was shaken out over my breast: There is enough evil in the crying ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... see to give cause for this. A flock of curlew were passing, wailing one to the other, across the sunset; a string of late gulls trailed athwart the sky; and a wedge of those beautiful little wild-duck known as wigeon was letting itself down to the shores of the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... knew him, was already "the oldest herd on the Pentlands," and had been all his days faithful to that curlew-scattering, sheep-collecting life. He remembered the droving days, when the drove-roads, that now lie green and solitary through the heather, were thronged thoroughfares. He had himself often marched flocks into England, sleeping on the hillsides with his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... foundation for their humble homes; here and there a grey church tower or skeleton windmill breaks the line of the level horizon. The meres and marshes have the silence of long dead years resting upon them, save where the breeze stirs the riverside reeds or a curlew cries ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... a farm and its out-buildings, and a pool of water beneath a group of elms. It was vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a scum of weed. And about half a mile beyond stood a cluster of cottages and an old towered church. He gazed idly down, listening vaguely to the wailing of a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro above the broken solitude of its green hill. And it seemed as if a thin and dark cloud began to be quietly withdrawn from over his eyes. Hill and wailing cry and barn and water faded out. And he was staring as if in an endless stillness at an ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... thickly timbered with gum, cherry, and sheoak: a thousand parrots flew swiftly in flocks, whistling and screaming from tree to tree, while wattled-birds and numerous other honeyeaters clustered on the flowering basksias. The spurwinged plover and the curlew ran swiftly among the grass, and on a tall dead tree white cockatoos and blue cranes ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... thing to break the silence up here was the cry of an occasional bird, the plaintive call of the plover, the barking of an eagle, the note of the curlew, a whinny as of a horse of Lilliput, the strange noise a pheasant makes and it rising from the heather: whir-r-r, like a piece of elastic snapping. Barring these you'd hear nothing at all. And barring a mountainy man or woman, and they cutting turf, you'd meet ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... with the deep mournful music were ringing, The curlew and plover in concert were singing; But the melody died 'midst derision and laughter, As the hosts of ungodly rushed on ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... whistlers" are curlew, or herringspear birds, thought to be storm-bringers when heard overhead at sea. You will find a story in Buckland's "Curiosities of Natural ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... momentary silence succeeded to their uproar. The tigers ceased to roar and the elephants to scream; the bears raised their snouts from their foul banquets, and the wolves dropped from their jaws the remnants of human flesh. And when they disappeared, the hooting of the owl, and ghastly "ha! ha!" of the curlew, and the howling of the jackal died away in the far distance, leaving a ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... of the Cornish moor. To the south Ding-Dong Mine reared its shattered chimney-stack, toward the northwest Carn Galvas—that rock-piled fastness of dead giants—reared a gray head against the blue. A curlew piped; a lizard rustled into a tussock of grass where pink bog-heather and seeding cotton grasses splashed the sodden ground; a dragon-fly from the marsh stayed a moment upon Men-an-tol, and the jewel of his eyes was a little world holding all the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... before the squall comes, if there's any about. I don't think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning about half an hour ago down in the south, but nothing has come of it. There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands. You don't seem to care ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... him before, with a good-for-nothing young spendthrift taken at the last moment "because he wrote a good hand," and a mixed crew, Hudson crossed the wide Atlantic for the last time. He sailed by way of Iceland, where "fresh fish and dainty fowl, partridges, curlew, plover, teale, and goose" much refreshed the already discontented crews, and the hot baths of Iceland delighted them. The men wanted to return to the pleasant land discovered in the last expedition, but the mysteries of the frozen North still called the old explorer, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... of an hour or more they rode along the edge of the Saltings, for the most part in silence that was broken only by the cry of curlew and the lap of the turning tide. No human being did they see, indeed, for this place was very desolate and unvisited, save now and again by fishermen. At length, just as the sun began to sink, they approached the shore of Death Creek—a sheet of tidal water which ran a mile ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... than the ant. To the smaller birds he is forbidden fruit. In wet weather, when his vestibule is shallow, the sand-hill crane may burglarize him, or even get a snap judgment on him at the front door. The bill of the great curlew cannot be sent in so effectively, not being so rightly drawn; but that bird, more common in the season than anywhere else away from the coast, finds plenty of other food. He is not here in the winter. His ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... curlew breeds in innumerable quantities in the muddy islands on the coasts of Pomauron; the egrets and crabiers in the same place. They resort to the mud-flats at ebbing water, while thousands of sandpipers and plovers, with here and there a ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... her depopulated vales, the scream Of bloody Superstition hollow rings, And the scared native to the tempest howls The yell of deprecation. O'er her marts, Her crowded ports, broods Silence; and the cry Of the low curlew, and the pensive dash Of distant billows, breaks alone the void; Even as the savage sits upon the stone That marks where stood her capitols, and hears The bittern booming in the weeds, he shrinks From the dismaying solitude.—Her bards Sing in a language that ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... at Plato, but never had he known crying curlew and misty mere and the fluttering wings ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... the outlines of a canvas collapsible boat crowded with men. At two lengths from the shore the rowers laid on their oars. One of the men gave vent to a low whistle resembling the call of a curlew. ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... fly many castes of hawks this day; the first flight was after a curlew; and the riding was so hard, so dangerous, from the broken nature of the ground, that the ladies gave it up, and were contented to view the sport from the eminence ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... side of this wilderness, is Holdernesse Hall, ten miles by road, but only six across the moor. It is a peculiarly desolate plain. A few moor farmers have small holdings, where they rear sheep and cattle. Except these, the plover and the curlew are the only inhabitants until you come to the Chesterfield high road. There is a church there, you see, a few cottages, and an inn. Beyond that the hills become precipitous. Surely it is here to the north that ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I love these wild flowers in this dear land of ours, The curlew I love to hear scream, And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks That ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... ship by mutual arrangement, and the whole of the crew had mustered to see him off and to express their sense of relief at his departure. After some years spent in long voyages, he had fancied a trip on a coaster as a change, and, the schooner Curlew having no use for a ship's carpenter, had shipped as cook. He had done his best, and the unpleasant epithets that followed him along the quay at Dunchurch as he followed in the wake of his sea-chest were the result. Master and ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs

... from a brooding curlew, a faint sigh from a plover, and the wild rasping cry of a lapwing greeted them overhead. Yet there was a silence, a silence broken for a moment by the cries of the birds, but a silence thick and heavy. Between the calls of the birds Mysie could almost ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... with sand Sinna sheeostang. Cough, to Sack-quee. Count, to Oohaw'koo-oong[39]. Country A'whfee. Cow Mee Ooshee. Crab Gaannee. Crab, to crawl as a Hoyoong. Creep, to Haw'yoong. Crow, to O'tayoong. Crow Garrasee. Cry, to Nachoong. Curlew U'nguainan. Cut, to Cheeoong, or feeoong, or feejoong. Dance Oodooee, or Makatta. Dark Coorasing. Daughter Innago oongua, or ungua. Day (at Napakiang) Nit'chee[40]. —— (in the north of the island) I'sheeree. —— after to-morrow Asattee. —— the following Asa tinnacha. Daylight Heeroo. Dead ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... is the matter?" "That," said the Kangaroo, as she laid herself down to rest, "is the sound of the Curlew enjoying itself. They are sociable birds, and entertain a great deal. There is a party to-night, I suppose, and that is the expression of their enjoyment. I believe," she continued, with a suppressed yawn, "it's not so painful ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... exception of the golden plover, few of the wading birds resemble those of Europe. The snipe, the woodcock, the curlew, most of the sandpipers, together with the coot and the water-hen, are distinct from those of Europe, and are not only peculiar to America, but few of them have been found to the south of the line. One of the most magnificent birds is the American flamingo, which is of a more ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... curlew and crested hern, Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern, Chaffinch and greenfinch, warbler, stonechat, ruff, Pied wagtail, robin, fly-catcher and chough, Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk, and jay, Built, those far ages gone, in this year's way. And the first man who walked the cliffs ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... Occasionally my casual observations are made afar off, with the medium of a telescope. Then the birds are seen behaving naturally, and without fear or self-consciousness. The other day the cute attitudes of a beach curlew interested me, as he stood upon a stone just awash, and ever and anon picked up a crab. A blue heron flapped down beside him, and the curlew skipped off to another rock. In a minute the heron straightened his ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... here was one of the curlew tribe, greatly resembling an ibis, and remarkable for its size. It measured from the extremity of the bill to the tip of the toe 27 1/2 inches, and weighed 1 pound 14 1/2 ounces. The colour, with the exception of the belly and legs, which were of a dirty white slightly mottled, very much resembled ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the unusual flood of melody. Farther ahead still it travelled, till the lonely dingo heard it as he prowled, and, sitting on his haunches, raised his throat towards the skies and poured forth a melancholy howl in unison, rousing the suspicions of the night curlew that everything was not as it should be, and inducing him in turn to give utterance to his cry, mournful and weird as the wail of an outcast soul, to warn his fellows to be on the alert, and to add to the unspeakably awe-inspiring solemnity of ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... various tenements in Hatton, Shrawley, Rowington, Pinley and Clendon.[259] Hil., 16 Elizabeth, Hugo Walford, Quer., and Thomas Shakspere and Marie, his wife, defendants, concerning cottage and 5 acres of land in Norton Curlew. Easter, 20 James I., Thomas Shakespere, Quer., and John Hall and Joyce, his wife, defendants, of 12 acres of land in Rowington, which were sold to the said Thomas Shakespeare, 41 Elizabeth.[260] ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... wave is mute; No sound or ocean shock; No music save the trilling flute That marks the curlew flock. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... "It's only a curlew calling to his friend," Grizzel said, creeping out of the hollow. "They scream exactly like people being killed, but it's only their way; they mean ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... The night was full of sounds, but whether earthly; from wildfowl and bittern and curlew, from fox, and badger, and otter; or from the evil spirits of the marsh, I knew not nor cared. For now the long imprisonment and the day's terrible doings, and the little food I had had since we halted on the hill of Brent, all ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... heard a sea-bird call like that," said Joe, in a husky whisper. "It wasn't a gull, nor a shag, nor a curlew." ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... fauna: Eagle River, Bald Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake the animals haunting these places in earlier days? Trapper's Grove tells a story we feel, but need not rehearse. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power of written expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte



Words linked to "Curlew" :   Numenius borealis, limicoline bird, curlew sandpiper, Numenius arquata, stone curlew, Numenius, European curlew, shore bird, shorebird, genus Numenius, Eskimo curlew



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