"Jackdaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of small birds is, I think, due in the first place to the extraordinary abundance of the jackdaw, the diligent seeker after small birds' nests, and to the autumn and winter pastime of bush-beating to which men and boys are given in these parts, and which the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a fool. I'll go and tell Professor Baumgarten all about it and ask his advice. I'd rather face a loaded cannon; but it must be done. Then I'll sell out, pay my debts, and go back where I belong. Better be an honest pauper than a jackdaw among peacocks'; and Nat smiled in the midst of his trouble, as he looked about him at the little elegancies of his room, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the genus Eulabes, often talk as well as parrots. The common introduced European starling often says a few words quite clearly. I once knew a long-tailed glossy starling (Lamprotornis caudatus) which shared an aviary with an accomplished albino jackdaw. The starling had acquired much of the jackdaw's repertoire, and the 'conversations' carried on between the two birds ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... as well as a narrow brimmed hat would answer that of an umbrella. Broken earthenware not unfrequently visible in the banks, in some places at the depth of 3-4 feet. Unsettled weather, with gusts of strong wind from the S. and SSE. Thermometer 78 degrees 82'. The usual Calcutta birds continue, jackdaw-like crow, Falco pondicherainus, two common mainas, Ardea indica, and ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... you, knight,' Udal whispered urgently from the doorway, 'carry no letter in this affair—if you escape, assuredly this mad pupil of mine shall die. For the King——?' Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw's: 'That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates' Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going whither so many great men have already passed, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... birds evinced the most perfect friendliness and confidence in us, and we became greatly attached to them. They and the fowls seemed excellent travellers, and after a long day's march would come up smiling, like the jackdaw of Rheims, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Isabella, gathering fruit; J is for John, who is playing the flute. K 's for Kate, who is nursing her dolly; L is for Lawrence, feeding Poor Polly. M is for Maja, learning to draw; N is for Nicholas, with a jackdaw. O 's for Octavius, riding a goat; P 's for Penelope, sailing a boat. Q is for Quintus, armed with a lance; R is for Rachel, learning to dance. S 's for Sarah, talking to the cook; T is for Thomas, reading a book. U 's for Urban, rolling on the green; V 's named Victoria, ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... that no man can go talkin' about to any but only the Lord himself. Still you can't help us poor folks seeing when there's summat amiss, and we can't help havin' our own thoughts any more than the sailor's jackdaw that couldn't speak. And sometimes we may be nearer the mark than you would suppose, for God has made us all of ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Sandie was my age to a year, and many a ploy we had together; there was the jackdaw's nest in the ivy on the old tower we harried together," and the General could only indicate the delightful risk of the exploit. "My father and the minister were pacing the avenue at the time, and caught ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Cowper's Castaway, which was a great favorite with me; its solemn measure and gloomy character, as well as the incident it was founded upon, making it well suited to a lonely watch at sea. Then his lines to Mary, his address to the Jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk (I abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems in my chest); "Ille et nefasto'' from Horace, and Goethe's Erl Knig. After I had got through ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bed, therefore, where she lay only more feverish—conjecturing, and painting frightful pictures, till she heard the crow of the early village cock, and the caw of the jackdaw wheeling close to the eaves as he took wing in the gray of the morning to show her that the business of a new day had commenced; and yet ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... eating out of the bowl with a wooden spoon, a tame jackdaw who had been sitting on an old stool by the fireside, hopped over and perched himself close ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... nothing stirs her grand old heart down to its central deeps universally and long, except the Right. She puts on her shawl very badly, and she is awkward enough in a concert-room, scarce knowing a Swedish nightingale from a jackdaw; but—blessings large and long upon her!—she knows how to teach her sons to sink like men amidst sharks and billows, without parade, without display, as if Duty were the most natural thing in the world; and she never mistakes long an ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, and the jackdaw. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Baltic, and half as many to the Black Sea,-this little Britain, commonly called Great Britain, is to dictate to Petersburg and Bengal and cover Constantinople under those wings that reach from the North Pole to the farthest East! I am mighty sorry for it, and hope we shall not prove a jackdaw that pretends to dress himself in the plumes ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... parents did not understand. It was time, however, to send him to school. They would see what the schoolmaster would do for him. But the schoolmaster was as blind as the parents, and Tommy's doom was sealed, when one morning, while the school was at prayers, a jackdaw poked its head out of his pocket ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... stupid Peruonto, hanging down his head as if he was going to gaol. Away he went, walking as if he were a jackdaw, or treading on eggs, counting his steps, at the pace of a snail's gallop, and making all sorts of zigzags and excursions on his way to the wood, to come there after the fashion of a raven. And when he reached the middle ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... cried Mason, dashing the head of the old man against the angle of the wall at each interrogatory. "Who the devil are you, and where is the Englishman? Speak, thou thundercloud! Answer me, you jackdaw, or I'll hang you on the gallows of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... JACKDAW (Corvus monedula).—A very amusing, though very wicked pet. There used to be throngs of them in the tower of the old church at Hursley, and their droll voices might be heard conversing in the evening. Mr. Chamberlayne had one which, after being freed, always came down to greet him when he ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... jackdaw's nest in the chimney, whereupon the whole train rushed off to investigate, leaving the two doctors and Ethel standing together in the empty parlour, Dr. May pressing, Dr. Spencer raising desultory objections; but so evidently against his own wishes, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... (falco), is very common, as is the crow, gadak (corvus), and jackdaw, pong (gracula), with ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... I could look around me I found that the hall was indeed simply full of animals. It seemed to me that almost every kind of creature from the countryside must be there: a pigeon, a white rat, an owl, a badger, a jackdaw—there was even a small pig, just in from the rainy garden, carefully wiping his feet on the mat while the light from the candle glistened on ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... all his life. All animals seemed to take to him, for he had pets without end. The two nanny-goats and the little hind followed him like dogs; the squirrel was always in his pocket or on his shoulder; and a jackdaw and a magpie, both of them pinioned, fluttered after him wherever he went, chattering and scolding as though the place belonged to them. Then the children mounted their ponies and off they started, the idiot leading the way on his own ragged pony, which he rode barebacked ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... possessed, till he had literally nothing left but the clothes in which he stood. 'He could not rest,' he said, 'till he had pulled out all his borrowed peacock's feathers. When they were gone he should be able to see, at last, whether he was jackdaw or eagle.' And wonder not, reader, at this same strength of will. The very genius, which too often makes its possessor self-indulgent in common matters, from the intense capability of enjoyment which it brings, may also, when ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... upon making out his case that he allowed himself to be imposed upon by the tales of irresponsible observers. Many of his stories of the intelligence of birds and beasts are antecedently improbable. He evidently credits the story of the Bishop of Carlisle, who thinks he saw a jackdaw being tried by a jury of rooks for some misdemeanor. Jack made a speech and the jury cawed back at him, and after a time appeared to acquit Jack! What a child's fancy to be put in a serious work on "Animal Intelligence"! The ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... crank and used to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and they justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among men like a jackdaw ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... had earned enough to make quite a fortune in his eyes; ten whole guineas lay glittering in the old night cap where he kept his savings, and the tailor thought he might now set up for a gentleman. So he bought cloth, made himself, in secret, a fine cloak, coat, and breeches, and in these jackdaw adornments paraded about the streets a whole morning, trying to appear an idle fine gentleman. At last he strutted into the best inn, ordered a grand dinner and a bottle of wine, ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... to be talked to, and arrangements made for the day's meals; then there were the fowls and ducks to feed, the one-eyed pony to visit, and talk to while he nibbled his daily apple, and the peace to keep between the seagull and jackdaw, whose habitual friendship could hardly stand the test of breakfast-time. And if she lingered too long with these and the dogs, Sir Paul, the parrot, was screaming loudly, threatening to "tell the missus," while the whole ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... give the thing into your keeping, sir? This jackdaw-like hiding is a sort of reflection on our honesty, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... wondering if it was on account of any special one of his latest escapades that he had been summoned to the office—the breaking of the window in the Long Hall by the stone he had flung at the rook, or the climbing of the South Tower for the jackdaw's nest. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him—grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in all countries and climates, and prosper wherever ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... old jackdaw that certainly did; for he hopped and hopped along after the master with the saddest expression I ever saw bird wear. But the master took no notice. On and on he wandered, seemingly unconscious of the presence even of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... curse of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims, who banned the thief—both body and soul, his life and for ever—who stole his ring. It was an awful curse, but none of the guests seemed the worse for it, except the poor jackdaw who had hidden the ring in some sly corner as a practical joke. But, if we are to believe traditionary and historical lore, only too many of the curses recorded in the chronicles of family history have been productive ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... river? We have plied here, men and boys, for years; and to be sure we cannot say that we never saw a swan: there are some here and there towards the fens, which make a low dull noise: but as for any harmony, a rook or a jackdaw, in comparison of them, may be looked ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... said Harry. "He'd look like an old cock jackdaw when he's moulting. Ha! ha! ha! what an ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... was only necessary to remove one to make room for my body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had not been lighted for many years; there was no soot in the passage. There was a jackdaw's nest high up. I could see the old jackdaw looking down at me. Up above her head was a little square of sky. I did not doubt that when I got to the top I should be able to scramble out of that square on to the leads, then down by a water-spout, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... of course the Jackdaw descends into the plains of the North-west Punjaub, is very numerous near the foot of the hills, and has been found in cis-Indus as far east as Umballa, and south at Ferozpoor, Jhelum, and Kalabagh. In Trans-Indus it extends unto the Dehra ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... of my life. In his time Christie had been "reader's" boy at Ballantyne's, in Edinburgh, and in that capacity he had laid hands with a jackdaw assiduity on every scrap of literary interest which he could secure. He had proof sheets corrected by the hands of every notable man of his time. He had been engaged for at least fifty years in making his collection, and he kept it all loosely tumbled together in a big chest, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... only instance I ever heard of his sagacity, was his deserting his former patron, when he found him declining in power, and in disgrace with the people. Without principle, talent, or intelligence, he is ungracious as a hog, greedy as a vulture, and thievish as a jackdaw; but, it must be owned, he is no hypocrite. He pretends to no virtue, and takes no pains to disguise his character — His ministry will be attended with one advantage, no man will be disappointed by his breach of promise, as no mortal ever trusted to his word. I wonder how lord— first discovered ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Awakes in confusion; The birds and the insects, The swift-footed beasts And the low crawling reptiles Are chattering and buzzing And stirring all round. 160 The timid grey hare Springing out of the bushes Speeds startled away; The hoarse little jackdaw Flies off to the top Of a birch-tree, and raises A harsh, grating shriek, A most horrible clamour. A weak little peewit Falls headlong in terror 170 From out of its nest, And the mother comes flying In search of her fledgeling. She twitters in anguish. Alas! ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... One side of this cloistered walk seems to be the length of the nave of the cathedral. There is a square of four such sides; and of places for meditation, grave, yet not too sombre, it seemed to me one of the best. While we stayed there, a jackdaw was walking to and fro across the grassy enclosure, and haunting around the good Bishop's grave. He was clad in black, and looked like a feathered ecclesiastic; but I know not whether it were Bishop Dennison's ghost, or that ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was 'a little beauty'. Her friends repeated the pleasing phrase enthusiastically, and for several minutes she stood, like a jackdaw in the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered like a party ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of the forest, was worth noticing, and was watched long through the glasses; namely, two or three large trees, from which dangled a multitude of the pendant nests of the Merles: {209} birds of the size of a jackdaw, brown and yellow, and mocking- birds, too, of no small ability. The pouches, two feet long and more, swayed in the breeze, fastened to the end of the boughs with a few threads. Each had, about half-way down, an opening into the round sac below, in and out of which the Merles crept and fluttered, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... last he reached the branch which bore the nest, where he stooped puzzled, for Mrs and Mr Passer must have had an eye to safety when they constructed their nest; for unless Master Harry had possessed the activity and lightness of body of the old cock jackdaw he was so lately talking about, there was no chance of his getting any of the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old pictures, good old furniture. Their first crude conception of dazzling suites of the newly perfect is replaced almost from the outset by a jackdaw dream of accumulating costly ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... here described are Rooks (corvus frugilegus). I have allowed myself to speak of them by their generic or family name of Crow, this being a common country practice. The genus corvus, or Crow, includes the Raven, the Carrion Crow, the Hooded Crow, the Jackdaw, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... little ducky, dovey, doggieboy, your swallow, your little jackdaw, your little tootsie wootsie sparrowkin: (opening his mouth) make a reptile of me and let me have a double tongue in my mouth; throw a chain of arms around me; clasp ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... enough in the life of the butcher's boy, and romance enough in the story of the miller's daughter, to occupy all her mind with, innocent of troubles concerning the Turkish question; steady-going old Barham, confessing nobody but the Jackdaw of Rheims, and fearless alike of Ritualism, Darwinism, or disestablishment; iridescent clearness of Thomas Hood—the wildest, deepest infinity of marvelously jestful men; manly and rational Sydney, inevitable, infallible, inoffensively wise of wit;[3]—they ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is "un peu fort"; and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on any ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... was made of pine-branches, plastered with mud and thatched with rye-straw; a hole in the top let the smoke out, and a hole in the side let in father, mother, pigs, chickens, and children, beside a tame jackdaw, that slept on an old stool by the fireplace, and ate with Otto's nine children out of a ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... right, for when Caesar reads to us a new book from the Troyad, thou, instead of crying out like a jackdaw, wouldst have to give an opinion that ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a jackdaw myself," said one of the men. "I got it from a woman that came to the door with a basket for fourpence. My mother stood on its back one day, and she getting out of bed. I split its tongue with a threepenny ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... assignation on the platform. The train arrived, and out of it, looking much more like her old self than she had on the previous day, emerged Mrs. Parsons with the most extraordinary collection of bundles, he counted nine of them, to say nothing of a jackdaw in a cage. She embraced him with enthusiasm, dropping the heaviest of the parcels, which seemed to contain bricks, upon his toe, and in a flood of language told him of the peculiar awfulness of the row between his father and herself which had ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... has given them no hands, or reason, or profession. But men have intellect in excess, and so ingenious are they that they keep near them horses, and dogs, and partridges, and jackdaws. Why then do you despair, who are as impressible as a jackdaw, have as much voice as a partridge, and are as noble as a dog, of getting some person to befriend you, by looking after him, winning his affections, guarding him, fighting his battles? Do you not see how many opportunities there are both on land ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... was a jackdaw Who hopped up and down In the principal street Of a neighboring town. j ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... jackdaw borrowing the plumage of the peacock, has its counterpart in Ceylon, where the popular legend runs that the pea-fowl stole the plumage of a bird called by the natives avitchia. I have not been able ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Kae, a jackdaw. Kail, kale, the colewort; cabbage; Scots' broth. Kail-blade, the leaf of the colewort. Kail-gullie, a cabbage knife. Kail-runt, the stem of the colewort. Kail-whittle, a cabbage knife. Kail-yard, a kitchen garden. Kain, kane, rents in kind. Kame, a comb. Kebars, rafters. Kebbuck, a cheese; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to speak, and to do wonders of all kinds, but Aldonza's bird was found one morning dead, and Giles consoled her by the promise of something much bigger, and that would talk much better. Two days after he brought her a young jackdaw. Aldonza clasped her hands and admired its glossy back and queer blue eye, and was in transports when it uttered something between "Jack" and "good lack." But Dennet looked in scorn at it, and said, "That's a bird tamed already. He didn't catch it. He ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be in vogue," Quoth a Jackdaw: "Glossy gray, Setting close, yet setting easy, Nothing fly-away; Suited to our ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... With a great many more of lesser degree,— In sooth, a goodly company; And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, was a prouder seen, Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams, Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims! In and out through the motley rout, That little Jackdaw kept hopping about: Here and there, like a dog in a fair, Over comfits and cates, and dishes and plates, Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall, Miter and crosier! he hopped upon all. With a saucy air, he perched ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... my side, while this picture I draw: In chattering a magpie, in pride a jackdaw; A temper the devil himself could not bridle; Impertinent mixture of busy and idle; As rude as a bear, no mule half so crabbed; She swills like a sow, and she breeds like a rabbit; A housewife in ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... course, of a jackdaw or a magpie—these birds' thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... mine if Bill Harewood had any sense,' said Lance, sitting up in a heap on the floor. 'He can go quite high enough when he pleases; only, unluckily, a goose of a jackdaw must needs get into the cathedral just as Bill had got to sing the solo in "As pants the hart;" and there he stood staring with his mouth wide open—and no wonder, for it was sitting on the old stone-king's head! Wasn't ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who uses tobacco "contrary to the order and way I have set down." It is a dreadful list which may possibly have frightened a few nervous smokers; but probably it had no greater effect than the terrible curse in the "Jackdaw of Rheims." ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... you jack-a-dandy! You've got my rent on your back, and on your little finger; and I'll have it off you before I've done with you, I warrant you. I'm your landlady, and I'll sell you up; I'll have old Thumbscrew here the first thing in the morning, and distrain everything, and you, too, you jackdaw, if any one would buy you, which they won't! I'll have my rent at last: I've been too easy with you, you ungrateful chap; for, mark, even Gripe this morning says, 'Haven't you a gentleman lodger up above? get him to pay you your own,' says he; and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... at a few sea birds, shore birds, and a marsh bird. Many inland birds, too, are fond of the shore. The artful Jackdaw builds in the cliffs, and his cousin, the Crow, searches the shore for food. Even the gay Kingfisher has been seen diving ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... must. At the surly. At the dames or draughts. At the lansquenet. At bob and mow. At the cuckoo. At primus secundus. At puff, or let him speak that At mark-knife. hath it. At the keys. At take nothing and throw out. At span-counter. At the marriage. At even or odd. At the frolic or jackdaw. At cross or pile. At the opinion. At ball and huckle-bones. At who doth the one, doth the At ivory balls. other. At the billiards. At the sequences. At bob and hit. At the ivory bundles. At the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... said he, "a pretty jest of Dan Aesopus about a jackdaw who thought himself a peacock because he had a monstrous long feather to his tail. Prithee, thou silly son of Neptune, knowest thou not that if I did bid thee carry me my box from the fore-deck there to the poop, thou must crawl with it like my jack-porter? And, by my soul, I have ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... found our opinion on the fact that the previous portrait is by him; that none but his etchings appear in the latter portion of the book; and because the bird represented following the footsteps and mimicking the walk of the young statesman, is own brother to the celebrated Jackdaw of Rheims immortalized by Thomas Ingoldsby. So remarkable is the likeness, that the shadow of D'Israeli's follower and that of Saint "Jem Crow" of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... coggl'd[264] in, like Jackdaw that cries ka bob! That to be kill'd I could not laughing forbear: And therefore I came out, I durst ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... "I'm a jackdaw, Nelsy," he said, trying to smile. "Do you remember how I used to carry on up there? I had a rotten time in Mt. Alban, but it was the best time I ever had. I wish to the good Lord I could do something besides banking. But my salary is now $750, and I'm twenty-three; I couldn't ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... liver got out of order, his corns grew more numerous and more painful, and a bald spot was seen on his crown. The people worked as before, by fits and starts, but more fitty and starty than ever. The factory was closed, and the manager died. They buried him about a week ago, a sort of human jackdaw of Rheims without the curse taken off. Protestants say the Galway workpeople wore him down, broke his spirit and broke his heart, but Catholics know better. The only wonder was that instead of being instantly consumed by fire from heaven, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... "Sailor," our widowed cat, was decked out in all the gay and gaudy trappings of a field officer on parade, and, what is more to the point, he was seemingly quite aware that he was looking smart. I suppose "Sailor" can never have read the "Jackdaw of Rheims," but he certainly looked the words of that conceited bird as he strutted proudly along before the admiral; and I feel assured that, though the commander-in-chief may not have thought much about the matter, there was no doubt ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Nellie in confidence that, just then, the old gentleman so comically resembled 'Blinkie,' a dissipated old tame jackdaw they had at home, in the way he cocked his head on one side, with his ruffled hair and all, that he couldn't have helped laughing, if he had died ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... eyes stretched an immense waste, bounded by a grey fence beside which ran a perfect forest of last year's burdocks. Beyond the waste ground was a dark, deserted factory, with windows boarded up. A belated jackdaw was flying round the chimney. This dreary, lifeless scene was beginning to be veiled in the ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... what none can estimate? Who will accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he saves? If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... made a flapping with their wings up and down the apartment. But the commodore, who is very choleric, and does not like to be jeered, fell into a main high passion, and stormed like a perfect hurricane, swearing that he knew a devil from a jackdaw as well as e'er a man in the three kingdoms. He owned, indeed, that the birds were found, but denied that they were the occasion of the uproar. For my own part, master, I believe much may be said on both sides of the question; though to be sure, the devil is always ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... poisoned by her magic potions. Minos interrupts the joy of AEgeus on the return of his son, and wages war against him; having collected troops from all parts, even from Paros, where Arne has been changed into a jackdaw. Minos endeavours to gain the alliance of AEacus, who, however, refuses it, and sends the Myrmidons, (who have been changed into ants from men after a severe pestilence), under the command of Cephalus to assist AEgeus. Cephalus relates to Phocus, the son of AEacus, how, being carried ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... you so weak in natural history, or have you forgotten that the jackdaw is a most respectable family bird? An example ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... own have got rid of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that were at issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong; yet he was as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw. Such a man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and having the will to put an end to him and no relenting, might do it pretty surely in that solitary place at ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... cannot wag his tail to keep the flies off," and that lack may have saddened him. He may have thought that a cow can snort and be dignified at the one moment, and that timidity is comely in a sheep. He would have scolded the jackdaw, and tried to out-whistle the throstle, and wondered why his pipe got tired when the blackbird's didn't. There would be flies to be watched, slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy specks that ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... I will be silent," said the Varangian, moved somewhat beyond his mood. "If you trust my word, so; if you think I am a jackdaw that must be speaking, whether in or out of place and purpose, I am contented to go back again, and therein we ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... lived longer, he might have been worth a deal of money—you brimstone chatterer!—but just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been making the foundations for, through many a year—you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!—he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of business care—I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of yourself!—and your mother, who was a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... belonging to the Castle of Penyard, where they were kept by supernatural force. A farmer, however, made up his mind to get them out, and employed for the purpose twenty steers to draw down the iron door of the vault. On the door being slightly opened, a jackdaw was seen sitting on one of the casks, but the door immediately closed with a bang—a ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the skull of the tuneful, melodious canary from that of the chirping, inharmonious sparrow. Nor could he fail to mark the constant difference between the form of the head of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo's head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge. In the dolphin, the porpoise, the seal, and many other animals, the male could there be distinguished from the female by the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... sentiments concerning Athanasius I do not think are affirmed with any detriment to the Church; for the Church does not suffer a loss on this account; who being the pillar {185} and ground of the truth, very far shrinks from seeking, like AEsop's Jackdaw, helps and ornaments which are not her own: the bare truth shines more beautiful in her own naked simplicity." Were this principle acted upon uniformly in our discussions on religious points of faith or practice, controversy would soon be drawn within far narrower limits; and would ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... jackdaw, which commonly nests in the cliffs, the rook is not, perhaps, commonly associated with the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, but a colony close to my own home in Devonshire displays sufficiently interesting adaptation to estuarine conditions to be worth passing mention. Just in the same way that ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... lengthening—the cows sauntered through the village to be milked—it began to get a little dusk, but still the old gentleman went on writing and Frank went on sleeping, and Barney's bright glance was fixed on the shining object opposite, much as a raven or a jackdaw will eye the silver spoon he means to steal by and by. "Everything comes to him who knows how to wait," and though Barney had never heard the proverb it was now verified in his case; the old gentleman paused in his writing, stuck his pen absently behind his ear, and proceeded to read over ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... the most terrible moments of man's life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross—that he will remember. He concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have remembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and find him needle in hand, how at the slightest ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and uncertain steps next bring me under a plane, and I am forced to admire it; I do not like planes, but this is so straight of trunk, so vast of size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper bough, makes off as I glance up. But the trees constantly afford unexpected pleasure; you wander among the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the trees which the Red Indian haunts, now by those which grow on Himalayan slopes. The interest lies in the fact that they ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of you is which! Lilias, Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, Clifford!" she declared, shaking hands with each. "I'm very rich to have five new cousins all at once! To-morrow you must show me everything, the rabbits and the dogs, and the tame jackdaw! Oh yes! I've been hearing about them and about you! Cousin Clare told me just what you would be like. I kept asking her ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... So the jackdaw (corvus monedula) generally builds in church-steeples, or under the roofs of high houses; but at Selbourn, in Southamptonshire, where towers and steeples are not sufficiently numerous, these birds build in forsaken rabbit burrows. See a curious account of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... again were sticks, kerries, and two assegais, a number of queer-shaped stones and bones, handles of broken table-knives, bits of the locks of guns, portions of an American clock, and various other articles which this human jackdaw had picked up and hidden away. Altogether it was a strange place: and vaguely it occurred to Jess, as she sank back upon the dirty skins, that, had it not been for the old clothes and the wreck of the American clock, she would have made ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the opposite bank stood the great rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice, and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was a baby—a round-faced, large-eyed, fat-legged baby, as unlike to the bronzed, whiskered, strapping seaman who went by the name of "Fighting Bill" as a jackdaw is to a marlinespike—when Bill was a baby, his father used to say he was just cut out for a sailor; and he was right, for the urchin was overflowing with vigour and muscular energy. He was utterly reckless, and very earnest—we might almost ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... tower; and the jackdaws evidently have pleasant homes in their hereditary nests among its topmost windows, and live delightful lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying-buttresses. I should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the sake of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... magpie's habit of collecting miscellaneous trifles caused its name to be given to a dish of uncertain constituents. It is a curious coincidence that the obsolete chuet or chewet meant both a round pie and a jackdaw.[30] It is uncertain in which of the two senses Prince Hal applies the name to Falstaff (1 Henry IV., v. 1). It comes from Fr. chouette, screech-owl, which formerly meant also ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Castle, who cites it on the authority of Hugh M. Smith, to occur among a breed of albino trout, which breed true and are reared in the State fish-hatcheries of America. With birds and mammals, however, there is no doubt that complete albino individuals do occur; and among species which, like the jackdaw, certain deer and rabbits, are normally deeply ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Rayburn must be right," thought the lad. "What eyes he has for everything of this kind. There are no rooks in the beeches; there isn't a jackdaw about; and I haven't seen a rock-dove; all proof that the ravens are here, for the others would not dare to nest near them. Only be to hatch young ones for food. But I don't see ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... for many years, with two previous managers, and, in Robinson Crusoe fashion, had recorded the years by notches in a beam of the ceiling. The notches for him then counted twenty-three years, and number one he notched for me. Every morning an old jackdaw perched on a chimney outside our skylight, and entertained us with his chatter. Atock said the old bird had perched there during all his time; and as long as I visited Ballinasloe—a period of nearly ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... strength, or to climb a tree, or to suck their paws through the long nights of winter?—The panther would teach them savage cruelty and a speedy step, and the deer would counsel them to fly from the pursuit of a snail, or a land-tortoise, or the cry of a wren, or the prate of a jackdaw; the fox might teach them cunning, and the dog sagacity, and the wild cat nimbleness, and the antelope fleetness, and the wolf courage, and the owl an insight into my ways. But there must be a being to repress the insolence, and controul the rage, of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... you insensible to the mere mechanical labour of writing,—but the intellectual saving would be tremendous. I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing every one who knows the delinquent. Let him get the credit ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... and you know as you look at him that he would prefer to see you dead rather than alive, so that he might safely take your eyes by way of an appetizer, and forthwith proceed to lift away your softer pieces preparatory to strolling under your ribs like a jackdaw in a cage much too small. He sits there placid, unwinsome, and patient; waiting for you to die. But he has his little vanities. He is tremendously proud of his wings—and they certainly are wings to astonish. On a warm day he likes to open them for coolness, but often he makes this a mere excuse ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... said the young man, turning his cunning head round, like a jackdaw. "I say that if I were going over Hind Head and by the Punch Bowl at night with as much money in my pocket as has that seaman there—I'd choose my companions better. You haven't heard what I said? I'd choose ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... I hear very little of the birds down where I live; and I may as well admit that I don't bother my head about them. Besides, there are one or two awkward customers among them, such as the crow, for instance, and the rook and the jackdaw, who all belong to the same family. Not to speak of the stork and the buzzard, for whom a wood-mouse is a ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... of blessings. If, as Miss Gibbs suggested, his cottage would have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a coloured frontispiece in a Christmas number ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... was a monstrous jackdaw that watched Julian intently, and here and there, between the branches, appeared great, fiery sparks as if the sky were raining all its stars upon the forest. But the sparks were the eyes of wild-cats, owls, ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... does Evelyn devote himself to the task of stripping the borrowed feathers from this fine jackdaw. After inaugurating his work by quoting the Horatian sneer, "Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?" he at once plunges in medias res, and not mincing his language, says:—"This impudent vagabond is a native of Wallachia, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... which I shall mention is Pride. There is not in the universe a more ridiculous nor a more contemptible animal than a proud clergyman; a turkey-cock or a jackdaw are objects of veneration when compared with him. I don't mean, by Pride, that noble dignity of mind to which goodness can only administer an adequate object, which delights in the testimony of its own conscience, and could not, without ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (? coal-tit), ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... due course of time; and the joyful mother, accompanied by her brother, set off walking to Buda, with the small boy and the ring for credentials. When resting by the way in a forest the child began playing with the ring, and a jackdaw, who in all ancient story has a weakness for this sort of ornament, pounced upon the shining jewel and carried it off to a tree. The brother with commendable quickness took up his bow and shot the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... me hisself. He's tellin' everybody hisself. It comed to a climax to-day. The auld bird's hoppin' all awver the village so proud as a jackdaw as have stole a shiny button. He'm bustin' ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of that ease and self-possession which can only be acquired by long habitual intercourse with well-bred persons, this surely is the wisest course that could be adopted, and a hundred degrees above that fidgety, jackdaw-like assumption of nonchalance with which the ill-bred amongst ourselves seek ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... of Alkmaar. Unfortunate mistake of a Spanish prisoner. 31. Conditions that tended to vivify the belief during Elizabethan era. 32. The new freedom. Want of rules of evidence. Arthur Hacket and his madnesses. Sneezing. Cock-crowing. Jackdaw in the House of Commons. Russell and Drake both mistaken for devils. 33. Credulousness of people. "To make one danse naked." A parson's proof of transubstantiation. 34. But the Elizabethans had strong common sense nevertheless. People do wrong if they set them down as fools. If we had ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... a straw what it is," persisted Tom, adding humbug to cruelty. "You would be nothing but a sham!—A live dishonesty! A jackdaw in peacock's feathers!—I am sorry, Letty, your own sense of truth and uprightness should not prevent even the passing desire to act such a lie. Your fine dress would be just a fine fib—yourself would be but a walking fib. I have been taking too much for granted with you: I must bring you no more ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... distant windmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, and the rain and winds rushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old building represented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as any once lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by the jackdaw. The family had, as it ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, indeterminate man in a green baize apron, who went about raising casual dust with a great feather broom, at first stowed the litter away daily, with jackdaw ingenuity of concealment, until Septimus gave them five francs each to desist; whereupon they desisted with alacrity, and the books became the stepping-stones aforesaid, stepping-stones to higher ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the Superfluities of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, for Money was made for the Free- hearted and Generous, and where is the Injury of taking from another, what he hath not the Heart ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... occasionally find heads of salmon nailed to their doors in derision. The missel-thrush is called the "holm-screech." The missel-thrushes, I know, have a difficulty to defend their young against crows; but last spring I found a jackdaw endeavouring to get at a missel-thrush's nest. The old birds were screeching loudly, and trying to drive the jackdaw away. The chaffinch appears to be called "woodfinch," at least the chaffinch answered nearest to the bird described ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... tea and munched his cookies, with his head on one side and the air of a thievish jackdaw; and proceeded, after his wont, to extract such pith ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the movement was not seen, as none of the circumstances were at all understood. Wilfrid, however, knew well who had sung those three bars, concerning which the 'Prima donna' questioned Mr. Pericles, and would not be put off by hearing that it was a startled jackdaw, or an owl, and an ole nightingale. The Greek rubbed his hands. "Now to recommence," he said; "and we shall not notice a jackdaw again." His eye went sideways watchfully at Wilfrid. "You like zat piece ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expensive part of the whole composition, and could not perhaps, in many instances, be done with any tolerable success. If a Latin poem is neat, elegant and musical, it is enough; but English readers are not so easily satisfied. To quote myself, you will find, in comparing the Jackdaw with the original, that I was obliged to sharpen a point which, though smart enough in the Latin, would in English have appeared as plain and as blunt as the tag of a lace." —Letter to Unwin, May 23, 1781 (Southey's Cowper, ed. 1836, vol. iv. p. 97).] All translation, as has been pointed out ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... dunderhead! You jibbering jackdaw! How could I reject a boy who simply would not be rejected? Why, I'll bet a ripe peach that Bill Peck was one of the doggondest finest soldiers you ever saw. He carries his objective. He sized you up just like that, Skinner. He declined to permit you to block him. ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... horse-race [held in memory of Severus's reign] the statue of Mars, while being carried in procession, fell down. This perhaps would not arouse such great wonder, but listen to the greatest marvel of all. The Green faction had been defeated, whereupon, catching sight of a jackdaw, which was screeching very loud on the tip of a javelin, they all gazed at him and all of a sudden, as if by previous arrangement, cried out: "Hail Martialius, Martialius hail, long it is since we beheld thee!" ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... they were interrupted by a loud caw, and looking round, Evelyn saw the convent jackdaw. The bird had hopped within a few yards, cawing all the while, evidently desirous of attracting their attention. With grey head a-slanted, the bird watched them out of sly eyes. "Pay no attention to him; you'll see what he'll do," said Sister Mary John, and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... are pleasantly illustrated by the fact that the collection of "animated books," which no Rommany gentleman's library should be without, generally includes a jackdaw. When the foot of the Gorgio is heard near the tent, a loud "wa-awk" from the wary bird (sounding very much like an alarm) at once proclaims the fact; and on approaching, the stranger finds the entire party in all probability asleep. Sometimes ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... perhaps 'tis better for you not to see it, lest you should come off as ill by seeing the Muses, as Actaeon did by seeing Diana: For you'd perhaps be in Danger of being turn'd either into a Hedgehog, or a wild Boar, a Swine, a Camel, a Frog, or a Jackdaw. But however, if you can't see, I'll make you hear 'em, if you don't make a Noise; they are just a-coming this Way. Let's meet 'em. Hail, most ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... mocking birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or lesser perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. Does not every member of the Crow family caw, whether it be a Jackdaw, the Jay, or the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long melancholy caw that seems to make ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... eye like a jackdaw, and looked almost as cunning. "You see," said he, "I have been reading up for ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... was so busy with herself, that, although close to him, she never sees he—always remembering that the night was dark. So Poll turned her eyes up, for all the world like a dying jackdaw." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at regular intervals to mark the roadway for the Kirghiz post-drivers. But in the spring and autumn its arid surface is clothed, as if by enchantment, with verdure and prairie flowers. Both flowers and birds are gorgeously colored. One variety, about half the size of the jackdaw which infests the houses of Tashkend and Samarkand, has a bright blue body and red wings; another, resembling our field-lark in size and habits, combines a pink breast with black head and wings. But already this springtide splendor was beginning to ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... abbey sleeps, An' t' ullet is t' owd prior. A jackdaw thruf each windey peeps, An' bigs his nest i' t' choir. In ivery dale a castle stands— Sing, Clifford, Percy, Scrope!— They threaped amang theirsels for t' lands, But fowt for t' ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... the tallest trees were climbed, or, as it was then called "swarmed," in search of the eggs of hawk, carrion crow, woodpecker, &c.; those of the owl were found in the thick fir plantations, or those of the jackdaw in old ruins; the rarest specimens being presented to the Doctor himself, while commoner kinds were hung in festoons from the ceiling of our study at his residence. The two chief holidays at this season were the Queen's Birthday, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the kings of the earth!" and "Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her divine Master," or Charles Wesley's Hymns, or, most loved of all, Cowper, from the rapt "Come thou, and, added to thy many crowns," or "O that those lips had language!" to the Jackdaw, and his incomparable Letters; or Gray's Poems, Burns's "Tam O'Shanter," or Sir Walter's "Eve of St. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... us to return. On our way down we disturbed a peevish jackdaw from her nest; she had dragged up to that intolerable height a pile of boughs that would have made a dozen nests; she had interwoven for the cup to hold her eggs a number of strips of purloined canvas. There lay the three speckled eggs, the hope of the race, while the chiding ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... determine whether seeds would lose their vitality in passing through the digestive organs of birds, Kerner von Marilaun fed seeds of two hundred and fifty different species of plants to each of the following: blackbird, song thrush, robin, jackdaw, raven, nutcracker, goldfinch, titmouse, bullfinch, crossbill, pigeon, fowl, turkey, duck, and a few others; also to marmot, horse, ox, and pig, making five hundred and twenty separate experiments. As ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... that when you took the bird up you found that it was neither a jackdaw, nor a sparrow nor a swallow, as you expected, but a humming-bird. Then you would be adrift again. The fact of it being a humming-bird would be a new fact which you had not taken into account, and for which your old explanation was not sufficient; and you would have ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... name, who gravely waddled behind her round the garden. In summer at tea-time Susie would much enjoy the company under the wych-elm on the lawn, and took her "dish of tea" out of the saucer in the antique and orthodox manner. Another amusing pet was a jackdaw who had an outdoor residence, though often allowed to be loose. He acquired an exact imitation of my old gardener's chronic cough, and enjoyed the exhibition of his achievement when the old man was working near the cage, somewhat ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory |
