"Ptarmigan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and hung mighty high, an' billygoat is doggoned strong 'nless you know how to cook 'em. Yes, we'll eat an sleep fust an' then his for the land where the Bighorn pasture, the woolywhite goats sleep on the rocks, the whistling marmot blows his danger signal an' the pretty white ptarmigan hides hisself in the snow-banks, the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... party of ptarmigan very much flustered and upset by being all but galloped over; not the white and frozen ptarmigan of the cheap poultry warehouse, but the "live" proposition of that name in their gray, or usual, disguise, posing as stones among many thousand that lay ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... to the east through which they had passed on their long portage. He pointed out to me a little dark line on the brow of the hill where the bushes were in which they had shot the rabbit, and on the eastern slope another dark shadow showing where they had shot the ptarmigan. ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... eggs to hatch under one of his hens. Mr. E. M. Cole reports in the “Naturalist” of 1892, p. 182, Phasianus Colchicus nest of seven or eight eggs “found May 6th, on the road margin.” Mr. J. Watson, in his book “Sylvan Folk,” says: “A party of ornithologists were trying to get a specimen of the ptarmigan in breeding plumage, but failed up to luncheon time. Sitting down, the lunch was unstrapped from a pony, and a strap fell on a ptarmigan, sitting, actually, under the pony. On another occasion a dog sat down upon the hen ptarmigan, which it had not discovered in the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... back a bag of four ptarmigan late in the afternoon. Fried, they were delicious. The dogs stood round in a half-circle and caught the bones tossed to them. Crunch— crunch—crunch. The bones no longer were. The dogs, heads cocked on one side, waited expectantly for more ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... snow destroyed all perspective, and brought the remotest fairy nooks and coverts, too lovely and fragile to seem cold, into the glittering foreground? "Wonderful! Glorious!" I could only exclaim, in breathless admiration. Once, by the roadside, we saw an Arctic ptarmigan, as white as the snow, with ruby eyes that sparkled like jewels as he moved slowly and silently along, not frightened ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... sound and hard as the road. The climate is also dry, and in general not very cold, though we had one or two very cold days. There is a deer forest—many roe deer, and on the opposite hill (which does not belong to us) grouse. There is also black cock and ptarmigan. Albert has, however, no luck this year, and has in vain been after the deer, though they are continually seen, and often quite close by the house. The children are very well, and enjoying themselves much. The boys always wear ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... ordered boiled groats for dinner, as an experiment. But after Lewis had eaten a ptarmigan, he regretted that he could not eat as much of the groats as he would have liked, in order to show her that he was really very fond of groats. He liked groats very much indeed—milk did not agree with him after his attack of ague. He couldn't take milk, but ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... dark, and she lay on his bosom, so that he could feel her warm breath. Her black hair lay right over him, and she was as soft and warm to the touch as a ptarmigan when it is frightened and its ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... lake. An Eagle. May 10th, Sand martins. Ice drifting in channel in front of fort. May 20th, Swans passing north. May 21st, Trees bursting into leaf. July 11th, Strawberries and raspberries. August 18th, Cranes passing south. October 11th, Small birds passing south. October 12th, First ptarmigan seen about the fort. October 24th, Lake in front ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... out of the soeter-house in the morning, Beret was still sleeping. Hans was standing in the yard. He had been punishing the dog for rousing a ptarmigan, and it was now lying fawning on him. When he saw Mildrid he let the dog out of disgrace; it jumped up on him and her, barked and caressed them, and was like a living expression of their own bright morning happiness. Hans helped ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... in the present volume. So that what Mr. GORDON the writer fails to convey about his favourite haunts (which is not much) Mr. GORDON the photographer is ready to supply. The papers, which range in subject from ptarmigan to cairngorms, are written with an engaging simplicity and directness, and show a sympathetic knowledge of wild nature such as is the reward only of long familiarity. The glorious mountain wind blows through ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... creature of that sort, raw and bony, dropped into London, like a ptarmigan, wild, and scared out of his wits. Old Johnstone was in the country, taking care of his wife, who had lost the use of her limbs ever since she had been married;—caught a violent—husband—the first day of wedlock! ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thereafter, Reuben's canoe returned laden with two deer, besides two swans, a number of ducks and hares, and several brace of ptarmigan, which latter were quite grey at that season, with the exception of one or two pure white feathers in the tail. They said that wild-fowl were innumerable among the islands; but this, indeed, was obvious to all, for everywhere ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Since life began no eye of man has seen this place before; How fearless all the wild things are! the banks with goose-grass gleam, And there's a bronzy musk-rat sitting sniffing at his door. A mother duck with brood of ten comes squattering along; The tawny, white-winged ptarmigan are flying all about; And in that swirly, golden pool, a restless, gleaming throng, The trout are waiting till we condescend to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... this mountain, as a conspicuous landmark, the party again pressed forward, and were speedily delighted to observe several flocks of ptarmigan busily feeding on the crests of the low hills which here and there crossed the route. These birds proved rather shy, though not so much so as to have prevented the sportsmen making a very decent bag had they been provided with ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden him,— a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially nurtured English ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some bear of the black kind, but neither Deer nor other game is to be found without going a great distance in the interior, where Reindeer are now and then procured. One species of Grouse, and one of Ptarmigan, the latter white at all seasons; the former, I suppose to be, the Willow Grouse. The men would neither sell nor give us a single salmon, saying, that so strict were their orders that, should they sell one, ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... revisiting, as a familiar thing, the shores which she was first to discover. The English admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic service a ship of the best build they could find, bought the two teak-built ships Baboo and Ptarmigan in 1850,—sent them to their own dock-yards to be refitted, and the Baboo became the Assistance,—the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their squadrons ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... and it seemed to him that the dazzling colour penetrated him and caused an irresistible nausea. His eye was attacked. His sight became uncertain. He thought he should go mad with the glare. Without fully understanding this terrible effect, he advanced on his way, and soon put up a ptarmigan, which he eagerly pursued. The bird soon fell, and in order to reach it Louis leaped from an ice-block and fell heavily; for the leap was at least ten feet, and the refraction made him think it was only two. The vertigo then seized ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... holding its head high above all the surrounding world. It shall be known as Mount Hubbard. To this mountain we decided to paddle and view the country. Instinctively we felt that Michikamau lay on the other side. We launched our canoe after a light luncheon of trout and a small ptarmigan George had shot. Once in the course of the afternoon we stopped paddling to climb a low ridge near the shore and eat cranberries, which we found in abundance on its barren top. From the ridge we could see water among the hills in every direction. In the large lake ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... does not cover his legs. They remain unfeathered. We shudder to see his translucent little tarsi on top of the snow, which he obviously prefers as a stand-point to bare spots where the snow has been blown away. Compared with the ptarmigan and the snowy owl, or even the ruffed grouse, all so well blanketed, he suggests a survival of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... return. Besides, Nikolai is not exacting; his wife seems to him peerless in all she does. Of course she has taken great pains; it has left its mark on her, too, and she is not gray for nothing. A few months ago she lost a front tooth, too—broke it on some bird shot left in the breast of a ptarmigan she was eating. She hardly dared look in the mirror now—didn't recognize herself. But what did it matter as long ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... snow-white coat, or the arctic fox would too readily discover him and pounce down upon him off-hand; while, conversely, the fox himself, if red or brown, could never creep upon the unwary hare without previous detection, which would defeat his purpose. For this reason, the ptarmigan and the willow grouse become as white in winter as the vast snow-fields under which they burrow; the ermine changes his dusky summer coat for the expensive wintry suit beloved of British Themis; the snow-bunting acquires ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... are wholly white all the year round, or which only turn white in winter. Among the former are the polar bear and the American polar hare, the snowy owl and the Greenland falcon; among the latter the arctic fox, the arctic hare, the ermine, and the ptarmigan. Those which are permanently white remain among the snow nearly all the year round, while those which change their colour inhabit regions which are free from snow in summer. The obvious explanation ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace |
