Birds
From Wikiquote
(Redirected from Western Gull)
Birds are bipedal, warm-blooded, oviparous vertebrate animals characterized primarily by feathers, forelimbs modified as wings, and hollow bones.
Contents |
[edit] Sourced
[edit] Cuckoo
- O Cuckoo! Shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?- William Wordsworth, To the Cuckoo
[edit] Nightingale
- Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
[edit] Western Gull
- Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself up into the Western Gull. He is rather the handsomest of the blue-mantled Laridae, for the depth of color in the mantle, in sharp contrast with the snowy plumage of back and breast, gives him an appearance of sturdiness and quality which is not easily dispelled by subsequent knowledge of the black heart within. As a scavanger, the Western Gull is impeccable. Wielding the besom of hunger, he and his kind sweep the beaches clean and purge the water-front of all pollution. But a scavanger is not necessarily a good citizen. Call him a ghoul, rather, for the Western Gull is cruel of beak and bottomless of maw. Pity, with him, is a thing unknown; and when one of their own comrades dies, these feathered jackals fall upon him without compunction, a veritable Leichnamveranderungsgebrauchsgesellschaft. If he thus mistreats his own kind, be assured that this gull asks only two questions of any other living thing: First, "Am I hungry?" (Ans., "Yes.") Second, "Can I get away with it?" (Ans., "I'll try.")
- William Leon Dawson, Birds of California, 1923
- The Western Gull is a common gull from the Pacific coast of the United States.
[edit] Thrush
- An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.- Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush (1900), from Poems of the Past and Present.
[edit] The Bird
- "The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer;
but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.".
- --early 20th century ornithologist and naturalist, Charles "William Beebe" (From "The Bird: Its Form and Function," 1906 )
[edit] Birds (multiple species)
- Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,
The Linnet and Thrush say, "I love and I love!"
In the winter they're silent—the wind is so strong;
What it says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving—all come back together.
But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—
"I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"
[edit] Unsourced
[edit] Pelican
- A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His beak will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week,
But I'm darned if I know how the helican.
