Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 25, 2025
There were also innumerable plovers, snipes, curlews, herons, and other smaller birds. A number of those strange birds, the scissor-bills, were flying about near a sandbank on one side. They had snow-white breasts, black coats, and red beaks. We observed the hollows in which their nests were placed in the sandbanks, for they made no attempt to conceal them.
They are abundantly more beautiful, and finer feather'd than those in Europe, and not above half so big. They cry pretty much, as the English Plovers do; and differ not much in Feather, but want a third of their Bigness. I never saw any but three times, that fell and settled on the Ground. They differ very little from those in Europe, as far as I could discern.
For the next three months it will be passing, millions upon millions: warblers, sparrows, thrushes, vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, kinglets, woodpeckers, swallows, humming-birds, hawks; with sandpipers, plovers, ducks and geese, gulls, and who knows how many more?
It is not easy to progress far along this road, because every bird suggests so many reflections and recollections. Upon approaching the rising ground at Ewell green plovers or peewits become plentiful in the cornfields. In spring and early summer the flocks break up to some extent, and the scattered parties conduct their nesting operations in the pastures or on the downs.
As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the sunshine. Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform. Then, in two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost with a sob.
The air quivered with the song of innumerable larks, which mingled with those of the willow-warblers; snipe in considerable numbers sprang up and darted off with a sharp cry from almost under his feet; plovers circled round and round; ducks of various kinds passed between the shore, and, as Godfrey supposed, inland swamps or lakes; martins in great numbers darted hither and thither hawking for insects.
It must be at Dave's, eh?" "Yes, it's there, sure enough. Oh, Tom, suppose some one were to burn down the duck 'coy!" "It wouldn't burn so as to do much harm. Look, there goes a flock of plovers." They could just catch the gleam of the wings in the dark night, as the great flock, evidently startled by the strange glare, swept by.
They were flying swiftly at a good height, when all at once, as if by a signal, they changed their direction, and, with the accuracy of drilling, darted down in a great bird stream straight for the earth, disappearing behind a low patch of willows. "Golden plovers!" cried Dick, excitedly. "Oh, Dave, if you were there with a gun!" "Ay, lad, and I'm here wi' a pole," said Dave.
Oh, 'tis beautiful! and I can show her where the plovers lay their eggs, and I will take her to listen for the curlew's note coming out of the mist like a spirit whistler, and I can take her down to the rocks by Ogo Wylofen, too, where the seals are making their home. But, indeed, Will knows it all as well as I do, and he will like to show them all to her himself, I think."
Why should a middle-aged solicitor turn plovers' egg colour and drop his jaw when reminded of so innocent and festal a matter as that no death had ever occurred in a house that he had sold? If I knew my English vocabulary at all, the tone in which he said the youngest sister "fell ill" meant that she had gone out of her mind.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking