Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Heron   Listen
noun
Heron  n.  (Zool.) Any wading bird of the genus Ardea and allied genera, of the family Ardeidae. The herons have a long, sharp bill, and long legs and toes, with the claw of the middle toe toothed. The common European heron (Ardea cinerea) is remarkable for its directly ascending flight, and was formerly hunted with the larger falcons. Note: There are several common American species; as, the great blue heron (Ardea herodias); the little blue (Ardea coerulea); the green (Ardea virescens); the snowy (Ardea candidissima); the night heron or qua-bird (Nycticorax nycticorax). The plumed herons are called egrets.
Heron's bill (Bot.), a plant of the genus Erodium; so called from the fancied resemblance of the fruit to the head and beak of the heron.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Heron" Quotes from Famous Books



... while the other three sides were in small simple panels, with a deep fantastic frieze in plaster, depicting a deer-chase in relief and running be tween woodwork and ceiling. The ceiling itself was relieved by long pendants without any apparent meaning, and by the crest of the Darrells,—a heron, wreathed round with the family motto, "Ardua petit Ardea." It was a dining-room, as was shown by the character of the furniture. But there was no attempt on the part of the present owner, and there ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... quadrants, of which Tycho Brahe in his mechanics, optics ([3363]divine optics) arithmetic, geometry, and such like arts and instruments? What so intricate and pleasing withal, as to peruse and practise Heron Alexandrinus's works, de spiritalibus, de machinis bellicis, de machina se movente, Jordani Nemorarii de ponderibus proposit. 13, that pleasant tract of Machometes Bragdedinus de superficierum divisionibus, Apollonius's Conics, or Commandinus's labours in that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... scarlet plumage shining in the sun. Near them was a flock of whooping-cranes—each as tall as a full-grown man— at intervals uttering their loud trumpet notes. The great egret, too, was there, with its snowy plumage and orange bill; the delicately-formed Louisiana heron, with droves of sand-hill cranes, appearing in the distance like ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... their ensigns chaste, Yet always, for some cause unknown, Sad pair, unto the elms they moan. O why should such a couple mourn, That in so equal flames do burn! Then as I careless on the bed Of gelid strawberries do tread, And through the hazels thick espy The hatching throstle's shining eye, The heron, from the ash's top, The eldest of its young lets drop, As if it stork-like did pretend That tribute to its lord ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... of a wild mountain bull, a denizen of the forest, and a remnant of the herds that had once browsed upon the hills, but which had almost all been captured, and removed to stock the park of the Abbot of Whalley. The streams and pools were full of fish: the stately heron frequented the meres; and on the craggy heights built the kite, the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... can sight of us give rest To that far-travelled heart, or draw The musings of that tranquil breast? I thought—and gazing, saw Far up above me, high, oh, high, From south to north a heron fly! ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... Regina!' all the ropes along, But knew at morn how that a counterfeit band Of level clouds had aped a silver strand; So when we heard the orchard-bird's small song, And all the people cried, 'A hellish throng To tempt us onward, by the Devil planned, Yea, all from hell—keen heron, fresh green weeds, Pelican, tunny-fish, fair tapering reeds, Lie-telling lands that ever shine and die In clouds of nothing round the empty sky. 'Tired Admiral, get thee from this hell, and rest!' 'Steersman,' I said, 'hold straight into ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... these productions of his adolescence, Sir Hugh the Heron, has been so frequently alluded to, that it seems necessary to tell the story of it, as the author himself, in conversation, was accustomed to do. At about twelve years of age, the young poet wrote a scrap of a poem under this title, and then cast it aside. His grandfather, Polidori, had ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... Pegana and crept across the sky, and found the birds of all the world sitting in trees and ivy, and whispering in the dark. He asked them one by one for news of the golden ball. Some had last seen it on a neighbouring hill and others in trees, though none knew where it was. A heron had seen it lying in a pond, but a wild duck in some reeds had seen it last as she came home across the hills, and then it ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... along my path. From tufts of heath rabbits scurried away through the bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck's drowsy quack. Once a fox stole across my path, and again, as I stooped to drink at a hurrying rill, a heron flapped heavily from the reeds beside me. I turned to look at the sun. It seemed to touch the edges of the plain. When at last I decided that it was useless to go on, and that I must make up my mind to spend at least one night on the moors, I threw myself down thoroughly fagged ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... heron or crane. They make queer noises when they fight, or carry on in a sort of dance. I've read lots of things about cranes that are hard to believe, yet the naturalists stand for ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... The aspect of these mournful fowls was not at all cheerful or inspiring, as the boat containing the Irishman and lieutenant approached the island. Through the gathering gloom of night could be seen a tall blue heron, standing midleg deep in water, obviously catching cold in his reckless disregard for wet feet and consequences. The mournful curlew, the dejected plover and the low-spirited snipe, who sought to join him in his suicidal contemplations, the raven, soaring through the air on restless wings, croaking ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... A heron arose from the bayou and streaked across the metallic blue of the sky. Another was wading along, intent upon its fishing. Sam's yellow dog, which had followed horse and rider, set up a barking, annoyed at the haughty carriage of the bird. He scrambled down the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... a photograph by Daniel Heron. The black spots are due to the torches of the fellahin of the neighbourhood who have visited the rock ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... sat on the edge of her nest, crying bitterly, when a heron, who was flying slowly past the rock, was filled with pity for her, and stopped to ask, 'What is the matter, you ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... for an hour, Walter rejoined his father. Captain Davenant was sitting with the two officers of his troop, Lieutenant O'Driscoll and Cornet Heron, by a fire, the materials for which the three troopers who acted as their servants had collected. There was no cooking to be done, for sufficient cold provisions had been brought ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... for the braves were out hunting or keeping watch at the approaches. One young lad took the horses, and led us to a teepee bigger than the others, outside of which stood a finely-made savage, with heron's feathers in his hair, and a necklace of polished shells. On his Iron face there was no flicker of welcome or recognition, but he shook hands silently with the two of us, and struck a blow on a dry gourd. Instantly three warriors appeared, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... was out in my room, he flew away from the window with a piercing scream of terror, and hid himself quite in the dark, behind my pillow, shivering with fright, as if he felt his last hour had come. We found out, when this had occurred several times, that his bete noire was a great heron, which used occasionally to leave the lake, and circle round the house, high up in the air. It could only have been by pure instinct that Richard was inspired with such terror whenever he saw the great winged bird, and it showed that artificial training, though ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... of Miss Margaret Clay one hot September morning came Mrs. Joseph Pickering, very charming in coffee-colored madras, with an exquisite heron cockade upon her narrow tan hat. Magsie was up, but not dressed, and was not ill pleased to have company. Her private as well as professional affairs were causing her much dissatisfaction of late, and she was at the moment in the act of ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... breathe repose, and peace, and harmony. The lake's unruffled bosom, cold and clear, Expands beneath me, like a silver veil Thrown o'er the level of subjacent fields, Revealing, on its conscious countenance, The shadows of the clouds that float above:— Upon its central stone the heron sits Stirless,—as in the wave its counterpart,— Looking, with quiet eye, towards the shore Of dark-green copse-wood, dark, save, here and there, Where spangled with the broom's bright aureate flowers.— The blue-winged sea-gull, sailing placidly Above his landward haunts, dips ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various

... female, and sometimes shares with her the duty of incubation. This is done by the male wood-pigeon, missel-thrush, blue martin, the buzzard, stone-curlew, curlew, dottrel, the sandpiper, common gull, black-coated gull, kittiwake, razorbill, puffin, storm-petrel, the great blue heron and the black vulture. Among these birds it is usual for the family duties to be performed quite irrespective of sex, and the parent who is free takes the task of feeding the one who is occupied. As soon as one family is ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... Harris, not half an hour before?—that "she could never meet Egbert Crawford after such a revelation?" Something of the kind, certainly. And she had met him, and unconsciously and without calculation gone through the very-brief interview in a manner worthy of the most finished actress—say of La Heron, La Hoey or La Bateman, to name three of the most dissimilar but ablest representatives of dramatic character on the American stage. Oh, these little women, who make a boast of their weakness—there is very little that they cannot do when ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... speak of that," Saniel said, looking at Phillis with a frankness and an open countenance that reassured heron a certain point. "It is I who am obliged to Madame Cormier. If the word were not barbarous, I should say that her illness has been ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... vast and flowery fields of Calderon is, I think, admirable, and presents the old Spanish dramatist before the English reader in a very attractive light. Particularly in the most poetical passages you are excellent; as, for instance, in the fine description of the gerfalcon and the heron in 'El Mayor Encanto.' I hope you mean to add more and more, so as to make the translation as nearly complete as a single life will permit. It seems rather appalling to undertake the whole of so voluminous a writer; nevertheless, I hope you will ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... Sir R. Heron states[469] that this breed suddenly appeared within his memory in Lord Brownlow's large stock of pied, white, and common peacocks. The same thing occurred in Sir J. Trevelyan's flock composed entirely of the {291} common kind, and in Mr. Thornton's stock of common and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... from his pavilion door the nodding heron plumes His nobles wore upon their brows, while, from the rosy glooms Which hid his harem, came low songs, on ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... element, they neither can nor will easily converse with them. They avouch that a heluo or great eater has a voracious elve to be his attender, called a joint-eater or just-halver, feeding on the pith and quintessence of what the man eats; and that, therefore, he continues lean like a hawk or heron, notwithstanding his devouring appetite; yet it would seem they convey that substance elsewhere, for these subterraneans eat but little in their dwellings, their food being exactly clean, and served up by ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... not uncommon in religions, the egg did not always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might come out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of Horus, one of the beautiful golden sparrow-hawks of Southern Egypt. A Sun-Hawk, hovering in high heaven on outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image; but what can ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... stealing by thy moon, Through the fluttered heron, hears the cry of the loon; Motionless the setter in thy dawnlight gray Shows the happy hidden cove where the wild ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... second week in May, the grand juries had completed their work. On the 10th, a true bill was found at Westminster, by the oaths of Giles Heron, Esq.; Roger More, Esq.; Richard Awnsham, Esq.; Thomas Byllyngton, Esq.; Gregory Lovel, Esq.; John Worsop, Esq.; William Goddard, gentleman; William Blakwall, gentleman; John Wylford, gentleman; William Berd, gentleman; Henry Hubbylthorne, gentleman; William Huning, gentleman; Robert Walys, gentleman; ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... winds favored, and the Heron made a quick trip. Vinnie, after two or three days of sea-sickness, enjoyed the voyage, which was made all the more pleasant to her by the friendship of the captain ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... fish. In the first cases (115-118) are the true cranes, including the common European variety, the Indian crane, the South American caurale snipe, the common and purple-crested herons of Europe, the Pacific heron, the crowned heron, the North American great heron, and the African demoiselle heron. In the two following cases (120, 121) the visitor will find the American blue heron, and the great and little egrets; and in the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... white-headed cousin of the North; and now and then flocks of muscovy ducks made the air resound with their strong broad wings. They saw also the "boat-bill," or "crab-eater," a curious wading bird of the heron kind, with a large bill shaped like two boats laid with their concave sides against each other. This, like the king-fisher, sat solitarily upon a projecting stump, now and then dashing into the shallow water, and scooping ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the terrible Border battle of Flodden in 1513. Ford Castle dated from the time of Edward I., and its proximity to the Border made it the object of many assaults. In the fifteenth century it was held by Sir William Heron, and a few days before the battle of Flodden the Scots, under James IV., during Sir William's captivity in Scotland, stormed and destroyed Ford, taking captive Lady Heron, who had endeavored to defend ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... saw your steed, a dappled gray, Lie dead beneath the birchen way; Painted exact your form and mien, Your hunting-suit of Lincoln green, That tasselled horn so gayly gilt, That falchion's crooked blade and hilt, That cap with heron plumage trim, And yon two hounds so dark and grim. He bade that all should ready be To grace a guest of fair degree; But light I held his prophecy, And deemed it was my father's horn Whose echoes o'er the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the full sport of hawking a heron must not be put up from its feeding-ground, where it is heavy with its meal, and has no time to get its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the fish-stream to the heronry. Thus ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... greatest that were ever seen with eye. He saw of them an hundred slain with hounds, And some with arrows bleed of bitter wounds. He saw, when voided* were the wilde deer, *passed away These falconers upon a fair rivere, That with their hawkes have the heron slain. Then saw he knightes jousting in a plain. And after this he did him such pleasance, That he him shew'd his lady on a dance, In which himselfe danced, as him thought. And when this master, that this magic wrought, Saw it was time, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... shade. They went on a few yards, and then they came to a circular pool overshadowed by the trees, whose highest boughs had been beneath their feet a few minutes before. The pond was hardly below the surface of the ground, and there was nothing like a bank on any side. A heron was standing there motionless, but when he saw them he flapped his wings and slowly rose, and soared above the green heights of the wood up into the very sky itself, for at that depth the trees appeared to touch the round white clouds which brooded ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that he could not keep them out of his garden. Mr C. told the writer that he lost many a beast and bird from the pokes of that insinuating weapon. We dissuade any lady from touching or going near a zebra's mouth, or the horns of an ibex or an algazel, or the pointed bill of a heron or stork, or from putting her hand near this ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... that cry, so low but yet so piercing, so strange but yet so sorrowful? It was not the marmot upon the side of the Righi—it was not the heron down by the lake; no, it was distinctively human. Hush! there it is again—from the churchyard ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... George Carew, could not be contented to let the Kavanaghs enjoy such lands as old Sir Peter Carew, young Sir Peter, and last, Sir George were content that they should have, but threatened to kill them wherever he could meet them. As it is now fallen out, about the last of November, one Henry Heron, Mr. Bagenall's brother-in-law, having lost four kine, making that his quarrel, he being accompanied with divers others to the number of twenty or thereabouts, by the procurement of his brother-in-law, went to the house of Mortagh Oge, a man seventy years old, the chief of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... served—a boar's head, stewed beef, minced mutton, squirrel, and hedgehog. The last dainty is now restricted to gypsies, and no one eats our little russet friend of the bushy tail; but our forefathers indulged in both. There were also roast capons, a heron, and chickens dressed in various ways. Near Amphillis stood a dish of beef jelly, a chowet or liver-pie, a flampoynt or pork-pie, and a dish of sops in fennel. The sweets were Barlee and Mon Amy, of which ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... child?" questioned Mrs. Weston sharply. "I declare, I believe both of my children are losing their wits. Here is Anna making rhymes and sing-songing her words in strange fashion; and thou, Rebecca, a girl of nearly fourteen, careless of thy work, and standing before me on one foot like a heron, staring at naught," and Mrs. Weston hurried to the pantry for the ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis

... southwest a fresh wind arose and swept clean the blue heavens; and, with the early sunbeams sparkling on the ripples of the tide, the canoes darted on toward the river's mouth. A heron flew up from the marshes suddenly, and sailed over our heads on its strong white wings. As I watched it dip out of sight in the river far beyond us I caught sight of another gleaming wing that slowly ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... comparatively new to the country, we once went for a week's shooting to the Lake of Scutari. Water-fowl abound there in marvellous numbers, consisting chiefly of crane, heron, thousands of duck, and a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... little purple flowers of autumn peeped about under the green briers. The fields were shaggy with ragweed and dead whitetop and yellow sedge. The walnut and the apple trees were bare, and the tall sycamore stood naked in its white skin. Sometimes a heron flapped across the land, taking a short cut to a lower water, or a woodpecker dived from the tall timber, or there boomed from the distant wooded hollow the drum of some pheasant ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... am I some faraway cousin of Dr. Knowall when the whole tale is told: forsooth I can lead thee thither; but tell me, what shall I do of valiant deeds at the Long Pools? for there is no fire-drake nor effit, nay, nor no giant, nor guileful dwarf, nought save mallard and coot, heron and bittern; yea, ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris

... on land: it drinks only when it bites, since it dips all its food in water: it is a figure of a man who will not take advice, and does nothing but what is soaked in the water of his own will. The heron [*Vulg.: herodionem], commonly called a falcon, signifies those whose "feet are swift to shed blood" (Ps. 13:3). The plover [*Here, again, the Douay translators transcribed from the Vulgate: charadrion; charadrius is the generic name for all plovers.], ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... should issue. The length of the work was an important consideration,—long things were not compatible with wide margins and graceful slenderness. For instance, we brought out Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, an essay by Emerson, and another by Thoreau. Our Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was Heron-Allen's translation of the original MS in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which, though less poetical than FitzGerald's, was not so common. Several years ago we began to publish the works of our own ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... ourselves, for he who has us in charge will be responsible for us; and perhaps we are gaining an altitude and mounting up to enable us to descend at one swoop on the kingdom of Kandy, as the saker or falcon does on the heron, so as to seize it however high it may soar; and though it seems to us not half an hour since we left the garden, believe me we must have ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... by his friend, Colonel Warren, in reference to his trial; but, deferring to the strongly-expressed wish of his counsel, he would leave his case in their hands. An able defence was made for him by Messrs. Heron and Molloy, Q.C., instructed by Mr. Scallan, Solicitor; but it was all in vain. When he was called on to say why sentence should not be pronounced on him, he delivered the following address in a loud tone of voice, his fresh ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... fierce frost had followed a wet sleet storm, he had climbed trees and found dead birds frozen to their perches. But most of the time he had nothing but starvation rations of wood-ants and buds. In the course of a few weeks he was lean as a heron, and his collar hung loose in his fur. He was growing to hate the icy and glittering desolation,—and, as he had once longed for an untried freedom, now he longed ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... a week from that time, Caterina was persuaded to travel in a comfortable carriage, under the care of Mr. Gilfil and his sister, Mrs. Heron, whose soft blue eyes and mild manners were very soothing to the poor bruised child—the more so as they had an air of sisterly equality which was quite new to her. Under Lady Cheverel's uncaressing authoritative goodwill, Tina had ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... colored ducks; while out and in among the water plants and rushes would appear at intervals glimpses of the brilliant sultan, marsh-fowl, crimson flamingoes, soft, blue-gray, demoiselle cranes, and crested heron, all associating in harmony, and with no fear of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... of the slaty stone were marks of ripplings of some now waveless sea; mid which were tri-toed footprints of some huge heron, or wading fowl. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... dearest, lend a heedful ear And listen while I sing Delights to every maiden dear, The charms of early spring: When earth is dotted with the heaps Of corn, when heron-scream Is rare but sweet, when passion leaps And ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... as Hachah whirled downward and went out of sight like a blue heron after a fish. Then she feared he might be stunned, so she swam to him and dragged him to the shore. He could not speak, but the woman ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... armed, too, and soon grew to be such an expert shot that she could drop a squirrel from the tip of a fir, or wing a heron in full flight. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... sometimes delaying a few moments on and at others just touching the summits, and at times sinking out of sight in the foliage: then, in an access of rapture, soaring vertically to a height of a hundred feet, with measured wing-beats, like those of a heron: or, mounting suddenly in a wild, hurried zigzag, then slowly circling downwards, to sit at last with tail outspread fanwise, and vans, glistening white in the sunshine, expanded and vibrating, or waved languidly up and down, with, a motion like that of some broad-winged butterfly ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie," and some of his most popular songs. This epitome of a genius so marvellous and so varied took his audience by storm. "The country murmured of him from sea to sea." "With his poems," says Robert Heron, "old and young, grave and gay, learned and ignorant, were alike transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway, and I can well remember how even plough-boys and maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the wages they earned the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... A heron measuring over six feet from tip to tip of his wings, and nearly four feet from beak to toe, was lately captured in Whately, Mass. His beak was ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... deck, and saw the sand-hills gradually appearing in the distance; the church and lighthouse looked like a heron and a swan rising from the blue waters. If the wind held good they might reach home in about an hour. So near they were to home and all its joys—so near to death and all its terrors! A plank in the ship gave way, and the water rushed in; the crew flew to the pumps, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... collar fell over the collar of the kurtka. A strong black full beard gave a martial expression to his face with the fiery eyes and regular features. Sometimes he wore a biretta with a diamond agraffe and a high plume of heron feathers. Very seldom he appeared in the uniform of ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... rocks about Red River; the Creeks from a knoll in the valley of Big Black River in the Natchez country, where dwelt the Master of Breath; the Aztecs were one of seven tribes that came out from the seven caverns of Aztlan, or Place of the Heron; and the Navajos believe that they emerged at a place known to them in ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... would you let him go?" said Master Silas. "Presently we shall have neither deer nor dog, neither hare nor coney, neither swan nor heron; every carp from pool, every bream from brook, will be groped for. The marble monuments in the church will no longer protect the leaden coffins; and if there be any ring of gold on the finger of knight or dame, it will be torn away with as little ruth and ceremony as the ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin Garland The Crow William Canton To the Cuckoo John Logan The Cuckoo Frederick Locker-Lampson To the Cuckoo William Wordsworth The Eagle Alfred Tennyson The Hawkbit Charles G. D. Roberts The Heron Edward Hovell-Thurlow The Jackdaw William Cowper The Green Linnet William Wordsworth To the Man-of-War-Bird Walt Whitman The Maryland Yellow-Throat Henry Van Dyke Lament of a Mocking-bird Frances Anne Kemble "O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art" William Wordsworth Philomel ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... a heron, flying Over waters cool, My thoughts of you are blue Iris! Today is the silent pool Which shining heron and Iris blue ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert

... thunder in the mountains? I should answer, I should tell you: 'From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the Northland, From the land of the Ojibways, From the land of the Dacotahs, From the mountains, moors, and fenlands, Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes. I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha, The musician, the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... PALMISTRY.—Mr. E. Heron-Allen, a very intelligent gentleman from England, with a fashionable prestige, has been interesting the fashionables of New York and Boston in palmistry, or, as he calls it, cheirosophy, with considerable profit to himself. The human constitution ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... through that it trembled and nodded, and presently snapped with a loud crack, and came down like a broken tree, with the yard and sail; the latter overlapping the deck and burying itself, black flag and all, in the sea; and there, in one moment, lay the Destroyer buffeting and wriggling—like a heron on the water with its long wing ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... shady thickets of the pawpaw-trees. The wild turkey, too, in all the glitter of his metallic plumage, crossed my path; and upon the bayou, whose bank I for some time followed, I had ample opportunity of discharging my piece at the blue heron or the egret, the summer duck or the snake-bird, the slender ibis or the stately crane. Even the king of winged creatures, the white-headed eagle, was more than once within range of my gun, screaming his maniac note among the tops of the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... Friend William Graham, I wish thee well, But this to thee I need not tell. Who is he with the cassock on, Who bursts my second sight upon, A merry twinkle in his eye, Not sanctimonious, nor yet sly, His country, one can scarcely miss Such pure Hibernian brogue is his? Tis surely Father Heron's gait, Bytown's first priest in '28. Close in canonical degree, John Cannon's stately form I see, In bigotry no stern red-tapist, Favorite of Protestant and Papist; A jovial blade with soul elastic, ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana that he ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... same; he wore black hose of Milan buckram, white boots, amber-colored doublet, and jacket of the same cloth as the hose. For a shoulder-sash he wore a heavy chain of gold; and he had a golden plume of great value, and a heavy tuft of heron feathers, also a gilded sword-hilt, and spurs of the same. Captain Don Luis Enriquez bestrode a black Cuatreno horse, with a saddle embroidered with gold and silver edging, a tuft of black and gray feathers, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly the sky covers and uncovers, moves and remains. A lake? Blot the shores of it out! A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun gold on its ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... little answered the purpose of protecting the head, but served to exercise the ingenuity of the fair wearer, who had not failed, according to the prevailing custom of the mountain maidens, to decorate the tiny cap with a heron's feather, and the then unusual luxury of a small and thin chain of gold, long enough to encircle the cap four or five times, and having the ends secured under a broad medal of the same costly metal. I have only to add, that the stature of the young person was something ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various

... of Alexandria, to whom we always have to have recourse when we desire accurate information as to the mechanic arts of antiquity, both composed treatises on puppet shows. That of Philo is lost, but Heron's treatise has been preserved to us, and has recently been translated in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... plumage; they likewise perform strange antics before the females, which, standing by as spectators, at last choose the most attractive partner. Those who have closely attended to birds in confinement well know that they often take individual preferences and dislikes: thus Sir R. Heron has described how a pied peacock was eminently attractive to all his hen birds. I cannot here enter on the necessary details; but if man can in a short time give beauty and an elegant carriage to his bantams, according to his standard of beauty, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... Pinkerton, Esq. June 22.-Strictures on "Heron's Letters of Literature." Mr. Pinkerton's proposed amendment of the English language. Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Mr. Hume and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for the market ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... treachery, we took very little notice of them and showed them they could only expect kind treatment from us, so long as they themselves continued peaceable. During the last few days we shot a few pigeons and parrots, also a small blue heron. ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... mournfully at the sky, like a cat when it sees a sparrow on a tall pine; often he wandered through the wood without dog or gun, like a run-away recruit; often he sat by a brook motionless, inclining his head over a stream, like a heron that wants to consume all the fish with its eye. Such were the queer habits of the Count; everybody said that there was some screw loose in him. Yet they respected him, for he was a gentleman of ancient lineage, rich, kind to his peasants, and affable and friendly with his ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... Certainly the accounts of the gorgeous colours of the plumage of the phoenix might well be descriptions of the rising sun. It appears, moreover, that the Egyptian hieroglyphic benu, {glyph}, which is a figure of a heron or crane (and thus akin to the phoenix), was employed to designate the ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... stalks the stately white heron, Seeking his food from the deep without fear, Gracefully waving wide wings as he rises When the canoe of the Indian draws near. Through reedy brake and the tangled sea-grasses Wander the stag and the timid-eyed ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... under its original covering again. I visited the people and houses here. I found nothing in any respect different from what I have described to you at Settlement No. 1. During the course of my walk, I startled from its repose in one of the rice-fields, a huge blue heron. You must have seen, as I often have, these creatures stuffed in museums; but 't is another matter, and far more curious, to meet them stalking on their stilts of legs over a rice-field, and then on your near ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... They began to think that they had done wrong in driving King James away. In a pretty little fable-book, there is a fable which says that the frogs, who had a log of wood for king, prayed to Jupiter to send them something more active. He sent them a stork, or heron, which gobbled them up alive by scores! The people of England found in the Boroughmongers what the poor frogs found in the stork; and they began to cry out against them and to wish for the old ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... the Burtons heard Mr. Heron Allen lecture on palmistry at Hampstead. For some weeks Burton was prostrated again by his old enemy, the gout, but Lord Stanley of Alderley, F. F. Arbuthnot, and other friends went and sat with him, so the illness had its compensations. A visit to Mr. John Payne, made, as usual, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... ceilings. I went over two of these palaces, falling into the hands, at each, of English-speaking officials whose ciceronage was touched with a kind of rapture. At the Nijo, especially, was my guide an enthusiast, becoming lyrical over the famous cartoons of the "Wet Heron" and the ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... "The harp of the woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought the best, each says his say, but Oisin answers, "The music of the woods is sweetest to me, the sound of the wind and of the blackbird, and the cuckoo and ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... morning meal was laid out. Count Otto sat at the head of the table, like a prince of Pomerania, upon a throne whereon his family arms were both carved and embroidered. He wore a doublet of elk-skin, and a cap with a heron's plume upon his head. He did not rise as we entered, but called to us to be seated and join the feast, as the party must move off soon. Costly wines were sent round; and I observed that on each of the glasses the family arms were cut. They were also painted upon ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... and slander, the persecution of inferiority, tempts you for just a moment to retaliate, when for an instant you forget yourself so far as to hunger for revenge,—be calm. When the grey heron is pursued by its enemy, the eagle, it does not run to escape; it remains calm, takes a dignified stand, and waits quietly, facing the enemy unmoved. With the terrific force with which the eagle makes its attack, the boasted king of birds ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... Such was the appearance of the Caravan to a man who was riding up towards it in an oblique direction. He was mounted on a fine Arabian courser, covered with a tiger-skin; silver bells were suspended from the deep-red stripe work, and on the head of the horse waved a plume of heron feathers. The rider was of majestic mien, and his attire corresponded with the splendor of his horse: a white turban, richly inwrought with gold, adorned his head, his habit and wide pantaloons were of bright red, and a curved sword with a magnificent handle ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... noise," said Martin, "is about the homeliest creature in these woods. It is a small grey heron, that lights down among the grass and weeds to hunt for small frogs and such little fish as swim along the shore. When he drives his pile, he stands with his neck and long bill pointed straight up, and pumping the air into his throat, sends ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... of little anecdotes of wild geese, among others how a certain "mighty miller," with a great gun loaded with rifle balls, had shot geese clean across the Ohio River. He then turned to the description of the heron. "Herons build their nests down in the pines near the lake," said he. "I have asked the Old Squire about making a trip there. He says I can go Saturday afternoon. I would like to have you two and Ellen go with me, but I do not want Halstead. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn't agreed with him. Everything within the range of the senses will, by the aid of the running water, lend itself to ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... lesson," answered the youth, "by a rascally forester of the Duke of Burgundy. I did but fly the falcon I had brought with me from Scotland, and that I reckoned on for bringing me into some note, at a heron near Peronne, and the rascally schelm [rogue, rascal (obsolete or Scotch)] shot my bird with ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... very creatures. But, after all, Barye's lions and horses belong to an entirely different race from those which the tradition-bound old fogies were pleased with. The collection embraces many admirable bronzes of birds: an eagle holding a dead heron; an owl with a rat; a paroquet on a tree, and a strikingly fine composition of a hawk killing a heron; and there are some beautiful studies of dogs, especially a large seated greyhound, belonging to Mr. Walters. There are rabbits, badgers, wolves and camels, but I remember no cows or ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... ill-thief blaw the Heron south! And never drink be near his drouth! He tauld myself by word o' mouth, He'd tak my letter; I lippen'd to the chiel in trouth, And ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... tassel, and bound on either side with a circle of diamonds (as I have seen several) or a rich embroidered handkerchief. On the other side of the head, the hair is laid flat; and here the ladies are at liberty to shew their fancies; some putting flowers, others a plume of heron's feathers, and, in short, what they please; but the most general fashion is a large bouquet of jewels, made like natural flowers; that is the buds of pearl; the roses, of different coloured rubies; the jessamines, of diamonds; the jonquils, of topazes, &c., ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... flew down from the right, and fell on a heron, and slew it in mid-air. The host shouted, for the hawk is the Holy Bird of Ra, and the Wanderer, too, rejoiced in the omen. "Look, men," he cried; "the Bird of Ra has slain the wandering thief from the waters. And so shall ye smite the ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... or where,— A long-legg'd heron chanced to fare By a certain river's brink, With his long, sharp beak Helved on his slender neck; 'Twas a fish-spear, you might think. The water was clear and still, The carp and the pike there at will Pursued their silent ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... or standing on some muddy shore, like a heron, this striking plant, so often found in that bird's haunts, is quite as decorative in a picture, and, happily, far more approachable in life. Indeed, one of the comforts of botany as compared with ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... nuns, though it cometh to mean superstitious and hypocritical women from their nature. Citrinatione or perfect digestion. Forage is old and hard provision made for horses and cattle in winter, or metaphorically, or to help out the ryme it may mean grass. Heroner is a long-winged hawk for the heron. The Hyppe is the berye of the sweet bryer or eglantine. Nowell meaneth more than Christmas. Porpherye is a peculiar marble, not marble in common. Sendale, a sylke stuffe. The trepegett is not the battering-ram, but an engine to cast stones. Wiuer or Wyvern, a serpent like unto a dragon. ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... apologetically, "—method and coolness. The world must keep its head clear: yellow fever and smallpox have been nearly stamped out; the Hun can be eliminated—with intelligence and clear thinking.... And I'm only an American airman who has been shot down like a winged heron whose comrades have lingered a little to comfort him and have gone on.... Yes, but a winged heron can still stab, little mistress of the bells.... And every blow counts.... Listen attentively—for Jack's sake ... and for the sake of France. For I ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... up," he said. "When I went away from here last, five years ago, you were still a child. You were such a thin, longlegged creature, with your hair hanging on your shoulders; you used to wear short frocks, and I used to tease you, calling you a heron. . . ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... elements of the scene were very diverse. Mrs. Heron, a languid-looking, fair-haired woman, lay at full length on one of the divans. Her step-daughter, Kitty, sat at the tea-table, and Kitty's elder brother, Percival, a tall, broad-shouldered young man of eight-and-twenty, was leaning against the mantelpiece. A girl, who looked about twenty-one years ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... little oddly with the quick movements and rapid talk which usually belonged to him. Then his manner suddenly changed, and he spoke in a tone of something like irritation, as if he had better have the whole thing out at once and be done with it—"My name is Heron—Victor Heron." ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... it neared the narrower winding channel. To enter this they skirted a mud-flat, where the day, breaking over the tree-tops and through the river mists, shone on scores upon scores of birds gathered to await it—curlews, sandpipers, gulls in rows like strings of jewels, here and there a heron standing sentry. The assembly paid no heed to ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... said the merchant guide, turning round to Hassan Subah, who, surrounded by his officers, led the van. The whole of the great way of the city was filled with the Seljukian warriors. Their ebon steeds, their snowy turbans, adorned with plumes of the black eagle and the red heron, their dazzling shawls, the blaze of their armour in the sunset, and the long undulating perspective of beautiful forms and brilliant colours, this regiment of heroes in a street of palaces. War had seldom afforded a more imposing or ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... descending nearly to his knees. The material was a light-blue cloth, while over his shoulder hung a short cloak of a darker hue. His cap was of Saxon fashion, and he wore on one side a little plume of a heron. In a somewhat costly belt hung a light short sword, while across his knees lay a crossbow, in itself almost a sure sign of its bearer being of other than Saxon blood. The boy looked anxiously as party after party ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... forget, was crossing the rivers. One reaches a river at night.... One begins shouting and so does the driver.... Rain, wind, pieces of ice glide down the river, there is a sound of splashing.... And to add to our gaiety there is the cry of a heron. Herons live on the Siberian rivers, so it seems they don't consider the climate but the geographical position.... Well, an hour later, in the darkness, a huge ferry-boat of the shape of a barge comes into sight with huge oars that look like the pincers of a crab. The ferry-men are a rowdy set, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... shady visions it conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of his own children! Luckily, she had no money—a beggarly fifty pound a year! And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had nothing to leave her, with contempt. Brooding over his glass, his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise when the ladies left the room. He would have to speak to Soames —would have to put him on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... satin, and in shape and fashion point-device—unless, as the Ambassador said good-humouredly, 'my young Lord Ribaumont wished to be one of Monsieur's clique.' Thus arrayed, then, and with the chaplet of pearls bound round the small cap, with a heron-plume that sat jauntily on one side of his fair curled head, Berenger took his seat beside the hazel-eyed, brown-haired Sidney, in his white satin and crimson, and with the Ambassador and his attendants were rolled off in the great state-coach ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... huge heron stood guard, stiff and shapeless as a weather-beaten stake. Blackbirds with crimson-slashed shoulders rose in clouds from the reeds, only to settle again as they passed amid a ceaseless chorus of harsh protest. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... Year's Bells The Vase and the Weed A Riddle To a Fly Burned by a Gaslight To a Friend Retribution The Three Graces The Last Rose of Summer The Starling and the Goose The Heroes of Alma A Kind Word, a Smile, or a Kiss Dear Mother, I'm Thinking of Thee The Heron and the Weather-Vane The Three Mirrors The Two Clocks Sacrifical: on the Execution of Two Greek Sailors at Swansea Wales to "Punch" Welcome! Change False as Fair Heads and Hearts Fall of Sebastopol To Lord Derby Unrequited The Household Spirit Had I a Heart A ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... heron, and the grey Halcyon talked from cedar's spray, Drummed the partridge far away;— Ah! could we choose to live ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... road makes a bend to the right, and the cat-tails and rushes grow in profusion, a blue heron, that spirit of the marsh, stands grotesque and sedate, and gazes with melancholy air into the water. Bullfrogs pipe, running the whole gamut of tones from treble to bass, hidden away amid the water grasses. Darning needles dodge in and out among the rushes in erratic flight, and a blackbird ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... spring the lions were in splendid condition. They are well housed, but fewer distractions are provided for them than in Regent's Park. I found myself fascinated by the herons, who were continually soaring out over the neighbouring houses and returning like darkening clouds. In England, although the heron is a native, we rarely seem to see him; while to study him is extremely difficult. In Holland he is ubiquitous: both wild ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... to athletic exercises, and loved to excite myself by encountering danger in its most terrific forms. Often had I passed whole days in climbing the steep and precipitous crags which overhang the sea in the neighbourhood of Morton Castle, ostensibly in the pursuit of the heron or the seagull, but self-acknowledgedly for the mere pleasure of grappling with the difficulties they opposed to me. Often, too, in the most terrific tempests, when sea and sky have met in one black and threatening mass, and when the startled ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... Congress, and he'd manoeuvred to make himself a conspicuous figure in Washington one way or other. His own present interests could not, Roger thought, be interfered with by Justin O'Reilly. The man was a Democrat, and opposed on principle to the cause of John Heron, whom Miss White had called the "California Oil Trust King": but personally the two were friends, even distantly related, and O'Reilly would wish to do ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson



Words linked to "Heron" :   yellow-crowned night heron, great white heron, egret, inventor, night heron, Hero of Alexandria, heron's bill, Egretta caerulea, mathematician, boatbill, bittern, hero, black-crowned night heron, snowy heron, wading bird, night raven, Cochlearius cochlearius, boat-billed heron, Ardea herodius, Ardeidae, artificer, family Ardeidae, discoverer, great blue heron, little blue heron, wader, Ardea occidentalis



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org