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Birds Quotes

Browse 346 quotes about Birds.

Birds Quotes

“You got the eggs in you; the world is fully ready to celebrate the chicks out of your laying labour. Never give up. Go and breed! Go and breed great dreams.”

WorldDreamHard WorkBirdLaborImpactPreparedFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorCelebrateLegacyLabourEggsDream BigBirdsWork HardBig DreamsMake A DifferencePrepareFowlFullAchieve Your DreamsEggBreedFullyHenChickGreat DreamsGo And BreedHatch Your EggLabouringLay Egg
Book:The Great Hand Book of Quotes
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“As he reached the river, Oswald suddenly felt as if he were walking around in a painting. Then it dawned on him. Everywhere he looked was a painting! Everything was alive with color: the water, the sky, the boathouses that lined the river with red tin roofs, silver tin roofs, and rusted orange tin roofs. Red boat in a yellow boathouse. Green, pink, blue, tan, yellow, and white boathouses. The wooden pilings sticking out of the water were a thousand different shades of gray and each individual piling was encrusted with hundreds of chalk-white barnacles and black woodpecker holes. Even the grain of the wood and the knots on each post differed from inch to inch and pole to pole.”

FriendshipChristmasFamily RelationshipsMiraclesWildlifeBirdsAlabamaArt Quotes Mindfulness
Book:A Redbird Christmas
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“On harsh, frigid January days, when the winds are relentless and the snow piles up around us, I often think of our small feathered friends back on the Third Line. I wonder if the old feeder is still standing in the orchard and if anyone thinks to put out a few crumbs and some bacon drippings for our beautiful, hungry, winter birds. In the stark, white landscape they provided a welcome splash of colour and their songs gave us hope through the long, silent winter.”

WinterBirdsGood Old DaysFarm Life
Book:Lanark County Calendar
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“Bats look and behave a whole lot differently than mice or foxes or elephants, but nobody would argue that they're not mammals. No, bats are just a weird type of mammal that evolved wings and developed the ability to fly. Birds are just a weird group of dinosaurs that did the same thing.”

ScienceEvolutionArgumentBatsBirdsDinosaursMammals
Book:The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
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“An insect hovers nearby. She can't remember what it's called: smaller than a dragonfly, with delicate mother-of-pearl wings. It skims the surface of the beck. She stays like that for a long time, listening to the birds, the water, the insects. She shuts her eyes, opening them again when she feels something brush her hand. The dragonfly-like creature with the iridescent wings. The word swims up from the depths of her brain: a damselfly. Tears well in her eyes, surprising her. She was fascinated by insects as a child. She remembers begging her mother to spare the moths that fluttered out from wardrobes, the gauzy spider's webs that clung to the ceiling. She'd collected vividly illustrated books about them. About birds, too. She would hide under the covers reading, in the small, silent hours of the morning while her parents slept in the next room. It hurts now, to think of that little girl, her innocent wonder: flashlight in hand, turning the glossy pages and marveling at the wild and wonderful creatures. Butterflies with eyes on their wings, parrots in candy-colored plumage.”

InsectsBirdsChildhood MemoriesChildlike WonderDamselfly
Book:Weyward
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“An almost invisible bird, a small piece of hopping dirt, purposed along the edge of the flower bed, eyeing for beauty or looking for worms. Olivia watched it as she walked with her husband toward the yew and puzzling statue. We count those birds as nothing, she thought, the small dun-colored ones, and prefer to keep our wonder for the spectral glory of cardinals, or the ungainly grace of cranes. Goldfinches and even jays delight us, but are they so different from these common little brown birds which we think of as vermin? Astonishing accidents of pigment, size, plumage: Why do they elicit or wonder?”

BrownBirdsBeauty In Simplicity
Book:The Garden Party: A Novel
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“The two of them had fallen into the habit of bartering knowledge whenever she visited. He schooled her in jazz, in bebop and exotic bossa nova, playing his favorites for her while he painted- Slim Gaillard, Rita Reys, King Pleasure, and Jimmy Giuffre- stabbing the air with his brush when there was a particular passage he wanted her to note. In turn, she showed him the latest additions to her birding diary- her sketches of the short-eared owl and American wigeon, the cedar waxwing and late warblers. She explained how the innocent-looking loggerhead shrike killed its prey by biting it in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord before impaling the victim on thorns or barbed wire and tearing it apart. "Good grief," he'd said, shuddering. "I'm in the clutches of an avian Vincent Price.”

NatureKnowledgeSpeciesBirdsAlice KesslerAvianThomas BayberAlice And ThomasMusic Genre
Book:The Gravity of Birds
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“The train was moving too fast to see much beyond the pines stepping up rock walls, but she knew from memory the bird species that would be endemic. She could picture the colored plates in her textbooks- the greater roadrunner, with its shaggy pompadour crest; the yellow eyes of burrowing owls; the shiny, jet-black plumage of the phainopepla, which gobbled up hundreds of mistletoe berries a day. She'd missed the Festival of the Cranes by only a few weeks. How tempting, to find herself just hours from Bosque del Apache, and the Rio Grande. She imagined lying on her stomach, binoculars trained on the sandhill cranes and snow geese in their winter quarters, watching in wonder the mass morning liftoffs and evening fly-ins. It was an old desire, but even now, though she knew the impossibility of it, it persisted; the world as one giant aviary she ached to see, all of its feathered inhabitants in their natural environment, a thousand times better to hear their cries dampened by verdant jungle foliage or echoed across the wells of canyons than to listen to abbreviated bits of captured songs emanating from a machine.”

BirdsCanyonsMigrationsAlice KesslerSouthern America
Book:The Gravity of Birds
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“They're old letters from this fellow Chubb and I used to know," he sang, almost in a whisper, and I imagined that the birds, if they could hear him, rustled in their sleep, on their roosts: his words entering their dreams, calling to them.”

NatureWildlifeBirdsGrandparentsConnection To Nature
Book:The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness: Three Lyrical Short Stories of Texas, Appalachia, and the Untamed American West
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“On city harp strings ‘neath cotton ball clouds, Pigeon to pigeon their stories they sing, Wafting flocks gather in soft, cooing crowds; Amid rush traffic, a prelude to spring, One with their nature, harmony within, Above street clatter, perched, resting their bones, Primed for the vernal bounty to begin, Soothing the clamor with light, dulcet tones; Whiffs of smog-filled drafts like bellows pulse through, Unfazed are they by our mad world of haste, The calm bevy awaits winter’s adieu, Unconsumed by thoughts of no time to waste, Nature presides with unshakable pride, The seasons shall turn with a feather’s glide.”

InspirationalMotivationalNaturePoemTrafficFeathersSonnetBirdsPigeonsCity Life
Author:Marie Helen Abramyan
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“He gave me the birds, and he gave me the swamp. At some point he stopped trying to teach me the finer points of fishing. He saw what I liked about the place and supplied a way to describe it. "Pond chicken," he'd say, at the movement of something purple in the reeds, or "Kingfisher," when a small rocket flew past and ahead of us, close to the water. Once, in the same tone of voice, he said, "Swamp girl." I turned, quick, to see. "That's you, Loni Mae." He looked at me sideways and laughed. Shafts of sunlight shone through the Spanish moss above him. "Or no. I got a better name for you. The Marsh Queen.”

BirdsBook TitleSwampMemories Of DaddyPet NameMarsh Queen
Book:The Marsh Queen
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“She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now. The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace. Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat. She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm. She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.”

LegacyInsectsBirdsCrowPower Of NatureFemale PowerFamiliarsProtectorsWeyward
Book:Weyward
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“I listened to the crackling fire, the chirp of birds in the garden's potted evergreens- so different from the spring-sweet melodies I was used to. That I might never hear or be able to endure again. Maybe Amarantha had won after all. And some strange, new part of me wondered if my never returning might be a fitting punishment for him. For what he had done to me.”

ListeningAbuseTraumaPunishmentSarah J MaasFeyreFeyre ArcheronA Court Of Mist And FuryBirdsBirdsong
Book:A Court of Mist and Fury
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“In the spring of the year birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers.”

SpringDawnWearyExhaustedBirdsHeartsPassengersDisturbFlashlight
Book:The Passenger
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“The Sniper Bird by Stewart Stafford "Look out!" the crowd shouted to me, "There's a Sniper Bird in those trees!" A whooshing sound shot past my ears, Making me duck down to my knees. He must have gone rogue, I reckoned, Someone cheated him over birdseed, Then he took a squirrel as his hostage, Get a negotiator quickly up those trees. He threw up his wings and surrendered, They brought him down in a gilded cage, Never again sniping at innocent people, He studies elocution with a parrot sage. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

BirdWittyIronyBirdsParodyHostageWhimsicalSniperBird PoemBird Poems
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“The vegetation grew so dense the road looked like a square slice of cake taken out clean with a knife. Although the wet tropics covers less than one percent of Australia, it contains almost half of our bird species, a third of our mammal species, more than half of our butterfly species, and over seven hundred plant species endemic to the area. The rain forest seemed to inhale and exhale in a sweaty tangle of heaving bio matter.”

AustraliaBirdsMammalsQueenslandRainforestTropicsNative SpeciesDaintree
Book:Stranger Country
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“December. The days begin white and glittering with snow---on the roof, the branches of the sycamore, where a robin has taken up residence. It reminds Kate of Robin Redbreast from The Secret Garden---for so many years, her only safe portal to the natural world. Only now does she truly understand her favorite passage, memorized since childhood: "Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us." Often, before she leaves for work, she stand outside to watch the sun catch on the white-frosted plants, searching for the robin's red breast. A spot of color against the stark morning. Sometimes, while she watches it flutter, she feels a tugging inside her womb, as if her daughter is responding to its song, anxious to breach the membrane between her mother's body and the outside world. The robin is not alone in the garden. Starlings skip over the snow, the winter sun varnishing their necks. At the front of the cottage, fieldfares---distinctive with their tawny feathers---chatter in the hedgerows. And of course, crows. So many that they form their own dark canopy of the sycamore, hooded figures watching.”

BirdsDecemberWintertimeRobinThe Secret GardenUnborn Daughters
Book:Weyward
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“Humanity should not remain insensitive to the forest fire or wildfire every year. Unless we act, the loss of biodiversity and extinction of herbs, birds and animals and the pains of the trees, birds, animals and the poor is also alarming signal for the extinction of humanity itself.”

Human RightsTreesBirdsBiodiversityWildfireForest FireExtinction Of HumanityHuman And Nature
Book:Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth
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“It was as big as a box kite and mounted on a pole, gesticulating wildly with moving arms, vanes, wheels, and propellers larger and small. I'd never seen it. It was all different colors. It didn't resemble anything in particular, except at the top, where there was a woman's head. Attached to her hair were three reflectors. Shells and chimes hung around her neck. Even with half the moving parts stuck, a gust blowing through it set off a flurry of fluttering and shimmering and ringing, as if a flock of exotic birds was taking flight.”

ShellsBirdsChimesSymbolKiteWhirligigReflectorsVanes
Author:Paul Fleischman
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“We have always had a curious connection to birds in my family. My grandfather was even called the Birdman of Havana because he kept pigeons. He named them after family members long since gone. I spent my childhood believing the birds were actually these people, simply transformed. I remember the musty, sweet scent of them. I remember the bloom of dust on their wings. My favorite was the one named after my mother. When my grandfather died, my brother set the birds free and I hated seeing them fly away. I did not want them to leave me, as nearly everyone I had ever loved had left me. But my brother said we were free like them now, and we left to cross the straits that very night.”

SpiritFreedomConnectionBirdsPigeon
Book:Other Birds
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“The desk in front of Frasier was littered with sketchbooks and colored pencils. Drawing was a medium he'd taken up later in life and all he drew was birds, over and over, usually in the heat of the day when it was too hot to be in the garden. The wall in front of him was covered in sketches of the dellawisps, so many of them the papers overlapped, forming a decoupage of turquoise birds.”

BirdsTurquoiseSketchesDellawisps
Book:Other Birds: A Novel
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“We have allowed alien plants to replace natives all over the country. Our native animals and plants cannot adapt to this gross and completely unnatural manipulation of their environment in time to negate the consequences. Their only hope for a sustainable future is for us to intervene to right the wrongs that we have perpetrated.”

NatureEnvironmentWildlifeBirdsNative Plants
Book:Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens
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“Bald eagles wheeled above the Sound, their commanding silhouettes outlined by blue sky. Belted kingfishers, with their fluffy topknots, often left their perches in the trees along the beach to flutter their blue-and-white plumage past my bunker. They eyed me through the unglazed window with fearless curiosity. River otters scooched along the beach below me sometimes, and once in a while I saw an orca breach, carving an arc between sea and sky. Their sleek black-and-white beauty was no less majestic than that of the eagles, and I cheered softly when I caught sight of them.”

BirdsNatures BeautyFaunaOrca
Book:The Witch's Kind
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