"A swan always gives the idea of a court-lady, — stately in her grace, ruffling in her bravery, and conscious of the floating plumes that mark her pretensions. The peacock is a coquette ; it turns in the sunshine, it looks round as if to ask the conscious air of its purple and gold ; but the swan sails on in majestic tranquillity, it sees the fair image of its perfect grace on the waters below, and is content."

"There goes the swallow,— Could we but follow! Hasty swallow, stay, Point us out the way; Look back swallow, turn back swallow, stop swallow."

"One swallowe proveth not that summer is neare."

"The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship."

"Down comes rain drop, bubble follows; On the house-top one by one Flock the synagogue of swallows, Met to vote that autumn's gone."

"Some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs."

"Now to the Goths as swift as swallow flies."

"But, as old Swedish legends say, Of all the birds upon that day, The swallow felt the deepest grief, And longed to give her Lord relief, And chirped when any near would come, "Hugswala swala swal honom!" Meaning, as they who tell it deem, Oh, cool, oh, cool and comfort Him!"

"The jelous swan, agens hire deth that syngith."

"The martlet Builds in the weather on the outward wall, Even in the force and road of casualty."

"I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death; And, from the organ-pipe of frailty, sings His soul and body to their lasting rest."

"This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made its pendent bed, and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd, The air is delicate."

"(Let music sound while he doth make his choice) Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end."

"It's surely summer, for there's a swallow: Come one swallow, his mate will follow, The bird rare quicken and wheel and thicken."

"Do you know why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories."

"I will play the swan And die in music."

"One swallow does not make spring."

"The swan's down-feather, That stands upon the swell at full of tide, And neither way inclines."

"As I have seen a swan With bootless labour swim against the tide And spend her strength with over-matching waves."

"For all the water in the ocean, Can never turn the swan's black legs to white, Although she lave them hourly in the flood."

"The swallow is come! The swallow is come! O, fair are the seasons, and light Are the days that she brings, With her dusky wings, And her bosom snowy white!"

"There's a double beauty whenever a swan Swims on a lake with her double thereon."

"The swan murmurs sweet strains with a faltering tongue, itself the singer of its own dirge."

"Una golondrina sola no hace verano."

"The swan, with arched neck Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet."

"At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years."

"Hush! With sudden gush As from a fountain sings in yonder bush The Hermit Thrush."

"And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."

"Sing, sweet thrushes, forth and sing! Meet the moon upon the lea; Are the emeralds of the spring On the angler's trysting-tree? Tell, sweet thrushes, tell to me, Are there buds on our willow-tree? Buds and birds on our trysting-tree?"

"Across the noisy street I hear him careless throw One warning utterance sweet; Then faint at first, and low, The full notes closer grow; Hark, what a torrent gush! They pour, they overflow— Sing on, sing on, O thrush!"

"O thrush, your song is passing sweet, But never a song that you have sung Is half so sweet as thrushes sang When my dear love and I were young."

"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!"

"When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush."

"In the gloamin' o' the wood The throssil whusslit sweet."

"The stately-sailing swan Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale; And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle, Protective of his young."

"You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve."

"The swan on still St. Mary's lake Float double, swan and shadow!"

"The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill."

"Thus does the white swan, as he lies on the wet grass, when the Fates summon him, sing at the fords of Mæander."

"I said to the brown, brown thrush: "Hush—hush! Through the wood's full strains I hear Thy monotone deep and clear, Like a sound amid sounds most fine.""

"Ah, nut-brown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants! And ah, ye poachers!—'Tis no sport for peasants."

"Or have you mark'd a partridge quake, Viewing the towering falcon nigh? She cuddles low behind the brake: Nor would she stay; nor dares she fly."

"Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?"

"Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs."

"I needed the birds worse & worse as I got older as if some crack had opened in the human scheme of things & only birds with their sharp morning notes had the sense for any new day."

"From nesting, brooding and sex, to metabolism, development and even the diseases that afflicted them, many of the traits found in birds today were inherited from the dinosaurs. The boundary between dinosaurs and birds has become utterly blurred."

"If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs."

"When it was assumed that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, it was correspondingly presumed that their flight evolved among climbers that first glided and then developed powered flight. This has the advantage that we know that arboreal animals can evolve powered flight with the aid of gravity, as per bats. When it was realized that birds descended from deinonychosaurs, many researchers switched to the hypothesis that running dinosaurs learned to fly from the ground up. This has the disadvantage that it is not certain whether it is practical for tetrapod flight to evolve among ground runners working against gravity. The characteristics of birds indicate that they evolved from dinosaurs that had first evolved as bipedal runners, and then evolved into long armed climbers. If the ancestors of birds had been entirely arboreal, then they should be semiquadrupedal forms whose sprawling legs were integrated into the main airfoil, like bats. That birds are bipeds whose erect legs are separate from the wings indicates that their ancestors evolved to run."

"Imagine, if you will, a world filled with billions of dinosaurs. A world where they can be found in thousands of shapes, sizes, colours and classes in every habitable pocket of the planet. Imagine them from the desert dunes of the Sahara to the frozen rim of the Antarctic Circle - and from the balmy islands of the South Pacific to the high flanks of the Himalayas. The thing is, you don't have to imagine very hard. In fact, wherever you live, you can probably step outside and look up into the trees and skies to find them. For the dinosaurs are the birds and they are all around you. Dinosaurs didn't die out when an asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago. Everything you were told as a child was wrong."