esias - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Thomas Hardy - William Wordsworth - Thomas Hardy - Carry on Up the Jungle 1970 - Henry David Thoreau - Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero TV - Richard Dawkins TV - Ancient Aliens TV - Taking on Tyson TV - Mike Tyson - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Blackadder TV - Charles I - Proverbs - Rachel Carson - David Attenborough TV - Life on Fire & Jeremy Irons TV - Dixon Lanier Merritt - Arthur C Clarke TV - James Fisher - John Keats - Nat Burton - William D’Avenant - John Webster - W S Gilbert - Edgar Allan Poe - Thomas Gray - Harper Lee - Paul Lawrence Dunbar - George Gascoigne - Izaac Walton - William Shakespeare - Daphne du Maurier - Aesop - Aristotle - Charles Lindbergh - Miguel de Cervantes - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Theodore Roosevelt - Tawny Pipit 1944 - The Independent - Destination Truth TV - The Birds 1963 - I Kings 17:6 - Psalms 55:6 - Birds Britannia TV - Dara O’Briain TV - Horizon TV - Planet Dinosaur TV - Walking With Dinosaurs TV - Reign of the Dinosaurs TV - Omens of the Apocalypse TV - Derek TV - George Eliot - Richard Holdaway - Bill Oddie TV - India: Nature’s Wonderland TV - The Last Seabird Summer? TV - John Webster - Flights of Fancy: Pigeons and the British TV - The Office US TV - Natural World TV - Cities: Nature’s New Wild TV - Mandy TV - Tom Holland TV - Natural History Museum TV - The Proof is Out There TV - Chris Packham TV - MonsterQuest TV -
Flitting across the waves and shallow straits,
With ecstasy she glides in graceful flight,
From lands afar, from royal kingdoms borne
High mystery beyond the common sight.
Heaven’s feathered basket of beak and bone,
Thy size shall never match thy wisdom sought
By restless souls forbidden yet to know
And break the crest of animated thought.
esias ryder, Shelley’ & Hardy’s Travelling Bird, 1969
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark, 1819
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. ibid.
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. ibid.
Like a Poet hidden
In the shade of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. ibid.
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest – but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety. ibid.
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought. ibid.
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then – as I am listening now. ibid.
A widow bird sat mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles the First 5:9
... Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell –
A little ball of feather and bone;
And how it perished, when piped farewell,
And where it wastes, are alike unknown ...
Go find it, faeries, go and find
That tiny pinch of priceless dust,
And bring a casket silver-lined,
And framed of gold that gems encrust ... Thomas Hardy, Shelley’s Skylark
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
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs ... Thomas Hardy, Proud Songsters
The community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed as supervisor, purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend, made its headquarters in an old thatched cottage standing in an enclosure that had once been a garden, but was now a trampled and sanded square. The house was overrun with ivy, its chimney being enlarged by the boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a ruined tower. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
O blithe new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! Shall I call the bird,
Or but a wandering voice? William Wordsworth, To the Cuckoo, 1807
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred point of heaven and home! William Wordsworth, To a Skylark
Just thought, sir, I’d spotted the golden crested tit, sir. Carry on Up the Jungle 1970 starring Frankie Howerd & Sid James & Charles Hawtrey & Joan Sims & Kenneth Connor & Bernard Bresslaw & Terry Scott & Jacki Piper & Valerie Leon et al, director Gerald Thomas, Connor as Claude Chumley
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
Seeing these birds of paradise – these entirely new birds of paradise – must have been an extraordinary culmination of his quest. Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero II: Wallace in the Spice Islands
Because it’s an archipelago, because the islands are within reach, it is a recipe for division of species. Every now and again one or two finches gets blown across, because that happens rather seldom, there’s time for it to evolve in a different way on the new island. Professor Richard Dawkins, interview Darwin’s Brave New World, CBC 2009
According to local legend a bird was responsible for the seamless construction. Legends say the winged creature carried a powerful chemical in its beak – a substance capable of melting stone. Ancient Aliens s2e8: Unexplained Structures, History 2010
He conquered the world at the age of twenty. But the chaos that follows the self-styled baddest man on the planet trampled anyone in his way. ‘Tyson bit Evander Holyfield twice’. Now aged forty-four Mike’s rejected drugs and alcohol, embraced religion and undergone years of therapy. Now Mike has turned to the one thing in his life he’s always cared about. Determined to leave his bad behaviour in the past the former boxer is taking up bird racing. He’s returning home to New York and back to the people and the birds he grew up with. To a secret world that exists on the City’s skyline. Mike’s swapping the ring for the rooftops to compete in a six-month-long pigeon racing season ... Mike’s team of beginners is going up against seasoned pros. Taking on Tyson, Animal Planet 2011
At the age of eleven an encounter with a sadistic gang member flicked a switch in young Mike Tyson’s mind. It was the bloody death of a bird that provoked Mike to throw his first ever punch. ibid.
The first thing I ever loved in my life – I loved the pigeons. Mike Tyson
A large black bird flying towards me, shrieking, attacking me. Star Trek: Voyager: The Raven s4e6, Seven of Nine to Doctor & Janeway
Baldrick: It’s got a little ring round its neck. There’s a novelty.
George: Oh really. Is there a paper hat as well?
Baldrick: No, but there’s a joke. Blackadder Goes Forth: Plan B – Corporal Punishment, BBC 1989
I sent our top bird. Speckled Jim. My own true love who’s been with me since I was a nipper. ibid. Melchett to Blackadder
You shot my speckled Jim! ibid.
The case before us is that of the Crown v Captain Edmund Blackadder, the Flanders Pigeon Murderer! ibid. Melchett