Stonechat

I just learned that the stonechat is a bird, but this yarn speaks to me of bricks. ❋ Unknown (2009)

The first shows a male who returns to give the cameraman a quick encore; the second shows a stonechat not eating a centipede. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Actually we heard two cuckoos, a stonechat and curlews, saw a heron, skylarks and countless warblers and the sun shone for most of the run without getting too hot. ❋ Unknown (2009)

The bird species confined to Réunion are the Réunion cuckoo-shrike (Coracina newtoni, EN), Réunion stonechat (Saxicola tectes), Réunion olive white-eye (Zosterops olivaceus), and Réunion bulbul (Hypsipetes borbonicus). ❋ Unknown (2008)

He makes a fist and hammers it against his skull to bring forth robin redbreast, stonechat, crow, while the rest of us raise our hands with what we think are the right answers and hold our breaths trying hard not to laugh. ❋ Unknown (2008)

At the time when folk go hunting with the sparrow-hawk and with the hound, which seeks the lark and the stonechat and tracks the quail and the partridge, it happened that a knight of Thrace, a young and sprightly noble, esteemed for his prowess, had one day gone a-hawking quite close beside this tower; Bertrand was the knight's name. ❋ De Troyes Chr��tien (N/A)

Bulbul, _hazari dastar_, the famous songster, is not a real _bulbul_, but either Alaudina or a stonechat. ❋ William Griffith (N/A)

Edolius occurs here, another stonechat has come in. ❋ William Griffith (N/A)

But the rock stood still, and a stonechat went and perched on it. ❋ Various (1909)

A stonechat he was sure it must be, and he wandered on till he came to a great silver fir, and thought that he spied a pigeon's nest among the multitudinous branches. ❋ Unknown (1892)

'Soldier or shepherd, what matter now she is gone?' and rising to his feet and coming down the sloping lawn, overflowing with the shade of the larches, he climbed through the hawthorns growing out of a crumbled wall, and once at the edge of the lake, he stood waiting for nothing seemingly but to hear the tiresome clanking call of the stonechat, and he compared its reiterated call with the words ❋ Unknown (1892)

Bless me, man, it's good of you, though, sitting up in the chimney there same as a good ould jackdaw, keeping the poor wife company when her selfish ould husband is flirting his tail like a stonechat. ❋ Hall Caine (1892)

Miriam broke off some lotus-buds and threw them at the stonechat, which flew away, but kept its beak still pointing towards the rushes. ❋ August Strindberg (1880)

A stonechat of the desert sat on a rock by the river, wagged its tail, and flapped its wings, as though it wished to show something which it saw; and chattered at the sight of something strange among the bulrushes. ❋ August Strindberg (1880)

The ground-lark sways on a frond above you; the stonechat lights for an instant, utters his cracking cry, and is off with a whisk; you have fair, quiet, and sweet rest, and you start up ready to jog along again. ❋ James Runciman (1871)

To the future must belong the task of deciphering some pages of the immense lexicon; for today I will content myself with remembering the Saxicola, or stonechat. ❋ Jean-Henri Fabre (1869)

It is summer, and the wind-birds top the furze; the bright stonechat, velvet-black and red and white, sits on the highest spray of the gorse, as if he were painted there. ❋ Richard Jefferies (1867)

In the garden this afternoon, a female stonechat, captured here via the magic of holding my iPhone up to a pair of binoculars: ❋ Harry (2010)