Word: egret
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plane buzzed through the clear morning air above Kenya's Tsavo National Park. In the rolling bushland below grazed herds of zebra, kudu, oryx and hartebeest, swishing away flies with their tails. Suddenly, from the middle of a patch of thorn trees, flashed the white flick of an egret, constant companion of the African elephant. It was what the pilot had been looking for. He radioed the position to the ground, and within minutes a helicopter arrived. Two white hunters climbed out and disappeared into the tangle of thorn trees. There was a burst of high-powered rifle shots...
Hovering over the open-air podium with his arms outstretched, the white-bearded, white-jacketed conductor looked like a snowy egret about to flap off into the fading sunset. Instead, he flew into Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, his baton carving the air, his left hand kneading a softly glowing tone from the strings. In Copland's Quiet City, he moved with the sure, deft strokes of a tailor stitching a hem, weaving the complex patterns into a taut whole. The interpretations, typically, were masterpieces of lucidity and logic, and at concert's end the audience at Stanford...
...allow the women se mettre en valeur"-meaning to show off a bit-explained French Perfume Queen Hélène Rochas after her My Fair Lady ball in the Bois de Boulogne. A bit! Mme. Rochas herself wore $250,000 worth of diamonds to decorate her egret-plumed Guy Laroche gown. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Begum Aga Khan, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford and all the other jet-set guests showed up in ascots, ostrich feathers and grey top hats. "There was not an egret plume or a false moustache...
...egrets' migration to the Western Hemisphere is one of today's most fascinating ornithological puzzles. Never had a land bird migrated 3,000 miles across the ocean from Africa and settled successfully on the other side. The cattle egret is a strong flyer (30 m.p.h.) and a notorious wanderer. But most of its earlier nomadism had been confined to Africa and Europe, where it has been spotted among herds of cattle all the way from the British Isles to the Cape of Good Hope...
...environment, the cattle egret has flourished surprisingly well. Flocks of 200 to 300 can be seen in Puerto Rico; the bird is common in Haiti. Florida is experiencing an egret explosion: two years ago, Florida's cattle egret population was 5,000; today it exceeds 15,000, and the sociable birds have been spotted in every state along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. One wanderer, apparently lost, flew aboard a ship 200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland; another was shot by a farmer near Portland, Me. who complained it was upsetting his chickens...