Crows and kites

Usage examples of birds.

But they were valuable birds, the finest verrin hawks he had taken for many seasons.

But she had found Davin, too, sick of the fever, and he had welcomed her coming-his apprentice was not yet skilled enough to go near the untrained birds, though he was good enough to feed the others and clean the mews-and so he had ordered Romilly to release them both.

She had reared eyasses-young birds hatched in the mews or captured still helpless, accustomed before they were feathered to feed from a hand or glove.

She stole for a few seconds on tiptoe away from the block to draw the door closed-it would avail her nothing to tame this hawk if all the birds died with the cold!

As she stepped across the doorsill she thought of an old ballad her own mother had sung in her childhood, of how, at night, the birds talked among themselves when no human creature was near.

But the birds in the mews where the tame ones were kept were only hunched forms on the blocks, fast asleep, and she felt from them only a confused silence.

Kilghard Hills lured her mind out there in the sky, with the clouds and the birds flying.

For through the infinite pain of loss, a thread of awareness stole, high flight, the world laid out beneath her like one of the maps in her schoolbooks, only colored and curiously sharp, with a sight stronger than her own, and little flickers of life coming from here, from there, small birds in flight, small animals in the grass.

Supernaturally keen, her sight and senses, aware of the life of small birds, so that she felt she was smacking her lips and almost giggled and broke out of the rapport with the absurdity of it, sudden burning hunger and a desire almost sexual in its ferocity .

But it is no task for sport, and in truth the birds are fierce, and not easy to handle.

She felt a little shiver, half pleasant, trickle down her spine at the thought of handling the great fierce birds of prey.

I beg her acceptance of these fine birds, and I send them now so that she may be accustomed to their flight.

They were tiny brilliant birds, gleaming with gloss and health, and Romilly caught her breath at the sight of them.

Never mind that such hawks were no good for anything but flying at field-mice, they were exquisite little birds and for Dom Garris to pay so much heed to her known interests was a good sign.

Perhaps tomorrow she could snare some birds, or she would meet with someone who could tell her if she was again on the road to Nevarsin - but she thought not, for this road grew ever poorer and worse-kept, and if she were nearing the biggest city in these hills, she would certainly have come to some travelled roads and inhabited parts before this!