Citations:murderbird
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English citations of murderbird
a shrike[edit]
- 1994 January 24, Dave Tiller, in What's a Shrike?, rec.birds, Usenet:
- Meryem Primmer (mer...@core.rose.hp.com) wrote:
- : Somehow today's lunch conversation managed to drift onto the subject
- : of hawks. One person mentioned a type of hawk (?), a shrike, that
- : hangs its prey on fences or other objects in order to attract a mate.
- : This generated lots of heated debate by a lot of people, none of whom
- : (including me) know much about birds of prey.
- It's also known as a murderbird. There's also another name for it,
- one that's apparently named after a famous murderer. (Not Jack T.R.)
- I've heard that it impales bugs/small rodents/etc on barbed wire, tree
- branchers, etc.
- 2002, Quincy Troupe, Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems:
- FLYING PREDATORS
- butcherbird-shrikes, jackiehangmen, murderbirds
- impale victims onto needle-sharp thorns, string them out
- like ornamental trophies
probably 'a shrike'[edit]
- 2006, Patrick Rosal, My American Kundiman: Poems (→ISBN):
- They say the sky will double at least once during a man's lifetime and so it did in Boulevards head [/] But turgid birds came three by three and then some to fling themselves about [/] So he swatted them away too [/] To fill the aching gapes of heaven he invited another swallow then two then three (their flashy undersides a dazzle and distraction) then nuthatch then murderbirds then uncountable dozens more [/] This is how he thought he'd save himself but soon enough his whole brain had become a madness of wings [/] A squeaky starling racket [/] Grackles darkening him.
- 2016, Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall (→ISBN), page 33:
- We're all going to snuff it in the dark and when we do, the angels will, like murderbirds, descend on us from Heaven, our prayers still caught in their teeth.
a bomber aircraft[edit]
- 2009 July 2, Hal Womack 3-dan, in Re: Venus Williams To Wed Mars' Womack?, rec.music.hip-hop, Usenet:
- * Except, of course, for that considerable part which is either
- starving to death ( in this general category another ~44,000
- fatalities today ) or suffering bombardment from USraeli hi-tech
- murderbirds aka Obombers or else bowling.
unclear[edit]
- 2000, New Hibernia Review:
- ... pulse
- with cold, and there he freed his sight.
- Lord Whirlabout again, those murderbirds
- not his first notice of Senan, only another
- assault out of his crane bag fully stocked
- with tumbles.