night bird

See also: nightbird

English

Alternative forms

• nightbird

Noun

night bird (plural night birds)

1. a type of bird associated with the night
2. a human denizen of night.
   • 1865, Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

     Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house, haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts, farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human night-birds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the night-birds hovering about the sloppy bar failed to discern at a glance in the passion-wasted night-bird with respectable feathers, the worst night-bird of all.