featherdom

Why they should make their homes on Pike's and Gray's Peaks and neglect Tillie Ann is another of those puzzles in featherdom that cannot be solved.

Birds of the Rockies 1896

But we have a more remarkable example of opposition in the resource of the little yellow warbler, which I have noted as one of the favorite dupes of the cow-bird -- a deliberate, intelligent, courageous defiance and frequent victory which are unique in bird history, and which, if through evolutionary process they became the fashion in featherdom, would put the cow-bird's mischief greatly at a discount.

My Studio Neighbors William Hamilton Gibson 1873

The two-storied nest may yet become the fashion in featherdom, in which case the cow-bird and European cuckoo would be forced to build nests of their own or perish.

My Studio Neighbors William Hamilton Gibson 1873

We have his counterpart in a black sheep of featherdom which vies with his European rival in deeds of cunning and cruelty, and which has not even a song to recommend him -- no vocal accomplishment which by the greatest of license could prompt a poet to exclaim,

My Studio Neighbors William Hamilton Gibson 1873

"attendant on the spring," taking her pick among the nurseries of featherdom, now victimizing the oriole by a brief sojourn in the swinging hammock in the elm, here stopping a moment to leave her charge to the care of an indigo-bird, to-morrow creeping through the grass to the secreted nest of the Maryland yellow-throat, or Wilson's thrush, or chewink.

My Studio Neighbors William Hamilton Gibson 1873

a four-story house, a possible fashion in featherdom, 51; pipit's, 35; wood-sparrow's, 37.

My Studio Neighbors William Hamilton Gibson 1873