tropic bird

American  

Or tropicbird

noun

1. any of several web-footed seabirds of the family Phaethontidae, chiefly of tropical seas, having white plumage with black markings and a pair of greatly elongated central tail feathers.

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Etymology

Origin of tropic bird

First recorded in 1675–85

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

tropic bird

When a ray of sunlight strays in upon it, the wondrous creature seems to hover on the stalk, ready to take flight, like some lost tropic bird.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various

When half-way across the point, I came suddenly upon a magnificent male tropic bird, sitting in his nest behind a tussock of tall, reedy grass.

From The Island Home by Dalziel

And she, to whom warmth and colour were a very part of her nature, was an exotic, a lost tropic bird, in these icy mountains.

From The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson by Sanchez, Nellie Van de Grift

She knew now it was only some huge, tropic bird, afar on the horizon--some condor, vulture, or other creature of the air.

From Darkness and Dawn by England, George Allan

It could not be the tail-feathers of the tropic bird so prized by the chiefs of Polynesia; nor yet the scarlet pouch of the sea-hawk.

From The Ocean Waifs A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea by Reid, Mayne