(n.) A kingfisher. By modern ornithologists restricted to a genus including a limited number of species having omnivorous habits, as the sacred kingfisher (Halcyon sancta) of Australia.
(a.) Pertaining to, or resembling, the halcyon, which was anciently said to lay her eggs in nests on or near the sea during the calm weather about the winter solstice.
(1) In the future search for coalition partners, Merkel will be heavily reliant on the hapless foreign minister and Liberal Democrat leader Guido Westerwelle, while the revitalised Social Democrats and the ever-rising Greens can start dreaming again of the halcyon days under Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer.
(2) No one is expecting a return the halcyon days of the early noughties when Big Brother regularly brought Channel 4 audiences of 4 million plus, big online audiences and page after page of tabloid coverage throughout the summer months.
(3) I remember Peter Shilton and the like doing this on what seemed like a regular basis (although obviously not in the 70s when I was a wee lad)" queried Neil Denny, back in the halcyon days of 2003.
(4) Acid phosphatase activity was histochemically localized in the proventriculus of two birds namely Ploceus philippinus and Halcyon smyrnensis.
(5) Yes, Fallon may long for the halcyon days when you could call a spade a spade, but since the race-hate sitcom Love Thy Neighbour was cancelled in the mid 1970s, those days are over.
(6) The halcyon days of the mid 20th century, where more mothers did stay at home and the father could be a breadwinner, was not the norm for more than a handful of decades.
(7) Equally, she does not shy away from emotive language - similar to the majority of her peers - saying: We do not live in halcyon world where choice exists for everyone.
(8) If Margate can emulate St Ives, it will mark a stunning comeback for a town whose halcyon days are long behind it.
(9) Playwright and director Shoji Kokami's Halcyon Days looks at the rise to cult status of so-called suicide websites reflecting their proliferation in recent years, particularly in Japan and South Korea.
(10) In those far-off, halcyon days, local authorities had been obliged by the Conservatives' 1962 Education Act not only to pay full-time students' tuition fees but also a contribution towards maintenance as well: a benefit my generation took for granted.
(11) Limited data on mental health suggest that the halcyon picture of country life may be grossly distorted.
(12) Pleasance, Sun to 27 Aug Lyn Gardner Halcyon Days, London Halcyon Days.
(13) Platinum discs for her 2010 debut album, the electronica-rippled Lights , and its 2012 follow-up, Halcyon , hang in the hallway.
(14) "Originally regional newspapers were run by entrepreneurial-type people back in the halcyon days.
(15) In what must now seem like the halcyon days of opposition, when he watched a rightwing government disintegrate in grace-and-favour scandals, George Papandreou uttered the immortal words: "The money exists, it is only that Mr [Kostas] Karamanlis prefers to give it to the few and powerful."
(16) There's a quiet track on Halcyon (co-written with Justin Parker) called I Know You Care that Goulding has introduced, at gigs, as a song about her absent father.
(17) It sounds almost halcyon; the perfect melting-pot with children of all classes and backgrounds getting on together.
(18) The rights had becomebecame available after Halcyon, the company that produced Terminator Salvation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 .
(19) Throughout Ghomeshi’s trial, as his lawyer Marie Heinen ripped apart the accusers , I found myself recalling a line from Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, set during the halcyon years when America’s biggest problem was the president’s joint taste for cigars and interns.
(20) "He appears to want to take us back to some halcyon age but it is a regressive agenda.
Nest
Definition:
(n.) The bed or receptacle prepared by a fowl for holding her eggs and for hatching and rearing her young.
(n.) Hence: the place in which the eggs of other animals, as insects, turtles, etc., are laid and hatched; a snug place in which young animals are reared.
(n.) A snug, comfortable, or cozy residence or situation; a retreat, or place of habitual resort; hence, those who occupy a nest, frequent a haunt, or are associated in the same pursuit; as, a nest of traitors; a nest of bugs.
(n.) An aggregated mass of any ore or mineral, in an isolated state, within a rock.
(n.) A collection of boxes, cases, or the like, of graduated size, each put within the one next larger.
(n.) A compact group of pulleys, gears, springs, etc., working together or collectively.
(v. i.) To build and occupy a nest.
(v. t.) To put into a nest; to form a nest for.
Example Sentences:
(1) Unlike most birds of prey, which are territorial and fight each other over nesting and hunting grounds, the hen harrier nests close to other harriers.
(2) Although selenium deficiency in livestock is consequently now rare in Oregon, selenium-deficient soils and attendant selenium deficiency conditions have been reported near the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in the Northern part of the San Joaquin Valley, California, where, paradoxically, selenium toxicity in wildfowl, nesting near evaporation ponds, occurred and attracted wide attention.
(3) The nested gene is oriented in a direction opposite to that of factor VIII and contains no intervening sequences.
(4) The experiment had a 2 x 2 factorial arrangement of treatments with two nest holding times and two storage methods.
(5) Hens of the same breed and age reared together on deep litter showed no differences in nest site selection and nesting behaviour regardless of whether they had previously been housed in a deep litter house or in cages.
(6) Specific kinds of maternal behaviour such as nesting, retrieving, grooming and exploring, are seen in non-human mammalian mothers immediately before, during and after delivery.
(7) We conclude that both proprioceptive feedback and audio-feedback must be involved to yield maximal stimulation of follicular growth by the female's nest-coo display.
(8) Prolactin secretion was stimulated less in incubating hens deprived of their nests for 24 h (nest-deprived) than in laying hens after administration of the 5-HT receptor agonist quipazine, or precursor 5-hydroxytryptophan.
(9) Four mechanisms for the formation of ectopic meningioma have been suggested: (a) direct extension of an intracranial lesion; (b) distant metastasis from an intracranial meningioma; (c) origin from arachnoid cells within the sheaths of cranial nerves; and (d) origin from embryonic nests of arachnoid cells.
(10) After the relatively abrupt start of intensive nest-building, the seasonal course of a pair's behavior becomes more regular, an indication that this transition in the female's state is critical in pacing the pair's breeding activities.
(11) These centers will collaborate in a nested-case control study based on the pooled cases and a sample of the non-diseased respondents.
(12) Spencer has now heard that Andy, who got the boat remember, has been cracking on to Louise, even though Jamie warned him it would be like jumping into a polar bear's nest.
(13) Hens from both strains performed vacuum nest-building behaviour before laying.
(14) These are collected in her pollen baskets which she takes back to the nest to feed the young after fertilising the flowers.
(15) The marked differences in the lipolytic activities of adipose tissue emphasize the distinct influence of the post-natal nutrition on metabolic functions in the later life and lead to the conclusion that the metabolism of adipose tissue of animals from small nests is directed towards a long-term increased storage of lipids.
(16) The most consistently sensational evidence from Icac has been around former Labor member Eddie Obeid and the influence he wielded in the NSW Labor government to feather his own nest.
(17) After 48 h of nest deprivation, the hens resumed nesting within 5 min of being returned to the pen although the plasma levels of Prl were low.
(18) Although distortion by competing risks is well-recognized in follow-up studies, the problem has not been as widely appreciated in nested case-control studies.
(19) We test first for confounded effects by examining socioeconomic effects while excluding and then including reproductive variables in nested multivariate models.
(20) The bird's nest inferior vena cava filter, in clinical trial since 1982, has been placed in 568 patients at risk for pulmonary embolism.