Also 6 fieres-bird.
1. † a. A bird which stays by or hovers round the fire (quot. 1593). b. (See quot. 1865.)
1593. Tell-troth’s New Y. Gift, 12. This weather-beaten fieres-bird.
1865. E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, ix. 252. The story of the ‘fire-bird’ … a bird which pecked at it [a tree] and made fire come forth.
2. a. U.S. A popular name of the Baltimore oriole, Icterus galbula. b. A kind of bee-eater.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav. (1849), 436. The woodpecker gave a lonely tap now and then on some hollow tree, and the fire-bird streamed by them with his deep-red plumage.
1856. Bryant, Poems, Indian Story, viii.
| The hollow woods, in the setting sun, | |
| Ring shrill with the fire-bird’s lay. |
1893. Pall Mall G., 12 Nov., 3/1. You may watch the red fire-bird (a kind of bee-eater) as it sweeps … round the bush-grown moat of the fortress.
