2004, Bruce Whittington, Loucas Raptis, Seasons with Birds, page 50:
The level below this is called the Phylum; birds belong to the Phylum Chordata, which includes all the vertebrate animals (the sub-phylum Vertebrata) and a few odds and ends.
1886, Edmund Routledge, Routledges every boy's annual''
He once took in his own mother, and was robbed by a 'pal,' who thought he was a doctor. Oh, he's a rare bird is 'Gentleman Joe'!
1939, (w), The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, page 24:
The door opened and a tall hungry-looking bird with a cane and a big nose came in neatly, shut the door behind him against the pressure of the door closer, marched over to the desk and placed a wrapped parcel on the desk.
2006, Jeff Fields, Terry Kay, A cry of angels
"Ah, he's a funny bird," said Phaedra, throwing a leg over the sill.
puhekieltä A girl or woman, especially one considered sexually attractive.
Campbell
And by my word! the bonny bird / In danger shall not tarry.
2013, Russell Brand, Russell Brand and the GQ awards: It's amazing how absurd it seems' (in The Guardian'', 13 September 2013)http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/sep/13/russell-brand-gq-awards-hugo-boss
The usual visual grammar was in place – a carpet in the street, people in paddocks awaiting a brush with something glamorous, blokes with earpieces, birds in frocks of colliding colours that if sighted in nature would indicate the presence of poison.
Deployment of the fourth bird "should ensure that Inmarsat has sufficient capacity in orbit in the early 1990s, taking into account the possibility of launch failures and the age of some of the spacecraft in the Inmarsat first generation system
1992, Cable Vision
Will a government- backed APSTAR satellite knock out a planned AsiaSat II bird?
2015, John Fuller, Thors Legions: Weather Support to the U.S. Air Force and Army, 1937-1987'', Springer (ISBN 9781935704140), page 384
In reality, the Air Force was never able to place a bird in orbit that quickly.