Ramsay flung open the door. "Lord Fred—damn it we are all in the lurch!", he exclaimed, […] "my rara avises have taken wing and flown off." / "What were they actually, Ramsay?" asked Newbank. / "Two black swans," replied he—"the finest creatures ever were beheld, except another of the kind that is in company with them, though I understand there is more of the breed."

Over the next eight months, with practically no funding except for what I could borrow, with an afflicted conscience, from my mother, I scoured the remotest corners of Cuba for rarae aves. I hitchhiked, jumped freight trains, cajoled guajiros into lending me their mules, slept in caves or beneath the canopies of immense ceiba trees. Cuba's landscape had changed so dramatically in only a decade that even the once populous birds that Dr. Forrest and I had collected were nowhere to be found, or found, at most, as singletons or in minuscule bands.

That Parsons girl is quite the rara avis if you ask me.

Few attorneys are well acquainted with the etiquette of good society; those among the fraternity are raræ aves, who venture on the esquire or afford sealing-wax; hence there is usually a characteristic vulgarity about "a lawyer's letter," which identifies it at once.

One [Maori] man stated his surprise on seeing a boat land with seamen, who had black legs and white bodies; others with bright red bodies, and white legs speckled with white spots, according to the dresses they had on, which was supposed to form part of the body; but their fear was at its height on seeing these rara avises walk about the beech, on which numbers of the natives ran up the hills, while others climbed the trees.

[…] Nazareth was one of those raræ aves of her sex, a self-contained, self-companioning woman, finding her best sympathizer, her best confidante, her most satisfactory friend, in Nazareth Pitcher; for Nazareth Sampson was non-existent as yet, except in name.

We are besides, for various reasons, compelled to employ higher-class labour than we could when the business was less complex, before there were serial issues, colonial and continental libraries, when translations were raræ aves, and when a casual ten-pound note was the Ultima Thule of our ambitions from America, &c.

The secret is—Frank Cravens. He is that rarest of rarae aves—the author-actor.

RARAE AVES OF THE STREET / There were colorful characters which moved through the Nassau Street atmosphere of the past and which have become legendary; Ginnity, the stamp finder of forty years ago, for example.

However that may be, the non-Catholic author who writes novels about Christ without betraying how the poison of modern Protestant theology has seeped down into literature is the rarest of rarae aves.

Again the tendency is very largely to use inside cylinders, but it is not quite so marked as in the case of tender engines; the 0-6-0 tank with outside cylinders is not quite the rara avis that the 0-6-0 tender has been.

‘Rara avis,’ she said. ‘That’s what you are Frankie. A rara avis.’ She had pushed him out into the night then, to Uncle George and the waiting car.

Alf was that rarest of rarae aves of the underclass. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was to be comfortable. He wanted to not have to work too hard for that comfort.

Rara avis

Meaning

Noun

Origin

Synonyms