cageful

The sole heiress to her father's bread-flour fortune, she has grown up in a Newport mansion modelled on the Palace of Versailles, and her coming-out ball boasts 800 guests, fountains of champagne, and the release of a cageful of gold-sprayed hummingbirds at midnight.

My Last Duchess by Daisy Goodwin 2010

The pigeons were a cageful of ciphers, stupid, pointy-faced, unwanted.

The Position Meg Wolitzer 2005

‘It is well’, the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting, bewildered press — a Persian greyhound between his feet and a cageful of yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his back.

Kim 2003

They had never had a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts before, unless you counted the memorable class last year when their old teacher had brought a cageful of pixies - to class and set them loose.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Rowling, J. K. 1999

Or Wulfgar, who was clever as a cageful of monkeys and who was as much a pleasure in company as Raven-or as skilled in his own way as Cedric.

Fortress Of Frost And Fire Lackey, Mercedes 1993

The place was cluttered and cozy, filled with knickknacks and pets: a cageful of ornamental finches whose aimless twittering gave Joanna a whole new insight into the term "birdbrained"; Pella's two fat pugs about whom Joanna, a cat person, privately agreed with the Regent; and, to Joanna's great delight, a five-foot boa constrictor dozing in wintry torpor in a big glass cabinet built into the side of the chimney.

The Silicon Mage Hambly, Barbara 1988

As with all the novels that have followed his minor classic The Moviegoer, The Thanatos Syndrome releases a cageful of themes, which dart off in all directions.

Danger Zones Towers, Robert 1987

And the screams of rage from his high-pitched voice, as he shot himself forward, sounded like a cageful of Australian cockatoos on the rampage.

The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories Franklin K. [Editor] Mathiews

And if she lingered too long with these and the dogs, Sir Paul, the parrot, was screaming loudly, threatening to "tell the missus," while the whole cageful of little birds were twittering and scolding that they had not been attended to first of all.

The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. Various

That I did not drop it into a cageful of terrier-pups was wholly due to the native vigour with which _Striatus_ hung on.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-02-04 Various