To show fatigue or weariness, as birds pick up straws to make their nests (or bed).
“Their eyelids did not once pick straws,
And wink, and sink away;
No, no; they were as brisk as bees,
And loving things did say.”
Peter Pindar: Orson and Ellen, canto v.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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