The Curlews

How pleasant for to hear the male curlew sing Above the moorland in the prime of the Spring The male sings his beautiful flute like territorial and courtship song Such beauty that to Nature does only belong Big gray mottled brown birds of ways of their own For their bubbling flute like song they are widely known With thin long curved bills for probing for their food in boggy and sandy ground And their three to four blotched green eggs in the rank grass always hard to be found Of their three to four chicks they always take good care Of egg incubation and chick rearing the male and female share At their breeding Season none to them is a friend And their eggs and young with aggression they always defend In the northern moorlands in April to June every year The flute like song of the curlews one often does hear.