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Project Gutenberg Australia HomeReturn to Index of Poems
When the little birds are calling from the bush-land green and wide,
Why within the jumbled city ‘mid its rumble should I bide?
Let me hear the bush birds singing as I heard them long ago,
‘Mong the mulga and the gidgees, and the wilgas bending low;
Where I’ve heard the greenleeks chirrup,
From a-top the green belar,
To the clink of bit and stirrup,
Riding slowly, riding far,
Where the parrakeets and lorries and the brilliant parrots are.
There the shrieking of corellas falls like music on my ears,
And I see the wild mobs rushing, and I hear the click of shears
Bringing half-forgotten mem’ries back o’er life’s intricate bars;
Where the white corellas mingle like a herd of flying stars.
You may praise the gay rosellas,
Or the western “twenty-eights,”
But the flight of white corellas,
And their crimson-plumaged mates,
Is the finest sight at sunset when you’ve crossed the Border gates.
I have watched the Banksian cocky when the rain winds ‘gan to blow,
Crying shrilly through the forest, plucking leaves and flying low;
Tho’ ‘tis somewhat prone to mischief, it a kinder spirit wooes
Than the raiding sulphur-crested and the gang-gang cockatoos.
When the “snowies” flock and cackle
Visions rise of ripened corn.
Of unpleasant tasks to tackle
On a freezing winter morn,
Ere the eastern river flats are of their golden dowry shorn.
In the deep, dark scrubs I’ve wandered, where the turkey builds her mound,
Where the whip-bird, and the cat bird, and the lyre-bird all abound;
Where the whirring, of the bronzewing and the wonga’s note occurs
With the tintinnabulation of the bell birds on the spurs;
Where the rifle-birds are tapping
As up giant boles they pass,
And the bower birds are snapping,
Playing antics quaint and crass,
While they decorate their playground with assorted shells and glass.
I have sat and watched the brolgas promenading on the plain,
Winning envy from the plover and the slowly plodding crane,
Seen them dancing on the greensward in the waning afternoon,
To the scorn of stately emus marching ‘long the broad lagoon,
Where the shag, with spreading pinions
In the sunshine, looks askant
At its swift and keen-eyed minions,
Darter green and cormorant,
‘Long the shore line cracking mussels with their beaks of adamant.
By those placid waters, merging into many a spreading marsh,
Though a thousand throats may clamor never doth a note sound harsh;
In the stream the black swan’s mirrored, and the great white pelican;
‘Mid the reeds the coots cry loudly, and the land-rail hides from man;
Where the avocet would bribe us
Oft to wade the shallows through,
In the presence of the ibis
And the long-legged jabiru,
Ere the booming of the bittern called its night mate out to woo.
Every dweller of the bushland loves the little butcher bird,
Whose delicious song at morning many a bushman’s heart has stirr’d;
And the warbling of the magpie from the apple bough at dawn
Wakens homely recollections of sweet partings on the lawn.
So the willy-wagtail fluttering
Over log and swamp and rill;
Welcome swallows ‘neath the guttering,
And the little whip-po’-will,
And the gay old kookaburra in that home life mingle still.
When the lone night shrouds the forest, from the camp-fire burning by,
There are some who shrink and shudder at the curlew’s “lonely cry”;
But I love it’s thrilling cadence as I’ve heard it ring afar,
Round Australia’s only castle, wild and rocky Yulgilbar.
And the coo of squatter pigeons,
Or the little turtle dove,
And the crying of the widgeons,
Homeless wanderers learn to love,
When there’s virgin bush around them and a speckless dome above.
When these feathered friends are hailing from the bushland green and wide,
Why should I within the prison of the city walls abide?
Let me hear the bush birds singing as I heard them long ago,
Where the gum-trees and the wattle and the clinging myalls grow.
There is gladness in their chorus,
Inspiration in their play;
They each do some duty for us
Round the home and far away,
And an ill day waits Australia when they’ve ceased their roundelay.
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