Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds <br />The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds, <br />"I've got a letter here," he said, "that no one's understood, <br />Addressed as follows: 'To the bird that's like a piece of wood.' <br />"The soldier bird got very cross -- it wasn't meant for her; <br />The spurwing plover had a try to stab me with a spur: <br />The jackass laughed, and said the thing was written for a lark. <br />I think I'll chuck this postman job and take to stripping bark." <br /> <br />Then all the birds for miles around came in to lend a hand; <br />They perched upon a broken limb as thick as they could stand, <br />And just as old man eaglehawk prepared to have his say <br />A portion of the broken limb got up and flew away. <br /> <br />Then, casting grammar to the winds, the postman said, "That's him! <br />The boobook owl -- he squats himself along a broken limb, <br />And pokes his beak up like a stick; there's not a bird, I vow, <br />Can tell you which is boobook owl and which is broken bough. <br /> <br />"And that's the thing he calls his nest -- that jerry-built affair -- <br />A bunch of sticks across a fork; I'll leave his letter there. <br />A cuckoo wouldn't use his nest, but what's the odds to him -- <br />A bird that tries to imitate a piece of leaning limb!"<br /><br />Andrew Barton Paterson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/camouflage/
