Wie ein Vogel lieblich singet. [Morning.] This hymn, which Miss Winkworth appropriately entitles "A Morning Song of Gladness," is included as No. 207 in the Geistreiche Psalmen und Gesänge, Marburg, 1722, in 6 stanzas of 8 lines. It had previously appeared in the edition of 1690 [Marburg University Library]. In J. Köbner's Christliche, Harfentöne, Hamburg, 1840, p. 239, stanzas i., iv., vi. are given, marked as "from the year 1580"; and this text is in Knapp's Evangelischer Lieder-Schatz, 1850, No. 2255 (1865, No. 2323). We have failed to trace the hymn earlier than 1690. The translated in common use is:—
As a bird in meadows fair. A good translated from Knapp, by Miss Winkworth, in her Lyra Germanica, 2nd Ser., 1858, p. 13; repeated in Mrs. Brock's Children's Hymn Book, 1881, beginning, "As the bird in meadows fair." In her Chorale Book for England, 1863, No. 161, Miss Winkworth rewrote it to the original metre, and there it begins, "As a bird at dawning singeth." [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)