Aussie Finch Forum

Hi just want to know if there is any nightingales in Australia... Very interesting to know if there are any birds in oz.. Very common in Europe ...

I've never heard of nightingales in Aus... I know we have Song Larks and skylarks....

They tried to introduce them but as far as I know the never took hold.

In the last one horse town I lived in ..no names but extra digits are a common phenomenon ,they referred to a certain bird that sang at night as Nightingales but I suspect it was Willy Wagtails singing late at night as they do.

I believe that nightingales were released around Melbourne in the 1830s by the "Naturalisation Society" and have since spread steadily north, east and west to fill available suitable habitat. They also introduced foxes, rabbits and sparrows to "reproduce the natural wonders of the English countryside" in this land of "degenerate and backward" species. They were first reported around Canberra about 8 years ago and have been in my area (just North of Canberra) for about five years.
I will post more extensively on this later (am at work) but for now I have one word: idiots!

The nightingales sing beautifully, though; I would keep them for that alone.

Just checked online and elsewhere: I was confusing it with the Blackbird Turdus merula, which was introduced and has spread in the manner described.
Further self-correcting: the rabbit was first successfully released on the mainland by a Thomas Austin on his property 'Barwon Park' in Victoria in 1859 (source: wikipedia).
Apologies for bum steer; the old memory's not what it was....

There are some figures of non native species released in the 1800's in the March 2011 newsletter but Nightingales didnt get a mention.
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Plenty in Europe amazing when it starts it song.. I knew people who would travel hundreds of miles to trap them on my grandfathers farm( forest).... My fav... Bird