Australian song-birds.



89



AUSTRALIAN SONG-BIRDS*


By W. M. Sherrie.


A recent statement by Mr. Gregory Mathews, who has had

experience of both countries in an ornithological sense, on the

relative merits of the song-birds of England and Australia has

attracted a good deal of attention. It has also caused some surprise

even in Australia. Mr. Mathews declared that he preferred the

notes of the Golden-breasted Whistler (which used to be known as

the Thickhead), the Reed-Warbler, the Grey Shrike Thrush, and the

Butcher-bird to the notes of the English Thrush or Nightingale.

He added that he considered the Reed-Warbler to be “ in a class by

itself.” In this country we have taken it for granted that even the

best of our native songsters were not in the same class as such

famous birds as the Nightingale, the Thrush, the Blackbird, or the

Mocking-bird of America. One of the reasons for this is that in the

past very little of an authoritative character had been written con¬

cerning the vocal powers of the birds of this continent. What little

was written and published had the effect of depreciating rather than

enhancing the average Australian’s estimate of the singing capacity

of the birds of his native land. Adam Lindsay Gordon, for example

(who should have known enough of Australia to realise the grotesque

falsity and absurdity of his statement), gave world- wide publicity to

the notion that Australia was a country of somewhat bizarre features,

among them being “songless birds” and “scentless flowers.” The

poet might have used the phrase in accordance with poetic licence,

or merely to secure a melodious and picturesque image, but the thing

was accepted as good “ natural history,” and is still regarded as such

in other parts of the world.


Australian people, from childhood up, had been accustomed

to reading or hearing glowing verbal accounts of the vocal wonders

of such birds as the Nightingale, the Thrush, the Linnet, and the

Mocking-bird, while at the same time having their own birds spoken

of slightingly in the manner affected by Marcus Clarke, Gordon, and

others who knew 1 little or nothing about the subject. Even now

there are people so destitute of judgment in a matter of this kind



* [Reprinted from an Australian paper.]



