First Peoples’ names for animals and plants undeniably enrich Australian culture. But to date, few names taken from a language of Australia’s First Peoples have been widely applied to birds.
About 2,000 Australian bird species and subspecies occur in Australia and its territories. However, just 35 of these have common names taken directly from First Peoples’ languages. These names are variations of just a handful of First Peoples words: galah, gang-gang, budgerigar, currawong, brolga, kookaburra, chowchilla, Kalkadoon and mukarrthippi.
