It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher, Muscicapidae.

[3][4] The genus name Luscinia is Latin for "nightingale" and megarhynchos is from Ancient Greek megas, "great" and rhunkhos "bill".

It is a migratory insectivorous species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe and the Palearctic, and wintering in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Research in Germany found that favoured breeding habitat of nightingales was defined by a number of geographical factors.

[8] In the U.K., the bird is at the northern limit of its range which has contracted in recent years, placing it on the red list for conservation.

[10] A survey conducted by the British Trust for Ornithology in 2012 and 2013 recorded some 3,300 territories, with most of these clustered in a few counties in the southeast of England, notably Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and East and West Sussex.

[11] By contrast, the European breeding population is estimated at between 3.2 and 7 million pairs, giving it green conservation status (least concern).

Nightingales sing even more loudly in urban or near-urban environments, in order to overcome the background noise.

The nightingale has a long history with symbolic associations ranging from "creativity, the muse, nature's purity, and, in Western spiritual tradition, virtue and goodness.

[21] National poet Taras Shevchenko observed that "even the memory of the nightingale's song makes man happy.

In medieval Persian literature, the nightingale's enjoyable song made it a symbol of the lover who is eloquent, passionate, and doomed to love in vain.