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The Thrush and the Nightingale is a late 13th-century poem, probably composed in Worcestershire by Dominican friars during the reign of Edward I (1277-1307). After The Owl and the Nightingale it is the second extant Middle English bird debate though it does not share its forerunner's excellent quality. It has only one topic, i.e. the worth of women, the narrator's part is more than weak, the frame is neglected and the opponents use more or less stereotypical arguments.

Francis Lee Utley gives a short survey of the poem (Utley 1972: 721):

When summer had come to our land I heard a "strif'' between thrush and nightingale on women's worth. The thrush attacked women as treacherous, fickle, workers of woe and creatures of lust; he argued by example, using the wives of Alexander, Adam, Constantine, Gawain, Samson; he exchanged many personal insults with his opponent. The Nightingale said women are peace-makers, meek, mild, virtuous and chaste; they bring joy to their husbands. Suddenly the Nightingale countered the Thrush's long catalogue of evil women with the name of Mary, and the Thrush at once admitted his error, promised nevermore to say malicious things about women, and went into voluntary exile.

Formally it the peom is well-structured and cast in a stanza form with rime couée of three or four stress lines ( aabccbddbeeb) and obviously nearer to French and Latin traditions. although no direct source has been detected.

The Thrush and the Nightingale is preserved in Bodleian Library MS Digby 86 and as a fragment in the well-known Auchinleck MS, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1.