AusVarmint

I think a few of native Noisy Mynas are meeting their demise by being mistaken for the dreaded Indian Myna which is destroying our native birdlife. I have enclosed a few images for your viewing.

Indian Myna



Noisy Myna


Identify your target.

How the heck do you confuse the two birds? One answer could be shooting in very low light conditions when the birds are settled for the night?
One race is muddy brown (Indian), the other is grey (Noisy). Yes, they both have yellow beaks, yellow legs and yellow eye patches. The Indian Myna also has distinctive white patches under it's wings that are only visible in flight but not at rest. The Noisy Myna seems to be mainly a nectar feeder around here whereas the Indian Myna seems to be insectiverous (they pick the ticks off my neighbour's cattle and seem to take hair for their nests) as well as being ground foragers. I have watched them forage in grain bins and stable manure heaps but they seem to be after grubs (maggots?) rather than just grain.
Like all forms of both hunting and pest control, it comes down to one simple skill: Know your prey and it's habits as well as you know yourself (parephrased from an old Ki'Kuyu saying an old friend told me when I was much younger).
Dennis.

Great topic FLmath. Good to see others want to raise awareness too. the Noisy Mynas are a welcome edition to our garden . . the indian mynas are not and are dealt with accordingly.

Hilly wrote:How the heck do you confuse the two birds...?

I have a cousin that always referred to noisy minors as pluvers [insert labotomy emoticon here].

Exactly. Some people simply don't know their birds. I've heard a lot of people call starlings "blackbirds."

The one thing with the noisy mynahs that annoys me is that they try and harass the parrots and move them on.

Fenring,

Lat week we found a Satin Bower Bird at the base of our drive, at the time didn't know what it was although we had a strong feeling that it was a native. It was very, very friendly which for a wild bird is an indication that something was wrong, so we called Wires who came out clarified it as a juvenile male Satin Bower Bird and then took it to the vet.

We were later informed that it had died, I can only draw conclusion that it may have been attacked by a few Foxes that we have lurking about.

We have since obtained a Field guide to Australian Birds authored by Michael Morcombe.

Regards

Sean

And the bird we always called the "Spur-winged Plover" is now the "Masked Lapwing". I think the clever people even changed the technical name for our Wedge-tailed eagle! Why do they have to do these things to us old buggers?
On a slightly diferent note, when I was much younger and growing up in Vaucluse (before it was fassionable) my nextdoor neighbour used to give me 6 pence (5 cents in today's money but worth a fortune in lollies then) for each Indian Myna, Starling or Bul-Bul that I shot with my little Diana air rifle. No wonder I'm as fat as I am today!
Dennis.
PS. If we put a bounty on these pests they would be almost wiped out in a year or so, Don't you think?

http://www.indianmyna.org/documents/Ind ... dbookl.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Great little handbook!

Can't say I've ever got them mixed up. The large community of Indian Mynah's Muscle their way into my neck of our little town every 3 months or so. They chase everything away, one starts the chase and as they fly accross the paddock there is 2 more to join in the chase little bastards. Pity I don't think many other people try and keep there numbers down here as there are always large numbers two streets over. I think that now that 5 have been knocked of up this end they are staying away.

Suits us though if they're away the noise's are around, Maggies and parrots plus a heap of little birds and our Kingfisher family.

Great post!

Too many ill-informed folk (generally not shooters) hear the word myna and assume their local miner is the subject.

The Indian myna and I have a long standing hate/hate relationship.

My backyard has 40 mature Qld blue gums with hundreds of nesting hollows. Even with so many sites available, at this time of year competition for nest sites is fierce. The mynas successfully chase just about every native bird species away (ganging up on the larger species). Even the kookaburras had been chased from their favourite nesting hollow by a gaggle of mynas. The local galahs and wood ducks ignore the mynas though.

For the past few years, little 14.6gn pieces of lead have been "dissuading" the myna population from taking up nesting hollows within air rifle range of my house. The result is 6 species of parrot currently nesting in tree hollows within 60m of my back door, along with dollar birds, kookaburras, nankeen kestrels, forest kingfishers and boobook owls.

My wife reckons when the mynas look at me they see a black cloaked figure carrying a scythe.

My wife reckons when the mynas look at me they see a black cloaked figure carrying a scythe.

Very good pot mate have you anymore pics

I've noticed the numbers of Indian mynahs are on the rise in central Vic. There never used to be any - now there are quite a few. The noisy mynahs don't like them and they harass them, but it has no effect.

I've been doing my patriotic best recently, and a couple of Indian mynahs have encountered the business end of that .20 Sheridan I just got. Even on 5 pumps it zips right through them.

fenring wrote:Exactly. Some people simply don't know their birds. I've heard a lot of people call starlings "blackbirds."

The one thing with the noisy mynahs that annoys me is that they try and harass the parrots and move them on.

I,m with you fenring!
Maybe I have a thing about Noisy Mynahs,but in our area (Suburban Adelaide) the agressive little B,s chase everything away from the area they occupy. They work very hard on harassing Sparrows,Silver eyes,and the little Green backed Tailor bird and Honey eaters these birds have all but disappeared from our area since the Mynahs arrival 2 years ago. Also the local Blackbird population copped a beating by a flock of 40 plus Noisy Mynahs during the last breeding cycle. Then the Parrots (Hooded Lorikeets and green grass parrots etc) cop it on a regular basis as well to the point that the Noisy Mynahs kill the young parrots in the nests. They are not a popular bird in my book. So far fortunately I have not seen or heard of the Indian Mynah making an appearance down here as yet.
Ray.

One little detail gents.

I don't want to put anyone's nose out of joint being a newcomer here so it is with some hesitation that I even mention this.

The correct spelling of the Aussie native species is noisy miner, only the foreign import from the subcontinent is spelled myna.

Correct use of the word myna might just help avoid folk confusing the two species.

Harley.

(Please forgive me being a stickler for details, comes with being a freelance writer I guess).

Harley wrote:One little detail gents.

I don't want to put anyone's nose out of joint being a newcomer here so it is with some hesitation that I even mention this.

The correct spelling of the Aussie native species is noisy miner, only the foreign import from the subcontinent is spelled myna.

Correct use of the word myna might just help avoid folk confusing the two species.

Harley.

(Please forgive me being a stickler for details, comes with being a freelance writer I guess).

Welcome mate,

What sort of writing do you do? Hunting and shooting etc?