canberrabirds

INDIAN MYNAS

To: Bruce Lindenmayer <>
Subject: INDIAN MYNAS
From: martin butterfield <>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:24:16 +1100
My position on Common Mynas is to support their demonisation, along with a number of other pests. 

However I am intrigued by Bruce's comment "Studies in Canberra Nature Parks in the 1990s have confirmed agressive displacement of native birds and mammals from nest hollows."  I spend a fair amount of time in parts of Canberra Nature Park and the only place where I have really noted many mynas once out of sight of housing has been Gunghalin Hill.   I was always surprised when living in South Bruce - backing on to Gossan Hill - that we did not record Mynas there, when they were very evident in Emu Ridge and Aranda (but I rarely recorded House Sparrows or Common Starlings in SB either).

For people's interest I attach a graph showing values of A and F from the GBS.  I suspect that the decline in F is as much due to a small number of new sites not having Mynas than the range contracting.  The drop in A clearly shows the decline in abundance.

I'm now off to Pt Vila for a week: another place in which the rats with wings are far too common.  My memory was that the playing fields next to the Australian High Commission were graced by 500 of them when I last visited.

Martin

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Bruce Lindenmayer <> wrote:
The discussion on the COG chat line, in my view, has missed a few vital points and has taken the discussion in an irrelevant direction.
 
Dealing with the second issue first, there has been quite a bit of discussion about Indian vs Noisy Miners. Clearly, both Noisy & Bell Miners have adverse impacts on other native bird species, and several studies have demonstrated this. But why this should be related to Indian Myna threats is puzzling. We could talk about lots of other pest species in the same context!
 
The Indian Myna has been classified by the IUCN as one of the World's 100 Most Invasive Species and Australian National Vertebrate Pests Committee as an "Extreme Threat". Anyone who has birdwatched in Cairns, Fiji or in the leafy suburbs and urban parks in Melbourne is confronted with massive populations, which clearly have excluded almost all small native birds. In Cairns I understand, populations of between 500 & 1000 per sq km have been observed. Studies in Canberra Nature Parks in the 1990s have confirmed agressive displacement of native birds and mammals from nest hollows.
 
CIMAG has never pretended to have all the answers on Indian Myna threats, and we are strongly supporting the work of Chris Tidemann & Kate Grarock to ensure that the best science underpins our activities.
 
Bruce Lindenmayer
 
 
 
 

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