I have noticed that even through this cold winter that there are enormous amounts of Indian mynah birds around.
My understanding of these birds is that they proliferate by destroying native bird nesting sites, therefore depleting their generation and habitats.
What is the latest on ridding ourselves of this pest?
Applause goes to Bryce Courtenay for his treatment of this subject in Matthew Flinders Cat.

I’m a fan of mynahs. I think they are misunderstood.

Having observed them in Townsville and the Wet Tropics of north Queensland for 24 years, I have come to the conclusion that they are a pretty benign feral species.

They haven’t increased in density in Townsville. The urban areas remain full of a wide variety of native birds.

The growing numbers of the native rainbow lorikeets and ibises are probably a bigger concern, as well as other native species that weren’t in this area prior to settlement, such as galahs and little corellas.

Further south, other native species have become quite problematic, especially pied currawongs and noisy miners.

Mynahs are restricted to highly humanised landscapes. They love urban areas and sugarcane and other intensive agriculture. But they just don’t go bush and hardly even venture into cleared grazing country.

They exhibit the most endearing character of gathering in groups of four, presumably two couples and chatting away to each other with copious head-bobs and other gestures of ages. It brightens my day whenever I see this.

Sorry, Ludwig, You are misinformed.
These birds were introduced, much as were cane toads, to control other introduced species. Something like the domino effect it all went wrong.
I would like to see initiatives to eliminate them, as in Melbourne, come into place soon.
As cute as they are they have no place here as they are ecological pirates.

AS SLEEP DEPRIVED AS I MAY BE, I fail to see why we cannot observe local conservation, based on commonsense.
Bless all creatures great and small, but within limits, only where natutre has placed them.

Goddess, in what way am I misinformed?

Yes they are feral. In fact they are commonly referred to as flying cane toads up here. But just because a species is feral doesn’t mean it is a necessarily a problem. There are many relatively benign feral plants and animals. There are far more of these than ones that we need to worry about.

Tim Lowe, author of ‘Feral Future’ and ‘The New Nature’ basically says that we simply have to accept the new ecological paradigm. That is; the one with many new species and the elimination of many original species. There is no way in the world that we can reverse things.

We might be able to address a very small number of feral species by way of stopping their spread, as with sparrows, starlings and perhaps cane toads into Western Australia, or by reducing the impact of some, for example; baiting foxes and cats in some areas, but most of them are beyond any meaningful control.

Long gone are the days of creatures great and small staying only where nature has placed them. So let’s worry about the really bad ones, and accept the not-so-bad ones as part of the huge ecological changes that we have wrought on this continent.

Afterall with reference to mynahs, vastly greater ecological damage has been done by humans in the habitats where they live than could ever be done by them. It seems pretty strange to me to eradicate mynahs for ecological reasons in areas that have been completely ecological altered and now only have a tiny fraction of the original number of native species left; a few birds and insects and practically no native plants.

If mynahs had the potential to spread into non-humanised landscapes, or to become a plague species to the great detriment of surviving natives in their highly altered habitat, then yes some action might be in order. But they aren’t. Every indication in north Queensland is that they are in balance with intensively humanised landscapes.

Of course, the thing that we should all be doing is fighting to stop the continued spread of the biggest feral species of all – humans. Everyone who is concerned about ecological damage on this continent must surely be concerned at the highest level about our rapid human population growth and continuous rapid coastal development.

It just completely blows my mind that anyone can be concerned about weeds, feral animals or other ecological disturbance… and be silent on this issue. I don’t know if you are one of these Goddess, but unfortunately the vast majority of good caring environmentally-minded people are!

Anybody else noticed how the increase in the number of Indian mynah birds corresponds with the reduction in the number of sparrows and other smaller birds?

Indian Mynahs are voracious invaders of the nests of other birds and they are also oviraptors.
Perhaps there are less sparrows etc because of this.

Sparrows are not nice but these grubby things? every coastal town and many a bit further away in NSW is suffering.
Even some green groups are killing them.
I started a bird friendly garden in 2002 now its a haven but my Finch's living in great bottle bush trees have been killed by these pests.
Feathers? oh nothing to be concerned about ,bit of a virus, strange it only kills one type of bird.
Still a few thousand around if you look.

Wobbles

Townsville is full of both mynahs and sparrows. There are also many other small birds that nest in urban areas, such as sunbirds, mistletoebirds, brown honeyeaters, etc, as well as several slightly larger mynah-sized species.

Mynahs don’t appear to influence sparrow numbers. And neither do sparrows nor mynahs seem to influence the abundance of other birds.

It is interesting to note that mynahs are abundant in the intensive agricultural areas of the lower Herbert and in the urban area of Ingham but are absent from the almost identical sugarcane-dominated lower Burdekin area and the urban areas of Ayr and Home Hill.

I am a pretty full-on birdo. I’ve done many trips around the lower Herbert and Burdekin areas and I haven’t noticed the slightest bit of difference in native species composition or abundance. So I can pretty confidently say that mynahs don’t significantly affect native birds.