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Vol. XXV No. 8, August 1-15, 2015

Chattering mynas

by Ahana Lakshmi

Mynas are amongst the first birds that I hear every morning. Till some weeks ago, for over a year, one used to fly down to the ledge outside the bathroom window and scream a wake-up call, perhaps around 5.30, before flying away with a chirr chirr, the characteristic sound as mynas take wing. I learnt that this early morning vocalisation is apparently characteristic of many territorial birds. Mynas are quiet at home among humans in cities with their gurgles, growls, sounds of throats being cleared and musical notes, all mingled together to create a distinctive song that is constantly changing in composition.

Common mynas are easy to identify with their brownish body, black head, bright yellow bills, yellow patch around the eyes and yellow legs. In flight, they show white wing patches. They move around in flocks or pairs and are quite aggressive. There was one pair that chased away a pigeon from a hole in the tree next to my window and attempted to nest there some time ago. Perhaps they missed their friends because they did not raise any chicks, nor did they allow the pigeon pair to nest there. (That I prefer the noisy myna to the mournful pigeon is a different matte!) They used to spend a lot of time on the window ledge on summer afternoons cocking their eyes inquisitively as if looking to check if we were watching them. My husband would quickly draw the curtains to shut them out as he felt that they were spying on him when he was trying to catch forty winks!

The common myna, Acridotheres tristis, is abundant in the whole of the Indian subcontinent. They belong to the order Passeriformes (perching birds). The scientific name roughly translates to ‘grasshopper hunter, dull coloured’. I think I prefer the common name ‘myna’ which appears to be so right for this cheerfully noisy bird.

‘Myna’ is supposed to be derived from the Hindi word maina which was derived from the Sanskrit word madana referring to a lover; it was also known as saarika, talking bird, in Sanskrit, mentioned extensively in literature. Apparently the hill myna was also known as saarika and it is the context which decides the bird being referred to. When the reference is to a noisy bird or one of-ill omen, it is the common myna, writes K.N. Dave in Birds in Sanskrit Literature, giving as example two stanzas from the Ramayana. Their quarrelsome nature earned for themselves the epithets of kalahapriya and kalahakula. Dave says that was why the ancient text called Vasantaraja-sakuna (Birds of augury) referred to them as birds of omen.

Dave also writes that literary tradition has regarded a talking parrot (shuka) as the mate of talking hill-myna (saarika). In Telugu, myna is gorinka, which immediately brings to mind the song Chilaka gorinka, kulikey pada paka from an old (1958) Telugu movie titled Chenchu Lakshmi. The song extols the pairing for life, as exemplified by chilaka (parrot) and gorinka (myna). There is also an award-winning 1966 Telugu movie by name Chilaka Gorinka.

Native to Asia, the distribution of mynas spans from Iran and Kazakhsthan through India to Burma, Malaysia and China. Here is a delightful nursery rhyme from Thailand (where the myna is called Nok Iyang) that shows how widespread it is:

Oh Mynah bird, Oh Mynah bird

Perching on the roof, perching on the cat

That’s rowing the boat.

Perching on the tiger that’s ploughing the field

You have the city and the countryside

You have the temples and the balconies…

(Thailand’s forgotten nursery rhymes).

In India, the myna is considered the farmer’s friend as it protects crops by feeding on insects/pests. Because of this ability, it was introduced in many other places too, such as the Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia, to combat invertebrate pests such as the cane beetle and locusts. But they have now become a major invasive species with potential to be a pest. The ‘Global Invasive Species Database’ which lists the common myna among the top hundred invasive species in the world says, “It competes with small mammals and birds for nesting hollows and on some islands, such as Hawaii and Fiji, it preys on other birds’ eggs and chicks. It presents a threat to indigenous biota, particularly parrots and other birdlife in Australia and elsewhere.” There is even a ‘lookout’ notice against them in Australia asking people to report any found in the wild where they have not been seen before as they spread seeds of the invasive Lantana plant, apart from carrying bird mites that can be transmitted to humans.

Not having seen any other variety of myna apart from the common myna, I was a little taken aback on my first visit to Rajghat many years ago. The birds were evidently mynas, characteristic brown body and black head. But what was this? Their eyes were dark orange! Had they been mourning the Father of the Nation for so many decades that their eyes had turned red with constant tears? Later, I learnt that these were bank mynas, another species (Acridotheres ginginianus) found on the banks of the Ganga and the Yamuna and were characterised by a brick red bare skin behind the eye in place of the yellow of the common myna. They are called ‘bank mynas’ because they nest on riverbanks and are known as Ganga-myna in Hindi.

The common myna is supposed to be a good mimic, though not a patch on the hill myna which can imitate human speech. A confirmed associate of humans and omnivorous in nature, mynas in urban settings not only eat insects, fruits and seeds but also scavenge at rubbish heaps. Mynas roost communally along with other birds.

A walk in the park across the road in the evening tells me how generously they add to the noise of crows, babblers, cuckoos and other birds that roost on the trees! During the day, you don’t have to go in search of them – they are always in the background, competing, as it were, with shrieking squirrels and cawing crows, with their assortment of vocalisations, till late in the evening. Birds of ill-omen? I’d rather have their variety chatter than the ghastly noise produced by the reversing car horns that reverberate everywhere. (Courtesy: Sri Aurobindo’s Action)

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