Miner Consternations
Noisy miners – native pride or avian thug? It turns out these masters of aggression are wreaking havoc on our other less brazen native wildlife.
Every society had a dirty underbelly and the world of birds is no different. Steve Van Dyck investigates the thugs of the bird world
Photo by Brett Donald
When you play with live mud crabs you instinctively know that if one of those lunging claws gets you, you are, essentially, dead meat. Even if you snap the claw off the body, the level of muscular engagement persists undiminished until you either pass out from the pain or you smash one of the pincer jaws…then pass out from the pain. Apart from the usual offenders like spiders, wasps or snakes, I can think of three innocent-looking animals that inflict a level of agony off the Richter Scale in proportion to both their small size and guileless appearance.
One is the Queensland blossom bat (Syconycteris australis) – mouse-sized and sweeter looking than Bambi, except when you try, without gloves, to remove it from a catching net. Second is the striped catfish (Plotosus lineatus) – small and sinless as a sardine, until you make the mistake of scooping it up in cupped hands. And third is the noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) – unpretentious buttercup-behind-the-ear honeyeater until you go about untangling one that’s snared on a barbed-wire fence. If you approach the problem expecting gratitude, nothing but familial dysautonomia can prepare you for the reflex action of this bird’s legs swinging in out of nowhere, its feet clamping down in a bionic clench and its eight industrial claws bottoming-out in the basal nerves of your epidermis. The only gang of hooks with as much sting as a miner’s foot is that produced by fishing tackle specialists Mustad and Son in their snapper-snagging 4/0 chemically sharpened Ultrapoint Penetrator hook. This bird, in the hand, is an avian acupuncturist on acid. But in the bush, it’s twice as psychotic.
Noisy miners, loved or hated by just about everyone on the eastern side of Australia, are masters at two things: terminal aggression and bikie-gang solidarity. Terrorising in small packs of ten to 25 birds – with each group contributing to the collective sedentary flock (of up to 400 birds) – they bully, bludgeon or kill most others on their pad (65 battered species have been recorded). If you wake to ‘woo, woo, woo, woo’, have lunch in the park to ‘loo-la-la-la, loo-la-la-la’ and sip an evening ale to ‘tee-oo tee-oo tee-oo’, then your bird list for that day will probably consist of noisy miners, magpies, crested pigeons, noisy miners, grey butcherbirds and noisy miners. And nothing much else. Only the uninformed will contend that the harassment metered out by this species is ‘just bluff’. A number of scientists who have studied noisy miners all their lives concur that it is one of the most pugnacious, aggressive species in eastern Australia. Recent research has shown that when noisy miners were removed from remnant patches of degraded woodland, diversity of native birds surged within the first three months, reaching levels at least sixteen times richer than in control plots that still contained miners.
Because it’s comforting to see lots of birds around us, even if they are all grey, most of us are unaware of the insidious, systematic process of elimination that’s going on. In a bizarre parallel, when we hear ‘…the notes of the bell-birds…running and ringing’ it’s almost impossible to believe that bell miners (first cousins of noisy miners) are now responsible for extreme forest ecosystem degradation and dieback in an increasing number of wet and dry sclerophyll forests in eastern Australia.
Back in the suburbs, coffee-sippers at outdoor cafés feel an inner glow when a cocky noisy miner waddles across their table, nibbles the top off the paper sugar satchel and licks out the crystals. My fowls, scuttling for cover, love them because the miner alarm-call signals that a falcon or circling hawk is hunting overhead. Small-bird keepers hate them because as a team, miners systematically hound aviary birds then impale them on clutched claws thrust through the wire. Even motorists find them distracting when summer rains break the dry season and miners are drawn to the road’s centre white line where dispersing flying termites stand out like rissoles in the snow.
Putting our polarised feelings for them aside for a moment, let’s consider how the miners feel about us? Well, they unreservedly love us (and our ride-on mowers, but mostly our bulldozers). This is because noisy miners are fixated on open ground with little understorey; open remnant woodland, trashed habitat, new estates, lightly treed urban sprawl, golf courses, suburban parklands, school yards, the verandahs of yuppie cafes. In a mob where effective communication ensures quick response and tight cohesion, sight and sound are best served in the great (stripped) outdoors. One recent study went a step further, concluding that miners chose habitat with short grass so the birds could easily locate their chicks after fledging. But that might be tugging the bow, as anyone who has endured life with fornicating miners around them will bear out. That incessant, penetrating ‘wick wick wick, wick wick wick’ of newly fledged chicks can be heard by us up to a kilometre away, and it’s hard to believe that feeding adults couldn’t locate babies calling from the bottom of a well.
Not so long ago, consulting ecologists recommended against planting gardens with grevilleas and other nectar-heavy species given the miners’ proclivity for that sort of sugar-dripping habitat. But one study recently showed that grevillea gardens made for no appreciable increase in miner numbers; the miners’ infatuation was more with open understorey than syrupy flowers. Clearly, noisy miners also polarise scientists.
It’s totally reasonable that we should delight in sharing morning tea with an engaging wild bird on the back verandah. Uncomplaining feathered neighbours make for a pleasant change from the ubiquitous prickly ones. But there is a sinister process of ethnic cleansing at play. If you or I were instrumental in reducing biodiversity by harassing, trapping or killing the bird species targeted by noisy miners we would be mocked in the pillory, then stoned prior to a more formal crucifixion. Yet we know noisy miners do it, but because they are native, all is forgiven.
What if a modern, proactive council somewhere sought to influence wildlife managers to mitigate against loss of biodiversity by relaxing the rules of protection with noisy miners? That is, repeat the aforementioned experiment of miner removal in sensitive areas and establish urban havens for rarer, hammered species? Or should we just outsmart miners and join the dots, planting more shrubs between power poles?
In a predictable response to elevated levels of toxic CO2, a surge in the murky ranks of the noisy miner brotherhood is forecast with global warming. That thought’s enough to make you break out in hives. It’s one thing to handle this bird and get the impact of its footprint, let alone account for its ecological repercussions into the future.
