Miner Disturbance

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you – BASTARD!

If you don’t know what that bird is instantly, be grateful. It is a Noisy Miner and it isn’t a droll nickname, like being called ‘bluey’ when you're a red-head.

Not to be confused with the Indian Myna (who causes all sorts of problems for people in completely different ways) this one is an Australian native. You are therefore not allowed to trap them and do youth-in-asia on them.

First to the Myna that isn’t so much of a problem to me, the Indian Myna.

It’s the black and brown jobby with the yellow beak. A good mate has had his house made unliveable on occasion, by having hordes of them move into inaccessible parts of his roof. They build huge nests and then go about recolonising the rest of the house with their mites (and that’s not a fond colloquial term for their offspring. I really mean their parasites).

In a complicated manoeuvre involving a split level trap and a load of dog-food, he has managed to trap dozens and dozens of the mongrels. The trap comes with a canvas sleeve that fits over it. The sleeve has a built in hose that goes straight to the exhaust pipe of your car. Neat. Unless of course you have a brand new car that has the type of engine that puts out cleaner air than it takes in. No joke. He described pulling the canvas off the cage with a magician's flourish - to reveal 4 and twenty mynas, all fresh eyed and breathing deeply. Plan B, Borrow an old car.

My problem is with the intractable attention seeker, the Noisy Miner. (Strange that they should be spelt so differently too). I have been driven out of the house some afternoons by these things with their ceaseless ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma.

It is not a pleasant call. It is not a musical noise. It does not allow you to commune with nature. They don’t do it to a particular rhythm, they do it near, they do it far. They do it from dawn till dusk. They drive other birds out of the area because… well because other birds haven’t paid quite the same amount in real estate as I have and can just pick up and go. I would too if I only had to look for a branch with approximately the right circumference.

Knowing that I can’t do anything harmful or soul-releasing to these feathered fiends but wanting to move them on, I bought a truly extravagant water pistol. One of those ones that you can ‘over-pump’ to really build up a bit of pressure.

The result? Noisy Miners can hear me starting to pump the thing up, they fly just out of water pistol range, and then when they see that I have exhausted the water pressure in the thing, fly in and poo at me. They actually make aggressive little bombing runs at me now.

I can’t help but admire them a little.