A villain emerged from an ABC prime-time television program earlier this month. A gangster and thug of the first degree but this villain was not of film noir, a creation of the cinematic and television world.
The “heavy” in the TV drama was the ubiquitous and aggressive noisy miner, this time featured in a program devoted to urban wildlife. Melbourne was the location for the Catalyst special but it could just as easily have been Hobert, where the noisy minor struts its stuff in another gangland ’hood, the Queens Domain.
I must confess I’ve never been a fan of the miners, not to be confused with the Indian myna of the mainland cities, an introduced member of the wider starling family. Noisy miners are a native species and, surprisingly, belong to the honeyeater family although their unruly behaviour sets them apart in a family that largely comprises pollen and nectar-eaters.
From experience, I know the miners do not tolerate other smaller birds – even their own clan in the honeyeater family – and they will drive them out relentlessly from territories, even killing them as demonstrated in the Catalyst special.
Happily, the noisy miners are not found at the place where I do most of my birdwatching, the Waterworks Reserve. The wet forest there is not their favoured habitat, unlike another of my birding spots, the Domain, where the dry, grassy woodland suits them perfectly.
Compared with the Waterworks, the Domain is not as rich in birds and I once thought the absence of species might reflect a limited range of flora, in a landscape largely dominated by sheaoaks and scattered eucalypts. The program explained otherwise. The miners largely feed on the substance which psyllid insects produce to protect themselves when they are attached to gum leaves, called lerps or honeydew. This is a food source for many other of the smaller species, too, and the miners fiercely protect their supplies, mainly in the blue and white gums that spread out across the grassy knoll of the upper Domain. The miners hang out in gangs – often reinforced by the young of previous breeding seasons – and gang members are easily summoned to declare a turf war on any birds deemed to be invading the miner space.
One species common on the Domain, eastern rosellas, form an easy co-existence with the miners, possibly because they are largely seed eaters, feeding in the extensive kangaroo grass and not venturing to the upper branches of the gums, except to roost and scout nesting sites.
As for another common bird of the Domain, the magpie, the street-wise miners have obviously learned the reality of the pecking order among the true “heavies” of the avian world.
The musical magpies might fill the woodlands with beautiful song but that fearsome, hook-tipped silver beak is enough to send the bullyboy miners back to the treetops.