Noisy miner
The noisy miner is endemic to eastern and southeastern Australia. It is a grey bird with a black head, orange-yellow beak and feet. It has a distinctive yellow patch behind the eye, and white tips on the tail feathers. Males, females and juveniles are similar in appearance.
About Noisy miner in brief
The noisy miner is endemic to eastern and southeastern Australia. It is a grey bird with a black head, orange-yellow beak and feet. It has a distinctive yellow patch behind the eye, and white tips on the tail feathers. Males, females and juveniles are similar in appearance, though young birds are a brownish-grey. Noisy miners are gregarious and territorial; they forage, bathe, roost, breed and defend territory communally, forming colonies that can contain several hundred birds. The density of noisy miner populations has significantly increased in many locations across its range, particularly in human-dominated habitats. Its territoriality means that translocation is unlikely to be a solution to its overabundance, and culling has been proposed, although it is currently a protected species across Australia. The noisy miner does not use a stereotyped courtship display, but copulation is a frenzied communal event. It breeds all year long, building a deep cup-shaped nest and laying two to four eggs. Incubation is by the female only, although up to twenty male helpers take care of the nestlings and fledglings. Most time is spent gleaning the foliage of eucalypts, and it can meet most of its nutritional needs from manna, honeydew, and lerp gathered from the foliage. It was as the chattering bee-eater that it was painted between 1792 and 1797 by Thomas Watling, one of a group collectively known as the Port Jackson garrulus.
He noted the colonists of New South Wales called it a cobginay miner, and aboriginal people of Tasmania called it the garrulous honeyeater, giving it the common name of Queginay garrula. Early notes recorded recorded as chattering bees were about to scare off prey as hunters were about. The birds also form temporary flocks called ‘coalitions’ for specific activities, such as mobbing a predator, and are known to chase, peck, fight, scolding, and mobbing each other throughout the day. Study shows that the noisy miner has benefited primarily from landscaping practices that create open areas dominated by eucalystpts. The popularity of nectar-producing garden plants was thought to play a role in its proliferation, but studies now show that it has benefited from landscapers creating open areas with dense understory shrubbery. It is one of four species in the genus Manorina, the other three being the white-fronted beesater, hooded bee-Eater, and the bee- fronted gracile. It can be found in Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and southeastern South Australia, as well as in New Zealand and South Africa. The noise miner is a vocal species with a large range of songs, calls, scoldings and alarms, and almost constant vocalisations, particularly from young birds. It also has a more intense yellow panel in the wing, and a broader white tip to the tail. The separation of the Tasmanian M. m. leachi is of long standing.
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This page is based on the article Noisy miner published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
