Common myna

Name and taxonomy

Mathurin Jacques Brisson described the bird in 1760 in his Ornithologie. He thought his specimen had come from the Philippines, which was a mistake. His Latin names sit outside the binomial system, so they carry no standing today. Carl Linnaeus added the species to his Systema Naturae in 1766 and cited Brisson. He called it Paradisea tristis, and the type locality was later fixed at Pondicherry. Louis Pierre Vieillot set up the genus Acridotheres in 1816.

Acridotheres comes from two Greek words and means locust hunter. In Latin, tristis means sad or gloomy. The English word myna is borrowed from Hindi, and the Hindi word descends from Sanskrit. Two subspecies are recognised. The Indian myna ranges from Kazakhstan and Iran east to China and Indochina. The Sri Lankan myna is darker and carries a larger yellow cheek patch.

Evolution and relatives

The common myna belongs to Sturnidae, the starling family. Like other starlings, it is an omnivore that walks rather than hops on open ground. The genus Acridotheres holds the true mynas of southern and south-eastern Asia. The jungle myna and the Javan myna are close relatives. The Javan myna competes with it directly in Singapore.

The species follows Gloger's rule, which links darker plumage to wetter climates. Birds from north-western India are paler than those from the south. In South Africa the invasion has begun to sort the birds by shape. Females far from the core of the range differ in wing and head measurements. That pattern suggests that females lead the spread into new ground. Traits used for feeding show no such sorting, only a response to the local habitat.

Appearance

The common myna is a stocky bird 23 to 26 centimetres long. It weighs 82 to 143 grams, and the male is only a little larger than the female. The body is dark brown and the whole head is black, like a hood. The bill, the legs and the skin behind the eye are all bright yellow. The wings are rounded and the tail is short with a square tip.

A white patch marks the base of the outer flight feathers. The underside of the wing is white, and the tail carries a white tip. Those white marks probably make the bird easy to name in flight. The undertail feathers are white as well. Young birds have browner heads than adults. In Australia people confuse the myna with the noisy miner, a larger grey native bird.

Habitat and range

The native range runs from Iran and Afghanistan through India, Nepal and Bangladesh. It reaches Sri Lanka in the south and China, Japan and Indochina in the east. The bird wants warm, open country with water nearby. Farmland, dry woodland, partly open forest and the edges of towns all suit it. It avoids dense vegetation and thick ground cover. In Hawaii it lives from sea level up to 3,000 metres.

Introduced populations now hold ground on every continent except South America and Antarctica. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Israel, Fiji, Hawaii and southern Florida all carry them. Spain and Portugal hold breeding birds, and the European Union listed the species in 2019. The Seychelles removed the myna at very great cost. GBIF holds occurrence records from 107 countries. iNaturalist carries 70,009 observations of the species.

The myna does best in cities, which probably suits the open woodland it evolved in. Tall vertical structures and bare ground are common to both. Canberra received 110 birds between 1968 and 1971. By 1991 the city held about 15 mynas in every square kilometre. Three years later a second study found 75 birds in the same area. Nests in gutters and drainpipes cause water damage to buildings.

Diet and feeding

The common myna eats almost anything it can swallow. Insects, grubs, earthworms, spiders, crustaceans and small reptiles all go down. Seeds, grain, fruit, flower nectar and petals fill out the diet. The genus name means locust hunter, and grasshoppers are a favourite. The bird also takes the eggs and chicks of other birds. It kills mice, lizards and small snakes, and it will wade to catch a fish.

Most feeding happens on the ground, in a walk broken by an occasional hop. Mynas follow grazing cattle and snap up the insects the herd puts to flight. They work over burnt grassland for the same reason. Near people they take rubbish, kitchen scraps and animals killed on the road. They pollinate flowers such as Salmalia and Erythrina while they feed. Foraging usually happens in loose parties of five or six birds.

Behaviour and social life

The common myna is bold, noisy and highly social. Mated birds preen each other, and juveniles form small flocks after they leave home. Birds have been seen letting fire ants run through their feathers. A home range is a set of favourite spots rather than one block of ground. Those ranges average about 0.25 square kilometres.

The species roosts communally all year, in flocks of tens or of thousands. House crows, cattle egrets, rose-ringed parakeets and rosy starlings join the same roosts. Birds arrive before sunset and leave again before dawn. A shared roost helps the flock spot predators and share news of food. From November to March the birds add aerial displays before and after roosting. Those flights probably serve the forming of pairs.

In the breeding season the same bird turns fierce. A breeding male defends up to 0.83 hectares around his hole. In a crowded city he holds only the ground next to the nest. Average territory size measured in India was 117.04 square metres. Pairs sometimes fight violently over a single hole. A pair may hold two roosts at once and guard both of them.

Communication and senses

The voice runs through croaks, squawks, chirps, clicks, whistles and growls. A singing bird fluffs out its feathers and bobs its head. Both sexes sing, and males sing more often than females. Flocks join in loud choruses at dawn and again at dusk. Before sleep a roost calls together, which observers call communal noise.

A myna screeches at a mate when a predator comes near or when it is about to fly. Its alarm calls also warn birds of other species. A bird under stress gives a high-pitched scream. Parents give a rich trill as they reach the nest with food. That trill makes the nestlings beg. Captive mynas copy human speech, which is why people keep them in cages.

Reproduction and life cycle

Common mynas are thought to pair for life. In Hawaii the pair stays together all year, while elsewhere birds pair up in early spring. In the native range nesting starts in March and runs on into September. A pair may raise one to three broods in a season, depending on where it lives. The male courts by bowing and bobbing his head with his feathers puffed out. Birds can breed at about one year old.

The nest goes in a hole in a tree, a wall or a building. In the Himalayas mynas breed from sea level up to 3,000 metres. Twigs, roots, rubbish, tissue paper, foil and shed snake skin all end up in the lining. The birds readily take over nest boxes and the holes of woodpeckers and parakeets. They have been recorded carrying out the chicks of the previous owners in the bill. Sometimes they then leave the emptied box unused.

A normal clutch holds four to six eggs, each about 30.8 millimetres long. Both parents incubate for 13 to 18 days, and the female does most of it. She alone sits through the night. Chicks hatch blind and helpless, and both parents feed them for about three weeks. They leave the nest at around 22 days but cannot fly for another week. Parents guard and feed them until about six weeks after hatching.

Independent young gather into small flocks. Some begin to form pairs at nine months, though few breed in their first year. The average life expectancy is about 4 years. A shortage of food is the main limit on survival. Bad weather and a poor choice of nest site kill many others. The Asian koel sometimes lays its eggs in a myna nest.

Predators and threats

House crows and domestic cats are the main nest robbers. Javan mongooses raid nests for eggs and young. People on some Pacific islands eat the birds. A flock mobs a predator together and warns its members by call. Communal roosting is itself a defence against night hunters.

The species carries nematodes, tapeworms, flukes, mites and other parasites. It is known to carry avian malaria. The mite Ornithonyssus bursa can cause skin trouble in people who handle the birds. No threat endangers the species anywhere in its range. The real problem runs the other way, since the myna threatens other birds.

Control programmes now target the bird across much of the introduced range. Poison, shooting, cage traps and scaring devices are all in use. Several councils in New South Wales began trapping trials in 2009. The Seychelles eradication succeeded, but the cost was very high. Most other campaigns probably hold numbers down only in one area.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the common myna as Least Concern. The range grows year by year, and the population grows with it. In 2000 the IUCN Species Survival Commission placed the bird on a very different list. That list names 100 of the world's worst invasive species. Only the red-vented bulbul and the common starling join it there among birds.

The Invasive Species Specialist Group of the IUCN keeps that list. The group first published it in 2000 and updated it in 2013. A species earns a place by damaging biodiversity or human activity. It also has to illustrate something general about biological invasion. South Africa has declared the myna an invasive species that must be controlled. In Israel a birding survey in 2024 found it the second most recorded bird in the country.

Relationship with humans

People spread this bird deliberately, and nearly always to kill insects. The French took mynas from Pondicherry to Mauritius in the eighteenth century. They fined anyone who harmed one. Australia received the bird between 1863 and 1872, for the market gardens of Melbourne. Queensland later imported it against grasshoppers and cane beetles. New Zealand received birds in the 1870s, and South Africa saw escapes in 1902.

The plan appears to have worked in some places and failed in most. In Hawaii the myna does control cutworms in sugarcane. It also spread the weed Lantana camara across open grassland there. A 2004 survey ranked it the fourth worst bird pest in the Hawaiian fruit industry. Grapes, figs, apples, pears, mangoes, guava and blueberries all suffer. Maize, wheat and rice near towns lose grain to the flocks.

In Australia the bird now dominates towns along the whole east coast. A public vote in 2008 named it the most important pest in the country. It can breed from the frosts of Canberra to the heat of Cairns. Scientists still disagree about how much damage it does to native birds. In its homeland it seems to be an ordinary city bird that nobody fights.

In culture and myth

Sanskrit writers gave the myna several names, and each describes the bird. Sarika is the usual one. Kalahapriya means one who is fond of arguments, which fits a quarrelsome bird. Chitranetra means pretty eyes, and pitanetra means yellow eyes. Pitapada means yellow legs. The modern Hindi name maina descends from the Sanskrit word madana.

Local names elsewhere appear to be just as direct. Malay speakers in Singapore call it gembala kerbau, which means buffalo shepherd. The name probably points to the habit of following cattle for insects. Chinese speakers in Singapore know it as Teck Meng. English speakers have used Indian myna, house myna and Calcutta myna.

Mynas have long been cage birds, kept for their song and their copied speech. In Bengal people taught the related hill myna to repeat short prayers. The scientific name of that bird may record the habit. Australian slang has gone the other way and calls the common myna a flying rat. Another Australian nickname is the cane toad of the sky.