Noisy Miner

Identification

The noisy miner is a large honeyeater, 24–28 centimetres (9.4–11.0 in) in length, with a wingspan of 36–45 centimetres (14–18 in), and weighing 70–80 grams (2.5–2.8 oz). Male, female and juvenile birds all have similar plumage: grey on the back, tail and breast, and otherwise white underneath, with white scalloping on the nape and hind-neck, and on the breast; off-white forehead and lores; a black band over the crown, bright orange-yellow bill, and a distinctive patch of yellow skin behind the eye; a prominent white tip to the tail; a narrow olive-yellow panel in the folded wing; and orange-yellow legs and feet. A juvenile can be distinguished by softer plumage, a brownish tinge to the black on its head and the grey on its back, and a duller, greyish-yellow skin-patch behind the eye.<p>The noisy miner is similar in appearance to the yellow-throated miner and the black-eared miner; it has a dull white forehead and a black crown, while the others have grey heads.<p>Size variation in the noisy miner over its range follows Bergmann's rule; namely, birds tend to be larger where the climate is colder. Adults from central-eastern and northern Queensland tend to have little or no olive-yellow edging to the feathers of the back and wings, and have a wider white fringe on the feathers of the hind-neck and back, giving birds from Queensland the appearance of having more distinctive scalloping than other populations. Wing length generally increases with latitude, yet M. m. leachi has measurably shorter wings than the nominate race, although no significant difference in wing length was found in a study comparing populations north of 30° S and south of the Murray River. The subspecies leachi also has finer scalloping on the hind-neck than the nominate race, a more intense yellow tinge to the wing panels, and a slightly broader off-white tip to the tail.<p>The far north Queensland subspecies titaniota has a shorter tail, paler crown, larger yellow skin-patch, and paler upper parts without the yellow-olive of the nominate race; and lepidota, found in western New South Wales, is smaller than the nominate race with a black crown, and darker, more mottled upperparts.<p>As the common name suggests, the noisy miner is an unusually vocal species. Previously known as the garrulous honeyeater, it has a large and varied repertoire of songs, calls, scoldings, and alarms. Most are loud and penetrating, and consist of harsh single notes. It has two broad-frequency alarm calls that are used when mobbing intruders into their territory, or when predators (including humans) are sighted; and a narrow-frequency alarm call that is primarily used when airborne predators are seen, such as the brown falcon (Falco berigora), or other large flying birds, including the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) and the pied currawong (Strepera graculina). The aerial predator alarm call is a series of high-pitched, slurred whistling notes. The broad-frequency alarm calls are a series of 'churr' notes, low-pitched and harsh, occurring at low and high levels of intensity. The narrow-band call is used in situations where the bird signals the presence of a predator and restricts information about its own location, while the broad-band alarm is used to attract attention, and can initiate mobbing behaviour. These churring calls vary between individuals, and laboratory tests show that noisy miners can distinguish calls by different birds. Hence, this may be integral to the complex social structure of the species.<p>Contact or social facilitation calls are low-pitched sounds that carry long distances. 'Chip' calls are given by individual birds when foraging, and a similar call is given by nestlings that call at an increased rate as the mother approaches the nest. Where there is a high level of social activity, such as during territorial disputes with conspecifics, calls are a series of quick, regular, single notes. The noisy miner has a mating display flight song: a soft warble of low-frequency notes given during short, undulating flights by the male, and responded to by the female with a low-frequency whistle. The noisy miner is found in open woodland habitats, where it is an advantage to call from the air, so as to overcome sound attenuation. Another display call, described as 'yammer', is a rapid rhythmical series of notes that is uttered during open-bill, wing-waving displays. The noisy miner has a song described as the 'dawn song'—a communal song of clear, whistled notes emitted in chorus in the early hours of the morning from May through January. The dawn song, which is also sung at dusk, is audible over long distances and features duets that often involve antiphony.<p>A nestling begins to give the 'chip' call soon after it emerges from the egg, and it calls frequently for the first two-thirds of the nestling period and constantly for the last third. The call does not vary in the presence of an adult at the nest, so it seems likely that the call is not directed at the adult bird. The nestling becomes silent when an adult gives an alarm call, and makes a squealing sound when the adult delivers food. The begging call of a fledgling is similar to the call of the nestling, but significantly louder and covering a greater frequency range (which may make it more directional). The rate of calling, on average, is 85 to 100 calls in a minute, and in open scrub, the call can be heard up to a kilometre away. Subsong, a juvenile vocalisation comprising elements of various calls, begins to be uttered when the fledgling is around thirty days old.<p>The noisy miner also produces non-vocal sounds by clicking or snapping its bill, usually during antagonistic encounters with other bird species, or when mobbing a predator.

Taxonomy

English ornithologist John Latham described the noisy miner four times in his 1801 work Supplementum Indicis Ornithologici, sive Systematis Ornithologiae, seemingly not knowing it was the same bird in each case: the chattering bee-eater (Merops garrulus), black-headed grackle (Gracula melanocephala), hooded bee-eater (Merops cucullatus), and white-fronted bee-eater (Merops albifrons). Early notes recorded its tendency to scare off prey as hunters were about to shoot. It was as the chattering bee-eater that it was painted between 1792 and 1797 by Thomas Watling, one of a group known collectively as the Port Jackson Painter. John Gould treated the name Merops garrulus as the original description, and renamed it Myzantha garrula in his 1865 work Handbook to the Birds of Australia, giving it the common name of garrulous honeyeater, and noting the alternate name of chattering honeyeater. He noted the colonists of Tasmania called it a miner, and aboriginal people of New South Wales called it cobaygin. Que que gang was a local aboriginal name from the Blue Mountains.<p>In the early 19th century, Australian ornithologists started using the name Manorina melanocephala instead, because it was listed first by Latham in 1801. This usage did not follow the letter of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and in 2009 the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature conserved the current name by formally suppressing the name M. garrula. The species name melanocephala is derived from the Ancient Greek words melas 'black', and kephale 'head', referring to its black crown. Other common names include Mickey miner and soldierbird. Four subspecies are recognised, including subspecies leachi found in eastern Tasmania. The mainland population was split into three subspecies in 1999 by Richard Schodde—titaniota from Cape York Peninsula in Queensland as far south as Mareeba, lepidota from central Queensland and inland New South Wales west of Nyngan, and the nominate subspecies melanocephala from southeastern New South Wales, Victoria, and southern South Australia. There are broad zones where birds are intermediate between subspecies. Further study is required to settle the taxonomic status of these populations.<p>The noisy miner is one of four species in the genus Manorina in the large family of honeyeaters known as Meliphagidae. The other three species of the genus Manorina are the black-eared miner (M. melanotis), the yellow-throated miner (M. flavigula), and the bell miner (M. melanophrys). One of the most obvious characteristics of the genus is a patch of bare yellow skin behind the eyes, which gives them an odd 'cross-eyed' look. Within the genus, the noisy, black-eared and yellow-throated miners form the subgenus Myzantha. The noisy miner occasionally hybridises with the yellow-throated miner. Molecular analysis has shown honeyeaters to be related to the Pardalotidae (pardalotes), Acanthizidae (Australian warblers, scrubwrens, thornbills, etc.), and the Maluridae (Australian fairy-wrens) in the large superfamily Meliphagoidea.

Scientific name

Manorina melanocephala

Authority

(Latham, 1801)

Order

Passeriformes

Family

Meliphagidae

Genus

Manorina

Range and habitat

The noisy miner is endemic to eastern and southeastern Australia, occupying a broad arc from Far North Queensland where there are scattered populations, to New South Wales where it is widespread and common from the coast to a line from Angledool to Balranald, through Victoria into southeastern South Australia, and eastern Tasmania. Its range in South Australia has been steadily expanding since it was first recorded near Adelaide in the early 1890s. It is sedentary over its entire range. The noisy miner is territorial, and the territory of a colony is aggressively defended—which has led to a significant reduction in avian diversity in areas occupied by the noisy miner, with smaller species excluded.<p>The noisy miner primarily inhabits dry, open eucalypt forest without understory shrubs. It is commonly found in open sclerophyll forests, including those on coastal dunes or granite outcrops; forests dominated by spotted gum on mountain ridges and exposed slopes; box and ironbark forests on the foothills of the Great Dividing Range; mixed forests of eucalypts and cypress (Callitris); forests dominated by yapunya, mulga, gidgee, brigalow or emu bush; in stands of belah and scattered clumps of boree; on the edges of woodlands of river red gum, including swamp woodlands bordering floodplains, and areas dominated by exotic species, such as European ash and willow. It regularly inhabits degraded patches of forest where the understory has been cleared, including recently burned areas, and modified habitats, such as lightly-timbered farming and grazing areas, roadside reserves, bushland remnants in towns and cities, and suburban parks and gardens with trees and grass, but without dense shrubbery.<p>The noisy miner has benefited from the thinning of woodland on rural properties, heavy grazing that removes the understory, fragmentation of woodland that increases the percentage of edge habitat, and urban landscaping practices that increase open eucalypt environments. It has been described as a 'reverse keystone' species, as it is colonising an ever-increasing range of human-dominated habitats, and aggressively excluding smaller bird species from urban environments. This phenomenon has been also observed in rural areas. A field study across the South West Slopes of New South Wales showed that the noisy miner's presence corresponded with reduced numbers of insectivorous birds, such as fantails, whistlers, the restless flycatcher (Myiagra inquieta), and other honeyeater species, and that this decrease was most marked in sites with better access to water and nutrients. While it has been hypothesised that the proliferation of large-flowering grevillea cultivars has contributed to the abundance of noisy miners, recent research has identified the proliferation of lightly treed, open areas, and the presence of eucalypt species as the most significant factors in the population increase. Large-flowered grevillea hybrids, such as Grevillea 'Robyn Gordon', can benefit the noisy miner, in that an abundance of resources is usually dominated by larger, aggressive honeyeaters, and a continuous nectar source could provide an advantage for the non-migratory species. A field study in box-ironbark country in central Victoria found that noisy miner numbers were correlated with the occurrence of yellow gum (Eucalyptus leucoxylon), which reliably produces flowers (and nectar) each year. The abundance of the noisy miner is primarily determined by habitat structure.<p>While the range of the noisy miner has not significantly expanded, the density of the population within that range has substantially increased. High densities of noisy miners are regularly recorded in forests with thick understory in southern Queensland, 20 kilometres (12 mi) or more from the forest/agricultural land edge. Many of these sites have extensive road networks used for forest management, and picnic areas and walking tracks for recreational use, and it has been found that these cleared spaces play a role in the abundance of noisy miners in the forest. There is evidence to suggest that higher road densities correspond with higher noisy miner population levels. Field work in Victoria showed that noisy miners infiltrated anywhere from 150 to 300 m (490 to 980 ft) into remnant woodland from the edges, with greater penetration occurring in less densely forested areas. This has implications for the size of woodland habitat needed to contain miner-free areas—around 36 hectares (89 acres). Revegetation projects restoring buloke woodland, a species of she-oak integral to the survival of the red-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorynchus banksii), have been interplanted with a nurse species, usually fast-growing eucalypts. Noisy miner populations were more likely in those buloke woodlands where eucalypts had been planted at densities of up to 16 per hectare (6.4 per acre). The presence of noisy miners was accompanied by a substantial difference in number and types of other birds found in the woodland.

Migration

Resident species

Behavior

Migration pattern: Resident species.

Conservation

Population trend: rising.

Population trend

rising