We have recently undertaken an amazing journey. The aim was to assist a young Australian student to set up a tracking study on Sooty Terns on a remote and uninhabited island in the Norfolk Island group, in the western Pacific about 1500 kilometres east of Brisbane, eastern Australia. Ventures such as this inevitably involve long flights, interspersed with variable duration stopovers in airports.
We are not the kind of people who relish the prospect of spending hours rummaging through duty-free shops at stupidly expensive goods that we would never consider buying in any other context, or consuming mediocre food and drink at inflated prices in crowded cafes (especially with the knowledge that unpleasant viruses are eagerly awaiting opportunities to use our bodies as reproduction facilities!).
A quiet corner with a view of the outside world is infinitely preferable. However, passing time searching for interesting birds that abound in far-off countries is not very productive in airports. Birds and jet engines do not go well together and huge efforts are made to discourage birds from inhabiting airfields and buildings where aircraft are serviced to prevent expensive repairs or, at worst, catastrophic accidents. But small numbers of birds do eke out a living in these fairly inhospitable surroundings and on our journey to and from our Pacific island destination we saw some old friends!
We left UK late on 12 November, flying to Sydney via Abu Dhabi, then taking a shorter hop to Brisbane where we stayed overnight and bought provisions for our future island life. From Brisbane, another 1500 km hop landed us on Norfolk Island, where we spent another night that allowed some recovery from the jetlag that had sapped our energy. The following morning a small boat took us to uninhabited (by humans – hundreds of thousands of seabirds made it their home) Phillip Island, our final destination.
Despite the efforts of airport staff, the long outward journey had some ornithological highlights, particularly related to species that we have worked with previously. In Abu Dhabi airport, we saw only two species, one was the almost ubiquitous Feral Pigeon. The other was a pair of Common Mynas that seemed to have adopted a gap, and a possible nest site, in the structure of the passenger accesses gangway to aeroplanes at gate 33. During our wait to board, the mynas kept us entertained by their toing and froing.
On our arrival in Sydney during the early morning of 14 November, we found a single Common Myna in the airport building during the wait for our delayed flight to Brisbane. When we eventually arrived at the Brisbane domestic terminal, we had to walkthrough the airport car park to access our hotel. In the car park we found another pair of Common Mynas investigating a potential nest site, and we occasionally saw this pair from our hotel bedroom window, as they sought food in an open grassy area close to the car park.
Having studied Common Mynas in Seychelles and elsewhere, we were aware that they had been introduced to eastern Australia and that steps were being taken in some cities to reduce their numbers. But to see them at every stop was unexpected.
A further surprise came after our landing on Norfolk Island. As we taxied to the terminal, I saw from my window seat a bird that looked like a European Starling. This proved to be the first of many encounters with them. Starlings, along with House Sparrows, Greenfinches, Blackbirds and Song Thrushes, all well-known British garden birds, had been introduced to the island many years ago under a “naturalisation” programme. Such introductions might have comforted the early European settlers but some of the species involved, especially European Starling and Common Myna, have proved problematic, both in relation to agricultural damage and competition with native species for food and nest sites in both Australia and New Zealand. Mynas are believed to have compromised the survival of some native species, as our and other studies have revealed in Seychelles and elsewhere.
After our two weeks on Phillip Island we returned to Brisbane and spent another week and a half exploring subtropical montane rainforest, where the bird life was incredible but also frustrating! We heard the calls of a huge variety of species but in many cases could not see the songsters. Many of those that we could see were stunning, such as Spangled Drongo, Satin Bowerbird and Rufous Whistler, to name a very few.
For our return journey we had to travel to Gold Coast airport, where we spent two days exploring the nearby coast on foot. Among an abundance of native Australian birds we found Common Mynas to be – common! Most were in pairs, but we also found a few larger flocks in mown grassland near the airport and around a popular beachside cafe. Our transiting through Melbourne airport was during the night but back in Abu Dhabi the Gate 33 pair of mynas entertained us again.
We know that Common Mynas and European Starlings were taken by people to Australia and Norfolk Island respectively, but the origin of Common Mynas in Middle Eastern countries is less certain. Their presence there might be part of a natural range expansion from central southern Asia, or it could follow unrecorded deliberate introductions by people, for example through the trade in captive wild birds. What is in no doubt, however, is that range expansion in south-eastern Europe is in progress and is leading to concerns over the impacts they might have on indigenous birds in the region.
Such is the concern that the Common Myna is included in the European Union list of invasive species whose entry into EU territory must be prevented, and any birds that have managed to enter must be eradicated. Common Mynas, and also European Starlings, are listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) among the world’s 100 most serious invasive species.
Wild Bird Conservation 