Just after Christmas, a pair of myna birds started nesting
in the eaves on along the deck. In their
native India, mynas are a symbol for enduring love because they mate for
life. Humans are drawn to love stories,
even within the animal kingdom and I’m no exception.
My bird-spouses found the safest of
environments to raise their young after an aged section of cladding had fallen off.
Mynas have made the world’s 100 worst
invasive species* but I find the chocolate
body, charcoal head and sunflower yellow eyes and beak a stunning
combination. However, it was their singing,
the melodic smorgasbord of whistles, clicks and light chirps that never failed
to lift my spirits at a time when my own love story failed to endure.
Robert the builder ordered some fibro sheets to repair the
damage, but the festive season ensured their arrival was a long time coming. And I forgot about the impending repairs.
It wasn't long before the two mynas spent the days flying off and returning with
morsels of food for their precious offspring.
What a delight when I heard the most delicate scratching in the ceiling
cavity as the tiny birds scampered around.
I was determined to wait until the young had flown away to find their
own lovers and happily-ever-after before the cladding was replaced.
The other day, I went out in the morning for a few hours and when I returned, the screeching hurt my ears. A pair of mynas was flying this way and that and crying as if possessed, fragments of pale-coloured food in each of their golden beaks. Imagine my horror when Robert called from
downstairs and announced the noisy birds would be gone soon.
He’d repaired the cladding.
The parents were frantically trying to find the entry to their home, now smooth, impenetrable fibro. They cried from the veranda railing, screeched from the roof next door, squawked as they flew to the neighbour’s clothes line to the fence to the bottle brush tree before repeating
the route, repeating the screams.
Their
distress was like a dagger to my heart made worse when the scratching on the
other side of the ceiling became louder and more desperate. I pictured the little beaks wide open, primrose
triangles pointing in opposite directions, waiting and crying themselves hoarse. When weakness consumed them, they managed
only hissing.
The frantic parents hopped and flew and screeched and the
hungry young scratched and hissed hour after hour. Only when the twilight faded, did mother and
father bird seek shelter elsewhere, but the baby birds were invigorated by
the darkness. Their tiny claws scraped
on the ceiling, their cries a scratchy hiss that went on and on.
But they weren’t only in the cavity above the veranda. They
were in the kitchen ceiling, the bathroom ceiling, my bedroom, my head. Their deathly cries filled my sleeping ears.
I became the unstable narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Tell-Tale Heart. He maintained his sanity even though the
heart of a man he killed and dismembered continued to beat and drove him to madness. Except my own tale was not a
piece of short Gothic fiction. It was a
reality.
I texted my brother and described my grief. He replied, without empathy, “mynas will set
up another nest elsewhere.”
Too true. Mynas
crimes are many - they destroy fruit and grain crops, they nest in
roofs, ceilings and gutters, they are extremely aggressive to native species,
breeding males will protect an nesting area of two acres, they breed easily,
are noisy and smell.
But their worst crime is they dispossess native species of
their nests like rosellas and even large birds like kookaburras and
galahs. They can even evict sugar
gliders from their hollows which is a death sentence for the marsupials.
That aside, I wanted to save the tiny birds. How bad would it be that two extra mynas
joined the existing feral population? I bashed at the sheet of Masonite and
managed only to dislodge only the sealant in the corner. Short
of finding something like a jigsaw to carve a hole in the ceiling of my deck, I
could only cover my ears. Except their
screeching persisted in my head.
I paced the house.
“Mum, they’re pests,” said Sutchy. "Don't worry about them."
I thought of trapping the parents and wringing their necks, but they are
extremely intelligent and suspicious creatures and avoided even my pitiful gaze.
The next morning I thought the ruckus in my head had pushed me into
insanity. But when I stumbled out to the deck, the mother and father myna were
flying around frantically, their babies chirping and hissing louder than
before.
I left for the Salvos, certain the midday sun on the tin
roof would finally end my distress. Then the parents could establish a new nest
and hopefully, despite their loss, their love would endure and they'd lay a more successful clutch of pale blue eggs.
*IUCN Species Survival Commission, 2000