I was born in Brisbane, QLD, Australia, grew up here, moved around a bit, and for the last 3 years have been living in one section of the Redlands (Some call it Redland City. I’m not popular, So I won’t) . Where I was living. Except for the neighbors, things where relatively peaceful. Then I’d go to my boyfriends place, which was a ten-minute drive from my house, two suburbs over. And all day every single day this bird would make this constant chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp call that would not stop. It was so annoying! But the weird thing is, I’d go back to my house, and not hear it. And many years ago, I lived in the same suburb as my boyfriend, and not hear this bird. In fact, I’ve never heard this bird in my life until early 2014 (34 yrs old).

Fast forward to the present date and time, and we moved in together, the same suburb I was living in, and I thought, “Yeah, no more bird! This is going to be great.” Like a huge load off my stress meter. Boy, was I wrong! That noisy constant birds started up in the trees in the next yard and my hopes and dreams of peace just shattered! I mean, I’m trying to study most days, and this thing is in my head, scraping down the front of my brain, making it impossible to concentrate!

It got to the point that as of today, I had to find out what that bird is, so I can help alleviate others’ pain should a similar situation arise. A good ol’ google search helps out with my description of ‘constant chirping noisy bird’, which led me to an old Whirpool forum where a member practically posed the same question that was running through my head. What the heck is that bird!!

Lots of members responded, linking sound bites, and proposed remedies for removal of said bird, but nothing was quite hitting the nail on the head for me. Until I just stumbled across it myself in a you-tube video. That’s it! That’s that annoying constantly chirping bird that never stops! Holy grail sorted, I went back to the Whirpool forum, to ad my discovery, and found it was an archived post, and I wasn’t able to join the forums. Which has led to me writing this blog post, in case anyone else needs some information on this bird species.

I actually went just a wee bit deeper, and came across an article from the ABC news site, with a sub-headline of “..The native noisy miner is causing more damage than the invasive, introduced species of myna bird, new research has shown.” In it, the article alludes that “..The birds have become such a big problem they have been nominated as a threat under the national environment protection act.” These are from research papers coming out of places like The University of Queensland, and several other professors from the top Unis in QLD agree, that these birds are in fact a threat to other native species. Even going so far as to recommend shooting the birds with shotguns as a form of culling.

I wouldn’t recommend shooting anything, but now that I know whats’ going on, I can get pro-active about this bird and employ tactics to calm my own stressors, or find alternative ways to gently shoe them along. Because I love this house, and my backyard, and I love the beautiful bird calls from the other birds I hear. They can be really gospel-like (The other birds, not the Noisy Miner.) when the sun shines through those tall trees and I am transported to a temple feeling place of wonder. Also, I just started talking to this sweet magpie, that copied my whistle-tones for several minutes, whilst he threw in some of his own alien bleeps and twerks, and I just don’t feel like being a jerk. ❤

© Starah  6/01/2016