After a seven-year battle using a combination of poisoning, trapping and shooting, the Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust successfully eradicated an initial population of around 6000 mynahs from Ātiu, making it the world’s largest island-based mynah eradication project. Roger Malcolm, a resident hotelier on Ātiu and one of the key people behind the eradication project, shares his own battle with one of the most invasive bird species in the world.

After leaving a miserable Wellington in winter, I finally stepped off the plane and on to my wife’s warm, green, beautiful island surrounded by a warm Pacific sea. Heaven. A land of tropical fruits, like bananas, pawpaw, guavas, star fruit, mangos, snow fruit, passion fruit, cornets and many more I had yet to discover.  But it wasn’t that island. Sure, there were plenty of fruit trees with green fruit but never a ripe fruit to be seen.

How could that be?

It seems that the supreme human being had a competitor. It was the Indian mynah. Introduced over a century ago to control the coconut stick insect. It was a cunning and smart bird that preyed on fruit and in fact any human food.  Wherever you put your food they found it. When you left a window or door open, they grabbed it. If it was too heavy to move, they trashed and shat on it.  Leave your donuts or bread on a car seat and go collect your mail, they were in through the car window and you only found this out when you opened your car door to a face full of flying birds and breadcrumbs.

It didn’t take long before you began to hate those smart, rowdy, bickering, devious, always fighting and occasionally social birds. Their antics, you could see had human parallels. Attacking one of their own when down. Ganging up and egging each other on in a fight. The worst of parallels. Were humans any better? Maybe mynahs were out humanising us and in control of Atiu?

One day, I trapped a mynah in the kitchen when it was destroying our bananas.  I caught it. It went completely docile. Why did this happen? I thrust it our cat. And yet while it was still in my hand, it squawked, pecked, scratched and tried to attack the cat. My cat fled, like all cats do here. Cats are scared of mynah birds and run for cover. But with us, why does a mynah show such deference to humans?

Enough of this anthropomorphising, I still hated these noisy destroyers of all our food. I wanted to be rid of them.

Then it happened. I was on my very slow roll through town with my tourist guests, pointing out this and that in the village when I noticed a raucous circle of mynahs around two pairs of mynahs and a half-eaten doughnut. The males of the two pairs were fighting over the doughnut. The inner females squawking insults at each other and encouraging their mates. Still I rolled on. The mynah circle was right on my path 20 metres away. The outer circle also egging it all on noticed the approach of our pickup and flew off. Still the males of inner four birds fought. Then 4 metres out more flew away and all but one fighting male remained. I saw him puff out his chest and stride towards the doughnut. It was then that my left-hand front wheel pushed him face first into the doughnut and squashed him flat.

I looked back through my rear vision mirror. The raucous group had reformed.  The surviving male fighter was pecking the doughnut and the rest of the group were pecking and tearing feathers from corpse.

I revelled in that mynah’s death. I didn’t care that I was now a bird killer. Wait a minute I liked birds, especially parrots. An internal conflict started. Was I a bird killer? Yep, but only of mynahs on Atiu I rationalised.

Swerving all over the road into circles of fighting mynahs was a fun but very inefficient way of killing them and also dangerous to other users of the road.   My seething hatred would have to wait for a better way of killing them to turn up. And turn up it did.

Atiu was fast becoming a bird sanctuary.

Our first bird refugee we welcomed was the Kakerori, the flycatcher from Rarotonga. The Kakerori was fleeing from the Rarotonga ship rat. The next bird was a very beautiful red lorikeet reintroduced from the island Rimatara in French Polynesia. Atiu once had this bird and the thought here is that they flew away to Rimatara after getting fed up with being plucked for their red feathers.  Centuries later we captured and forced the return of 27 of these parrots. Four of which may have remembered the stories of their ancestors told them about what the humans on Atiu did and immediately took off trying to find home. More likely they were trying to return to their breeding partners. Unfortunately they only got as far as Mitiaro which was the right direction but meant doom because Mitiaro is a home of the bird eating ship rat.

Meanwhile, the remaining 23 red lorikeet, continued to make Atiu their new home. They are now called the kura, as someone suddenly remembered their ancient Atiu name. By the way, that remembering was probably my wife who is also called Kura. But then maybe not as on Rimatara the bird is called the ‘ura.

The kura first had to find new partners as our method of catching the birds did not ensure we caught pairs. Their behaviour in the days and weeks after release was novel. The birds were often seen flocking high in the sky squealing their high-pitched whistles to call other birds into the flock. One time a flock grew to number 16. We presume that serious match making was in progress and after five months this flocking stopped. Thereafter sightings normally numbered one bird. We guessed then that that nest hollowing and egg laying was in progress.  Sure enough 10 months after their arrival on Atiu the first fledgling was seen.

Thirteen months after arriving the first nest was found. It was just beside the road to my sawmill and above 13 kikau weavers, weaving their way to buy airfares to tere NZ. Two months later two chicks were briefly seen inspecting their new world from just outside their nest.

This was the camera moment we all wanted. Those that could and were involved in Rimatara lorikeet reintroduction travelled to Atiu. Like expectant parents we all gathered around the nest waiting for the next sighting like dad and relatives around the door to the maternity ward. Then verbatim on the day 25 August 2008 in an email to Alan of San Diego Zoo this happened:

Hi Alan,

We may need a lori mix. Recipe please using materials on Atiu.

Today was a great day of filming.

The chick came out of the nest with both parents present. Chick sat above the nest testing wings for about 1/2 hour, parents left.  5 minutes later two mynahs came down from 1 o'clock and attacked. The chick fledged with mynahs in pursuit. Next seen hanging from a coconut frond. The mynahs attacked. Finally found hidden in a pistache tree sitting on a branch about 8 feet from the ground.  Parents returned to nest went in stayed in for 2 1/2 minutes (presumably they fed a second chick) then flew away to some feeding ground well away from the nest. (Somebody has got to teach these parents to count).

If the parents have not located their chick before dark a plan may be to catch the chick and feed. Your comment?

Cheers,

Roger.

Another snippet two days later and verbatim to Rosemary a parrot specialist:

Hi Rosemary,

Thanks for your advice, Rosemary.  Most appreciated. So far we have not directly interfered with the life progress of the fledgling. We have not touched a kura.

Everything seems to be going well, but the drama is something different. As watchers of each event as it unfolds it is very hard not to get very personally involved. We have succumbed somewhat to our emotions.

All of us here have joined the kuras in the war on mynahs. But let’s go back to yesterday morning.

9am. Robby was on watch. The first fledgling out that had caused the previous drama with mynah birds was sitting high in an albizzia tree about 10 metres from the nest when the mynahs attacked again. The chick headed straight for a lower mango tree with the mynahs in pursuit. This time it was different the parents were nearby.

They attacked.

It was all on. The three mynahs screeched, peaked, batted their wings in frenzy and the noise attracted more mynah birds.

All joined in.

About 15 in all.

If anyone has witnessed the behaviour of mynah birds this is a weird but fairly common behaviour. It was an even more furious battle and in the middle of it all were two red kura zipping around and attacking and making full body contact.  The fight lasted an hour, degenerating finally into mynahs attacking mynahs (as they do) and with this the parents flew off. The chick was nowhere to be seen.  Robby thought he saw it dropping to the ground during the mayhem. We were all despondent believing the chick had been trashed in the fight. We searched the ground and the trees. Nothing. The parents were no help seemingly flying haphazardly around chasing the occasional mynah and feeding the chick/s still in the nest.

Today, yay! The first fledgling is found again by Robby high in an albizzia tree about 70 metres from the nest. It looks healthy and is being feed.

We started popping away with an air rifle at any mynah that came near the area.

Bird WW1 CNN style body count: mynahs - 2 dead, 3 injured; kuras - 0 dead, 3 feathers ruffled.

The good news for today, chick number two is popping its head out of the nest and is getting ready to fledge.

Cheers,

Roger.

Finally, and at last, my hatred of the mynah had an outlet. This was only the opening squirmish. It was to develop into a full war on eliminating the Atiu mynah. But that is a larger story.