The war is over.

Last year our local Landcare group offered its members nesting boxes to instal on their properties. One of the boxes I’d received was a ‘Rosella Box’ that I installed 7 metres up on the east side of the building.  Within six months a pair of Crimson Rosellas (Platycercus elegans) had moved in and successfully raised a brood of chicks (pictured left). In early spring this year rosellas were again checking out the nestbox.

But this year things are different. For the first time that I can remember the district has been overrun by Indian Mynas (Acridotheres tristis). These birds were first introduced from India to Victoria in the 1860’s to control insect pests and have since thrived. They are listed as one of the world’s most invasive species.

The nestbox on the wall was hot property. For about five weeks the Crimson Rosellas and the Indian Mynas were at war over it. It didn’t seem like a fair fight – a pair of rosellas against a flock of mynas. And in the end the numbers won out (pictured right).

The internet is filled with suggestions about how to remedy the situation including midnight raids on the nestbox to ‘remove’ an adult myna on successive nights and then removing the eggs. I suspect the word ‘remove’ is a euphemism for something far worse that I don’t wish to contemplate. My excuse for inaction is that the nestbox is too high for me to access unless I reconstruct the scaffolding I used to first instal it.

My myna problem still remains a major one.