your help please! myna samples / info for research project

[Oscar Thomas]

I've seen one take a Puriri moth, not fun to watch.

[Anna Santure]

Kia ora Clinton, Mark and Michael - many thanks for the descriptions of the current distribution. I am worried to hear of the sighting in Christchurch - sounds like the movement of mynas via ship is not necessarily a rare event (I wonder if this is within NZ or perhaps even from elsewhere in the Pacific). Waikanae / Masterton seem really interesting points where a few individuals are able to survive - as discussed above, I guess it is hard to determine whether these are true edges of expansion or just a little range 'wobble', but the sightings do seem significantly further south than the main distribution.

It does seem that freshly dead mynas are rather elusive! We have had success at getting DNA out of birds that are not very fresh, but the main thing needed for our project is a reasonable sample (10-20 birds) from each location, so I fear that me driving around scraping mynas off the road may not cut it! With that in mind, I may look at requesting ethics permission from my university to enable sampling of mynas from areas where there is not a control trapping effort in place.

Please do keep me in mind if you hear of anyone currently trapping, and thank you again to everyone for the fantastic information above, and I'd love to keep hearing if you spot mynas in any other odd places.

Anna

[Michael Szabo]

There is an Australian trap design that was invented for catching Common Mynas which is now available in New Zealand from Adrian Gilbert in Ngunguru (adriangilbert@xtra.co.nz). He could possibly find you some carcasses.

[Nick Allen]

According to Oliver in his New Zealand Birds, Mynas were liberated in all centres, the birds coming from those introduced to Australia from India (presumably the reference to India refers to the country before partition into the three countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). All centres Oliver presumed meant from Auckland to Dunedin. He stated "At first they increased rapidly, afterwards they began to disappear in most places. They are now absent altogether from the South Island, which is understandable if they are affected by cold weather and no doubt this is the case." Writing in the early 50's he gave their range as "best established in Hawke's Bay province and from there have tended to move northward and are now rapidly expanding in the South Auckland area and are entering the North Auckland peninsula."

[Anna Santure]

Kia ora Michael, Nick and Oliver (wow, thank you to everyone for the messages, this is great!),
Oliver - indeed, really sad to see precious NZ species being gobbled by invaders
thanks Michael - yes I've been in touch with Adrian who is super kind and is actually helping to organise the collection of mynas for me both at his place and from a number of people / groups he's sold traps to in the far North, which is great!
Nick - thanks so much for the info - I think this is also reflected in JM Cunningham's papers from 1948 and 1951 that Ian uploaded to this forum too - I do wonder what "all centres" means though in terms of North Island cities / large towns! We are very lucky to have collaborators in Australia that we can compare samples to as I think it is really interesting to figure out whether NZ birds are from only one Australian population or a number of different introductions from different cities (likely Melbourne and/or Sydney). The good news is that genetics should be able to help us even if the records are a bit vague!

[philbattley]

Hi Anna, in the southeast part of their (current) range they now seem to be resident in Dannevirke, beyond which there is a bit of a gap towards the larger populations in the main Hawkes Bay area. I've seen about 1-6 each time I've driven through Dannevirke in the past few years.
Cheers, Phil

[Anna Santure]

Kia ora Phil - great to hear from you and thanks for the information!

[Michael Szabo]

More info here:
https://www.landcare.org.nz/file/northl ... -2016/open

[Anna Santure]

Wonderful, thanks Michael - that's a handy general resource for control of other predators / pests, too!

[Alan Tennyson]

Three adults at the usual corner in Foxton today, plus I picked up a dead chick under the Phoenix palm which I'll put in the Te Papa collection as a record of breeding/for molecular sampling.
cheers
Alan