While they are technically a type of honeyeater and love to eat nectar, they will also eat insects, frogs, lizards, seeds, fruit, and just about anything else.
Their ability to eat so many different food sources may explain why they like living close to us in built up areas. While the Noisy Miner can be a nuisance, they can also be a helper in the garden.
These guys love to eat the little bugs and insects that get up to no good in your veggie garden. Miners can show a lot of aggression towards other birds and will often try to chase them away.
They also go after possums , hunting them out of tree hollows. You may even see miners mobbing pet cats by calling loudly and swooping them in groups. Noisy Miners prefer open spaces and tall trees. Since Noisy Miners love wide-open spaces, the more densely vegetated your backyard, the less likely they are to claim the space for themselves.
This gives other animals a chance to thrive in your backyard too. Spiky bushes are great for deterring Miners and other aggressive birds and animals, while sheltering little buddies. As Noisy Miners breed year-round, there are always chicks which are just as noisy as their parents.
They often demand food from any members of the Miner group that they see. They have also become well adapted to suburban situations and are a common sight in parks and gardens. The Noisy Miner feeds on nectar, fruits and insects. Very occasionally they will eat small reptiles and amphibians. Food is either taken from trees or on the ground.
In keeping with its highly social nature, the Noisy Miner usually feeds in large groups. Noisy Miners breed in colonies and several broods may be reared in one season. The female constructs the nest and incubates the eggs alone, but both sexes will care for and feed the young birds.
Additional 'helpers' also feed the young. Interestingly, these helpers are almost always male birds. Noisy Miners, Manorina melanocephala , can be annoying because of their constant vocalizations, but their main problem is the impact they have on other birds. Both problems arise from a dramatic increase in their abundance resulting from the creation of favourable habitat by humans. The Australian Museum respects and acknowledges the Gadigal people as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands.
Image credit: gadigal yilimung shield made by Uncle Charles Chicka Madden. In the past I used to see superb fairy-wrens here. I would regularly see New Holland honeyeaters, eastern spinebills and silvereyes. Not any more. Noisy miners have taken over. There are no small birds at all.
Small insectivorous birds play an important role in the environment, consuming insects that otherwise defoliate trees. When noisy miners cause the eradication of these small birds, trees suffer more leaf damage. In this way, noisy miners assist dieback. Climate change isn't helping. The last thing they need is to be evicted from suitable habitat by a despotic bully. I spoke to the gardeners at the native garden about the obvious overabundance of noisy miners.
They all agreed that there were too many miners, but they shrugged their shoulders in resignation. They were correct: noisy miners are protected by law.
It is illegal to cull them unless you have a permit from the State wildlife authority. But that attitude misses the point: overabundant native species can be just as damaging as their exotic counterparts when it comes to upsetting the natural balance.
The facts are these: noisy miners have proliferated. They dominate the environment. Their aggression leads to the eradication of small birds.
They can change species composition, spread infectious diseases, reduce natural diversity and cause local extinctions. Experiments have demonstrated that when noisy miners are removed from an area, the number of species of birds can increase tenfold, and the number of individual birds can increase 40 times.
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