Noisy miner
The
noisy miner is a bird in the honeyeater family Meliphagidae and is endemic to eastern and south-eastern Australia. This miner is a grey bird, with a black head, orange-yellow beak and feet, a distinctive yellow patch behind the eye and white tips on the tail feathers. The Tasmanian race has a more intense yellow panel in the wing, and a broader white tip to the tail. Males, females and juveniles are similar in appearance, though young birds are a brownish-grey. As the common name suggests, the noisy miner is a vocal species with a large range of songs, calls, scoldings and alarms, and almost constant vocalizations particularly from young birds. One of four species in the genus
Manorina, the noisy miner itself is divided into four subspecies. The separation of the Tasmanian
M. m. leachi is of long standing, and the mainland birds were further split in 1999. Found in a broad arc from Far North Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria to Tasmania and eastern South Australia, the noisy miner primarily inhabits dry, open eucalypt forests that lack understory shrubs.