Mynas and the pox
In a discussion of the spread of COVID I, possibly unwisely, drew an analogy between the disease spreading down the Hume Highway and the spread of Common Mynas. That led to an interesting comment on my Facebook page which requires a little more work to show the situation more fully. Interested readers might like to peruse the website of the Canberra Indian Myna Action Group (CIMAG). The vernacular name of the species is now officially Common Myna but the Action Group was formed using the old name (and it has a snappier acronym). I joined COG in 1983, shortly after arriving in Canberra. Either in that year or the next I saw m first Indian Myna (as they were then known) in our yard at Scullin. Discussing this with the then manager of the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) Garden Birds Survey (GBS) he said that the species was mainly confined to an area around Green Square in Kingston with a secondary flock around the Scullin Medical Centre (about 300m from our house. The populatio