Perception Channels: visual ; tactile ; acoustic ; chemical
Due to their large exploitation for trade, the Hill myna population has declined. Forest destruction and habitat loss further this rate to a possible level of concern. Currently however, little is being done to conserve this species.
US Federal List: no special status
CITES: appendix iii
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: least concern
The large demand for the Hill myna has caused competition amongst hunters, but there has not been a major conflict between the natives yet. There may be concern for strife if the myna population decreases far below the demand.
Although the Hill myna doesn't have an original song, it is one of the most famous songbird mimics. Its ability to mimic human speech, bird calls, and a wide variety of other sounds has made this bird more demanded than the parrot (Orenstein, 1997). This demand has led to the creation of industries that harvest and prepare juveniles for the pet trade.
In north eastern India, the HIll myna used to be caught for food. In fact, curried myna was a favorite among the people there (Feare, 1999).
Finally, the Hill mynas frugivore diet aids in the pollination of forest trees and in seed dispersal.
The Hill myna is generally an arboreal frugivore, but also includes nectar, insects, and lizards in its diet. Figs are eaten most frequently, followed by berries and seeds from a variety of trees and shrubs. Most of the insects eaten are gleaned from trees, but it has been known to catch winged termites in the air (Feare, 1999).
Gracula religiosa (otherwise known as the Common Hill Myna, Common Grackle, or the Talking Myna) is native to eastern India, southern China, Indochina, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Phillippines. This species however has been introduced and successfully established in other areas, particularily Florida, Hawaii, Japan, and Puerto Rico (Feare, 1999).
Biogeographic Regions: oriental (Native )
The Hill myna is found either on hills between 300 and 2000 m. high or at sea level (Feare, 1999). It prefers areas where rainfall and humidity are both high, therefore inhabiting most of the jungles, evergreen, and wet deciduous forests in its range. The myna is common at forest edges, clearings or thinned areas, and cultivated areas such as coffee plantations (Feare, 1999).
Terrestrial Biomes: forest ; rainforest
The Hill myna averages 27-30 cm in length. It has a glossy black appearance with feathers that vary in undertone. The crown, nape, and breast has a purple glow while the rest of the body is tinted with green and the tail is polished turquoise. The wings are black with a white patch on primaries 3-9. The face consists of a red bill that fades into a yellow hooked tip and fleshy wattles, or flaps of bare skin, that extend out to the middle of the nape (Feare, 1984).
Other Physical Features: endothermic ; bilateral symmetry
The breeding season for the Hill myna varies slightly depending on range, but most breed in April-July. A monogamous pair searches for a small hole in a tree at the forest edge. Both sexes fill the hole with twigs, leaves, and feathers (Feare, 1999) and the female produces ~2 eggs that are blue with brownish spottings. The female spends more time incubating than the male, however, both parents tend the young equally when they hatch. The young fledge after a month and soon after the parents begin a new clutch. The Hill myna averages 2-3 broods annually (Anonymous, 2000).
Key Reproductive Features: iteroparous ; gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate); sexual ; oviparous
The common hill myna (Gracula religiosa), sometimes spelled "mynah" and formerly simply known as the hill myna or myna bird, is the myna most commonly sighted in aviculture, where it is often simply referred to by the latter two names. It is a member of the starling family (Sturnidae), resident in hill regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia. The Sri Lanka hill myna, a former subspecies of G. religiosa, is now generally accepted as a separate species G. ptilogenys. The Enggano hill myna (G. enganensis) and Nias hill myna (G. robusta) are also widely accepted as specifically distinct, and many authors favor treating the southern hill myna (G. indica) from the Nilgiris and elsewhere in the Western Ghats of India as a separate species.
The common hill myna is a popular talking bird. Its specific name religiosa may allude to the practice of teaching mynas to repeat prayers.[3]
This is a stocky jet-black myna, with bright orange-yellow patches of naked skin and fleshy wattles on the side of its head and nape. At about 29 cm length, it is somewhat larger than the common myna (Acridotheres tristis).[4]
It is overall green-glossed black plumage, purple-tinged on the head and neck. Its large, white wing patches are obvious in flight, but mostly covered when the bird is sitting. The bill and strong legs are bright yellow, and there are yellow wattles on the nape and under the eye. These differ conspicuously in shape from the naked eye-patch of the common myna and bank myna (A. ginginianus), and more subtly vary between the different hill mynas from South Asia: in the common hill myna, they extend from the eye to the nape, where they join, while the Sri Lanka hill myna has a single wattle across the nape and extending a bit towards the eyes. In the southern hill myna, the wattles are separate and curve towards the top of the head. The Nias and Enggano hill mynas differ in details of the facial wattles, and size, particularly that of the bill.[4]
Sexes are similar; juveniles have a duller bill.[4]
With the southern, Nias and Enggano hill mynas as separate species, the common hill myna, Gracula religiosa, has seven subspecies, which differ only slightly. In taxonomic order, they are:[5][6]
A 2020 study found that the subspecies G. religiosa miotera likely represents a distinct species and was likely driven to extinction in the wild in the late 2010s due unsustainable collecting for the wildlife trade. The paper recommends rescuing the last genetically pure captive individuals for the purpose of captive breeding. The International Ornithological Congress tentatively recognises it as a subspecies.[6][7]
The common hill myna is often detected by its loud, shrill, descending whistles followed by other calls. It is most vocal at dawn and dusk, when it is found in small groups in forest clearings high in the canopy.[4]
Both sexes can produce an extraordinarily wide range of loud calls – whistles, wails, screeches, and gurgles, sometimes melodious and often very human-like in quality. Each individual has a repertoire of three to 13 such call types, which may be shared with some near neighbours of the same sex, being learned when young. Dialects change rapidly with distance, such that birds living more than 15 km apart have no call-types in common with one another.[4]
Unlike some other birds, such as the greater racket-tailed drongo (Dicrurus paradiseus), the common hill myna does not imitate other birds in the wild, although it is a widely held misconception that they do. On the other hand, in captivity, they are among the most renowned mimics, the only bird, perhaps, on par with the grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). They can learn to reproduce many everyday sounds, particularly the human voice, and even whistled tunes, with astonishing accuracy and clarity.[8]
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This myna is a resident breeder from Kumaon division in India (80° E longitude) east through Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, the lower Himalayas, terai and foothills up to 2,000 m ASL. Its range continues east through Southeast Asia northeastwards to southern China, and via Thailand southeastwards across northern Indonesia to Palawan in the Philippines. It is virtually extinct in Bangladesh due to habitat destruction and overexploitation for the pet trade. A feral population on Christmas Island has likewise disappeared. Introduced populations exist in Saint Helena, Puerto Rico and perhaps in the mainland United States and possibly elsewhere; feral birds require at least a warm subtropical climate to persist.[4]
This myna is almost entirely arboreal, moving in large, noisy groups of half a dozen or so, in tree-tops at the edge of the forest. It hops sideways along the branch, unlike the characteristic jaunty walk of other mynas. Like most starlings, the hill myna is fairly omnivorous, eating fruit, nectar and insects.[4]
They build a nest in a hole in a tree. The usual clutch is two or three eggs.[4] There is no sexual dimorphism in these birds, which results in a limited possibility of choosing the sex to work with for mating.[9]
The hill mynas are popular cage birds, renowned for their ability to imitate speech. The widely distributed common hill myna is the one most frequently seen in aviculture. Demand outstrips captive breeding capacity, so they are rarely found in pet stores and usually purchased directly from breeders or importers who can certify the birds are traded legally.
This species is widely distributed and locally common, and if adult stocks are safeguarded, it is able to multiply quickly. On a worldwide scale, the IUCN thus considers the common hill myna a Species of Least Concern. But in the 1990s, nearly 20,000 wild-caught birds, mostly adults and juveniles, were brought into trade each year. In the central part of its range, G. r. intermedia populations have declined markedly, especially in Thailand, which supplied much of the thriving Western market. Its neighbor countries, from where exports were often limited due to political or military reasons, nevertheless supplied a burgeoning domestic demand, and demand in the entire region continues to be very high. In 1992, Thailand had the common hill myna put on CITES Appendix III, to safeguard its stocks against collapsing. In 1997, at the request of the Netherlands and the Philippines, the species was uplisted to CITES Appendix II. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands subspecies G. r. andamanensis and (if valid) G. r. halibrecta, described as "exceedingly common" in 1874, qualified as Near Threatened in 1991. The former is not at all common anymore in the Nicobar Islands and the latter—if distinct—has a very limited range.[10]
Elsewhere, such as on the Philippines and in Laos, the decline has been more localized. It is also becoming increasingly rare in the regions of northeastern India due to capture of fledged birds for the illegal pet trade. In the Garo Hills region, however, the locals make artificial nests of a split-bamboo framework covered with grass, and put them up in accessible positions in tall trees in a forest clearing or at the edge of a small village to entice the mynas to breed there. The villagers are thus able to extract the young at the proper time for easy hand-rearing, making common hill myna farming a profitable, small-scale cottage industry. It helps to preserve the environment, because the breeding birds are not removed from the population, while habitat destruction is curtailed because the mynas will desert areas of extensive logging and prefer more natural forest to plantations. As the mynas can be somewhat of a pest of fruit trees when too numerous, an additional benefit to the locals is the inexpensive means of controlling the myna population: failing stocks can be bolstered by putting out more nests than can be harvested, while the maximum proportion of nestlings are taken when the population becomes too large.[11]
The common hill myna (Gracula religiosa), sometimes spelled "mynah" and formerly simply known as the hill myna or myna bird, is the myna most commonly sighted in aviculture, where it is often simply referred to by the latter two names. It is a member of the starling family (Sturnidae), resident in hill regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia. The Sri Lanka hill myna, a former subspecies of G. religiosa, is now generally accepted as a separate species G. ptilogenys. The Enggano hill myna (G. enganensis) and Nias hill myna (G. robusta) are also widely accepted as specifically distinct, and many authors favor treating the southern hill myna (G. indica) from the Nilgiris and elsewhere in the Western Ghats of India as a separate species.
The common hill myna is a popular talking bird. Its specific name religiosa may allude to the practice of teaching mynas to repeat prayers.
