Starlings and Mynas

This is the group Indians look at most and see least. Common Myna is on every roof and every rubbish heap in the country, and familiarity has made the whole family invisible along with it — which is a pity, because behind that one ubiquitous bird sit twenty-one others, several of them scarce, a few of them spectacular, and one of them among the most accomplished vocal mimics on earth.

They are sociable and noisy and they concentrate, which is what makes them workable. A fruiting fig or a flowering silk-cotton will hold a mixed crowd of starlings for days; an evening roost can run to thousands. And in the hot months they come to water — reliably, repeatedly, and with none of the caution a raptor or a gamebird would show. Both photographs on this page are of birds at something they cannot resist: one pair in a water bowl, one bird reaching for fruit. Find what the birds are going to and wait there.

The trouble with the group is that several species are separated by details that need a close view — bill colour, the exact shade of a head, the amount of white in a wing — and some pairs are split geographically rather than by anything you can see. Where you are standing can matter as much as what you are looking at.