Munia

Whenever I see a munia I recall a fairy tale I read as a child. While creating the world, our Creator is colouring birds and animals to His liking. He goes through them all, painting them in His favourite colours. All the colours get used up. Just then a small bird pops out from its hiding spot: a munia, looking pitiful without colour. What to do? There are just a few drops of colour left, and He sprinkles them on the bird, endowing it with its spotted colours.

Indeed, it is almost impossible not to like munias. In many families, “munia” is often an affectionate form of addressing children (after “moina” and “tia”, of course!)

In Bangladesh there are five species of munia out of a total of 39 worldwide species. (There is also a related bird, the red avadavat.) Munias are smaller than sparrows, ten centimetres long and weighing twelve grams. They are gregarious birds, staying in groups and often playing with each other.

In my experience, our most common munia is the scaly-breasted munia, which might be the one that inspired the fairy tale. Its backside is reddish brown, with a dark area around the face. Its breast has a red-and-black scale pattern on white background.

It is harder to find the white-rumped munia. I have seen it in the Moulvi Bazar area. It is a darker bird that often eats grains of rice from harvested paddyfields or rice drying areas. We also have black-headed and tricoloured munias which were once classified as the same species and only recently divided into two. They look similar with a black head and dark reddish brown body, except for a white chest patch on the tricoloured one. The Indian silverbill is our fifth munia species, a beige coloured bird named for its shiny beak.

It is delightful to watch a flock of munias eating grass seeds. They land together in the grass and frolic away, jumping hither and thither, chirping busily with each other. Individuals then swing from stalks of grass by their feet. They lean towards an adjacent strand of seeds and slide their beak along it, eating all the seeds and leaving the strand clean. Sometimes two munias quarrel. One of them springs up a foot or two and hovers effortlessly before landing on a different spot where it resumes feasting.

Munias live year-round in our country. They breed during summer and monsoon. Hence, this time of year they are out showing off and looking for mates. Because of their appearance and sweet nature, munias are popular as pets worldwide. The black-headed munia was the national bird of the Philippines before being replaced by the Philippines eagle.

When the winter migrants are gone, munias are a joy to watch as they fly synchronously, undulating like a graceful wave. Rain brings fresh grass in fields that dried over winter. You can find munias in such fields as well as in wooded areas. I have seen them in the fields of Bashundhara, Purbachol and Keraniganj, as well as in parks such as the Botanical Garden and Baridhara Lakeside Park.

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