In the 1980s, primary school chants really had something to recommend them, with crowd-pleasers like: one one was a racehorse / one two was one too / one one won one race / one two won one too.

But the one that stuck with me went like this: If I was a little bird / I’d like to be a sparra / I’d sit upon Princes Bridge / and shit into the Yarra.

Introduced myna birds have become dominant in Melbourne gardens.

Not because of any desire to further dirty our esteemed river, but because the swarms of chirpy little sparrows are mostly gone now. On Melbourne’s streets and in its backyards, sparrows are a rare sight. Pigeons, yes. Blackbirds too. Seagulls, crows, magpies, rainbow lorikeets sometimes, yes. But what happened to the sparrows?

Was the rise of air-con and the decline of eaves on houses removing safe nesting spots? Or was it our shift away from tangled, overgrown backyards in favour of larger houses and fewer trees?

Both probably contributed. But I like to blame my least favourite birds, the introduced common myna and the native noisy miner. The two species have similar names and are similarly sized, but introduced mynas – yellow beaks, brown bodies, white under the wings........

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