Top 10 Smartest Talking Birds In The World
By • Last Updated7. Hill Myna
Hill mynas are among the best talking birds found throughout Southeast Asia, renowned for their remarkable ability to mimic human voices with precision. In addition to human speech, they can produce a wide variety of whistles, wails, and screeches.
The two primary species of hill mynas are the great Indian hill myna and the common hill myna. These species are particularly skilled at vocal mimicry, often imitating human speech with remarkable tone and quality. While some other species, such as the Southern hill myna, also possess talking abilities, their clarity does not match that of the great Indian or common hill mynas.
The common hill myna, sometimes spelled “mynah” and previously known simply as the hill myna, is the most frequently encountered species in aviculture, often referred to by these simpler names. This bird belongs to the starling family and inhabits hilly regions across South and Southeast Asia. The Sri Lanka hill myna, once classified as a subspecies of G. religiosa, is now widely recognized as a separate species, G. ptilogenys. Additionally, the Enggano hill myna and Nias hill myna are accepted as distinct species, with many experts considering the Southern hill myna from the Nilgiris and the Western Ghats of India as a separate species as well.
Characterized by a stocky build, the common hill myna is a jet-black bird adorned with bright orange-yellow patches of bare skin and fleshy wattles on the sides of its head and nape. At approximately 29 cm in length, it is slightly larger than the common myna.
Its plumage exhibits an overall green-glossed black color, with a purple sheen on the head and neck. The large white wing patches are prominent in flight but mostly concealed when the bird is perched. The bill and strong legs are bright yellow, and yellow wattles are present on the nape and beneath the eye. These wattles are distinctly shaped compared to the naked eye patches of the common and bank mynas, with subtle variations among the different hill myna species from South Asia. In the common hill myna, the wattles extend from the eye to the nape and merge together, whereas the Sri Lanka hill myna features a single wattle across the nape that extends slightly toward the eyes. In the Southern hill myna, the wattles are separate and curve toward the top of the head. The Nias and Enggano hill mynas differ in the details of their facial wattles and bill size.