Scaly-breasted Munia

About the Scaly-breasted Munia

The Scaly-breasted Munia is a tiny import that made itself at home - a chocolate-brown finch-like bird from tropical Asia, the adult wearing dark scalloped "scales" across a white breast. Popular for decades in the cage-bird trade under the name "nutmeg mannikin" or "spice finch", escaped and released birds have founded thriving feral populations in several warm parts of the world, Texas among them.

Munias travel in tight, twittering flocks, working seed heads of grasses and weeds like animated clothespins, bending stems to the ground and shelling seeds with their thick gray bills. Flocks move constantly between weedy lots, park edges, and feeders, calling with soft flute-like "kit-tee" notes that carry surprisingly far for so small a bird.

Youngsters are plain warm brown without any scaling, and since flocks are usually a mix of ages, the anonymous brown birds swirling with the scaled adults often confuse first-time observers.

In Texas the species is established mainly around Houston and other Gulf Coast cities, with records spreading inland; it was added to the official state list in 2014. Whatever one thinks of introduced birds, a fence-line full of munias shelling grass seeds is an undeniably charming sight - a little piece of southeast Asia gone native in the Texas heat.