An angry-looking myna bird has become a viral video star after landing directly in front of a highway traffic camera in New Zealand.
The black-and-yellow tropical bird stares curiously into the camera overlooking a section of road near Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, its beak open as it appears to squawk loudly. It then flies off before returning for a few more seconds.
The video was posted on Facebook on Oct. 21 by the New Zealand Transport Agency, which operates the cameras and joked that the bird “needs to myna its own business.”
“The myna bird is a pest in New Zealand — it’s aggressive towards our native birds, destroying their nests, eating native fruit, and taking over other birds’ territory, so this definitely wasn’t a welcome cameo on our cameras,” the agency said.
Myna birds, which have the ability to mimic human speech and are often kept as pets, are native to Asia. First introduced to New Zealand in the 1860s, by the mid-20th century they had spread across the North Island and begun to disrupt local ecosystems, leading them to be classified as an invasive species.
“A myna annoyance like this can make the roads a bit tricky to see,” the agency said. “Thankfully the myna didn’t stick around long and our bird’s eye view of the road was soon restored.”
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