The noisy miner is possibly Australia’s most successful native bird species. It is also one of the most hated, as its success has been at the expense of many other species of woodland birds, including several threatened species. For these reasons many people call for the bird to be culled – but does it work? That is exactly what Richard Beggs from the Australian National University is going to figure out as part of a PhD project. Here he explains how this aggressive and territorial bird is causing so much trouble and discusses the challenges of controlling it.