The
Brush Turkey is one of Australia's three "mound builders". The others
being, the locally found Orange-footed Scrubfowl and the Mallee Fowl in
the southern part of the continent.
They are
solitary in nature and aggressive to each other and to other lesser species.
They are bullies!!
Unlike the Orange-footed
Scrubfowl, Brush Turkeys do not form permanent pair bonds. A successful
male, with a good nest location, mates with many different females during the
breeding season.
By scratching up earth and decaying leaf matter
with their powerful legs the male Brush Turkey builds huge incubation mounds
which can be four metres in diameter and well
over one metre high. They are re-used every year with the dominant bird maintaining
the best locality. After copulating with the female he allows her to deposit
her eggs in the clutch that he exposes. He then aggressively drives her
away and very carefully recovers the eggs with humus. Quite often the eggs
that he tends in his mound have been fertilised by another male. He can
only hope I guess that some other male is reciprocating with his eggs. Incubation temperature is about 33 degrees Celsius.
No parental care is provided to
the young who dig themselves from the mound and can fly within the hour of
hatching.
Large goannas and feral pigs often raid the mounds stealing the eggs and disrupting
the incubation temperature.
Brush Turkeys usually make
themselves unpopular with most people because of their destructive scratching
and aggressive behaviour towards each other and anything else they come into
contact with.
Size
70 Centimetres.
Replay
call
Back
to Bird list
Photographed
and call recorded at Thylogale
by David & Diane Armbrust
Copyright ©
1998 David & Diane Armbrust
Thylogale Nature Refuge
AUSTRALIA
Phone/Fax 07 4094 1600
Intl. +617+4094 1600
Contact us
ABN 33 708 530 113
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