Since I mulched large areas of my garden, a pair of these guys have become daily visitors, scratching my carefully-laid mulch into places I didn’t intend.
Unsurprisingly, not all gardeners welcome them. But I do. What unique birds!
These are not closely related to American turkeys, instead belonging to the Australasian/Wallacean megapode (‘big foot’) family.
Megapodes don’t build conventional nests, instead relying on natural sources of heat to incubate the eggs.
The Australian Brush-turkey does so by raking up a mound of leaves (often 5 or more metres across) and relying on wet-season rains to saturate it, creating a giant compost heap inside which they lay their eggs.
I haven’t found the mound of the pair to which this one belongs.
Assuming it is the same pair I’ve been seeing from time to time over the last four years, they’ve only just acquired adult colours, so maybe they don’t yet have an incubation mound.
Or if they do, it might be hidden in some tolerant person’s backyard.