I'll never forget my first
visit to Noosa. As soon as I got there I headed for the national
park and
within minutes I was happy to discover a wild brush turkey
in the rainforest. I felt really clever and proud of myself
for my nature-finding skills. Then I went down to busy Hastings
Street with its shops and tourists and got a better idea
about how clever I'd been. It turned out that brush turkeys
were everywhere, wandering the street, strolling down the
footpath and even pausing by cafes. In fact the birds were
so common that some of the locals were tired of them wrecking
their gardens.
The truth is that these birds are more
common in the steamy northern rainforests than the cooler,
drier areas down south. But the sheer number of the birds
there still surprised me.
Brush turkeys are ground-dwelling birds
although they can fly if they need to. In the bush you'll
see them scratching around the damp ground looking for insects,
fruit and seeds. |
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The flattened tail is one
of the things
about brush turkeys that makes
them easy to recognise |
|
An unsual white (albino?) brush
turkey |
What do they look like?
Brush turkeys are big black birds, about
70 cm long with a red head and neck. At the base of the neck
there's a frilly yellow bit (bigger and more noticeable in
the male). The tail is black and flattened into a vertical
plane like a ship’s rudder. Occasionally people see a
white brush turkey, like the one in the photo above. I don't
know if those birds are albinos or not.
Where do you find them?
They live along a mainly coastal strip
from about Sydney to the northern-most tip of Queensland on
Australia's east coast. The furthest south I've seen them is
in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the northern edge of
Sydney. They used to be more widespread but the clearing of
rainforests, plus people shooting them illegally, have reduced
their range. |
What's the big deal about the nests
then?
Brush turkeys make huge nests. The male
flicks loose leaves (or it might be someone's carefully-planted
vegetable garden) from the ground with his feet, building the
stuff up
into an impressive
large
mound.
By
the time he's finished he has a pile of leaf material about
a metre
high
and 4 metres across. |
| Just like in a
compost heap, the leaf material starts to decompose and the
fermentation creates
heat which - you guessed it - incubates the eggs. The bird
makes sure things don't get too hot though - he wants the eggs
incubated, not hard-boiled. To test the temperature of the
mound he digs a hole and sticks his head in it, like the bird
in the photo above and at right. If it's too hot he digs up
bits of the mound and releases excess heat to ensure a nice
egg-friendly temperature. |
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| The female is allowed onto the mound
for mating and egg laying. The female digs a small hole in
it, lays its egg and then scratches some leaves over it.
This goes on every two or three days until there are a couple
of dozen eggs.
About 50 days later, the chicks start hatching
and fight their way to the surface. They scamper off into
the bush and look after themselves, living alone.
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