Australian palm turkey
ABOUT
Talk turkey. Large and bright, Australian brush turkeys (also known as bush turkeys or scrub turkeys) are hard to miss. A colorful head sits above a black body supported by strong legs and wide feet intended for digging. A clumsy flier, bush turkeys cannot fly long distances, flying only when threatened by predators or perching in trees at night and during the hottest times of the day.
Down Under showstopper. Males weigh more than 5 pounds (2,450 grams) and females are slightly smaller at about 4.8 pounds (2,210 grams). The body is covered with dark, blue-black feathers, topped by a bare red head and a yellow throat-plaster (birds in the northern areas of the range have these light green). Females and young birds have dull yellow wattles. The bird’s underside has many white feathers, its tail is large, fan-like and flattened on one side. Their beak is black and hooked. Outside the breeding season, the male’s wattles shrink and lose some of their bright color.
Australian feathered turkeys don’t look much like their parents as they are small, plump birds with dark brown plumage. They grow quickly and within a few months the chicks will have dull blue-black plumage and a characteristic upright tail. Its head and neck will become a dark pink hairless color.
I want to be alone. However, solitary and shy by nature, these birds will spend the night in communal tree nests. Australian bush turkeys live in highland tropical forests and in moist forests near the coast. They can be seen in drier bushland inland. The bird also frequents urban wooded areas and has been known to colonize backyard compost piles as potential sites in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia.
ENVIRONMENT AND DIET
Get out of my garden! Australian bush turkeys that venture into urban or suburban areas may encounter humans when trying to find a possible mound location. When digging up leaf litter, twigs and dirt suitable for mound construction, they can create piles of yards, gardens and parks. They may also try to steal mulch to make their own docks. They are part of the staple diet of Australia’s aboriginal people. Non-human predators of birds include dingoes, dogs, snakes and goannas (a type of monitor lizard). Fragmentation of their habitat is increasingly bringing Australian turkeys into human-inhabited areas.
Choose a quick meal. Bush turkeys are omnivores, eating insects, fallen fruit, and seeds that they find by raking leaf litter with their feet or breaking up rotten logs.
FAMILY LIFE
Birds of few words. Generally quiet, Australian bush turkeys can growl softly. Males have a deep, three-note booming call.
Take the mound. When it comes to courtship, it’s the male’s ability to build and build that matters. Male acacias become much larger during the breeding season, often swinging from side to side as they run. During mating and nesting season, the male’s head and wattles also become much more brightly colored.
The Australian bush turkey is one of the continent’s three “mound builders.” After mating, the male builds a mound by collecting soil, leaves, and other substrate materials with his powerful feet. The mound can be up to 3 feet tall and 13 to 16 feet in diameter. Females choose males at least partly based on the quality of the mound. They may visit many mounds before choosing one. If a mound is particularly attractive, more than one female will lay dozens of eggs in a mound!
Egg them. Those eggs are laid over a period of several days, and the female sometimes lays eggs in different mounds to increase the changes that help her offspring survive. Heat is generated by the decomposition of moist organic matter in the mound of soil used to incubate the eggs. The optimal incubation temperature is about 91 degrees F (33 degrees C), which male feathered turkeys maintain by removing and adding layers to the mound. After the eggs are laid, the male chases the female away and covers the eggs with dirt.
After hatching, the chicks spend their first two days crawling over the mound to the surface of the water. Part of the Megapodiidae family, the chicks of this bird are precocial: they can fly from the moment they emerge from the mound. Since bush turkeys are almost independent from the start, the possibility of death is very high. A bird’s chance of surviving to adulthood is only 1/200!
Nesting nests are maintained (and defended) by the male for nearly a year as they are used by many females.
CONSERVE
Increase again. Although they are now quite common, Australian brush turkeys were nearly extinct in the 1930s, when the Great Depression made these easy-to-hunt birds a reliable source of meat and eggs for humans. Birds’ habitats are becoming increasingly fragmented, which could push them into densely populated areas where their digging could cause conflict.
