Quote:
Originally Posted by nightstalker
I've got it nestled up on the hot water system so we''ll see what dosn't happen  |
Hi Graham,
If it transpires that it was a Brush Turkey, nothing would surprise me.
They will sometimes walk many km over a period of weeks. The clutches
are often layed by several females over a period of time, so it may
be that only one female discovered the mound and deposited one egg.
Or as you mentioned, goannas and foxes can predate on them.
The biggest trick of all with the Brush Turkey is that once they lay an
egg, that is it, they leave it on its own. The male may now and then
check the temperature of the mound with its beak and add or remove material
if need be.
The young are remarkable and have to dig their own way out, find somewhere
to hide, learn friend from foe, learn to discover what is food and what is not
and find a tree to roost in for the night all on their own. They are not raised
by their parents. They scurry out of the mound very quickly and that is why they
are rarely seen. This has been the topic of research for animal behaviorists
out of institutions such as Macquarie University here in Sydney. I spent some
time one afternoon with a NPWS Ranger with a radio locating device, trudging
through the bush trying to find a turkey with a radio collar I had spotted.
Turns out there is still a lot of remarkable things that nobody understands about them.
The ranger told me about one they had tracked with a radio collar that had walked
all the way from the Kuring-Gai Chase National Park to the busy Sydney suburb
of Thornleigh. In doing so, it had crossed a railway, a four lane busy freeway, the
Pacific Highway, traversed the downtown shopping center of Hornsby and then through
the streets of suburbia, managing not to get hit by cars, trucks, trains
or injured by domestic animals or humans.
If it is a Brush Turkey egg, they incubate in a very narrow temperature
band. 34C is the normal temperature with 32C at the low end and
36C at the high end.
At 34C, there is more female embryonic mortality and at 36C, more
male embryonic mortality. So temperature can determine whether more
males or females survive.
Apparently they can survive greater temperature excusions in the 20C to
40C range for periods of time.
Brush Turkey eggs are placed vertically in the mound small end down.
Whereas other birds have to turn their eggs in order to ensure
proper development of the embryo, remarkably Australian Brush Turkeys
don't. For comparison, farm chickens will turn their eggs dozens of times
per day.
In any case, it would be interesting to know what type of animal it
was.
.
