“P.S.—I have, by cross examination of several natives, elicited the following account of this bird, and I am quite satisfied of its truth.
“There is only one male and one female to each nest: they repair an old nest, and do not build a new one; both assist in scratching the sand to the nest. The female commences laying about the beginning of September, or when the spear-grass begins to shoot. Both sexes approach the nest together when the female is about to lay, and they take an equal share in the labour of covering and uncovering the mound. After every sunrise the female lays an egg, and lays altogether from eight to ten. If the natives rob the nest, the female will lay again in the same nest, but she will only lay the full number of eggs twice in one summer. From the commencement of building, until the last eggs are hatched, four moons elapse (this would give a very long period of time before the eggs were hatched). The young one scratches its way out alone; the mother does not assist it. They usually come out one at a time; occasionally a pair appear together. The mother, who is feeding in the scrub in the vicinity, hears its call and runs to it. She then takes care of the young one as a European hen does of its chick. When the young are all hatched the mother is accompanied by eight or ten young ones, who remain with her until they are more than half-grown. The male bird does not accompany them. The two sexes have different calls: that of the female is constantly uttered while she walks about in the scrub with her young ones.
“The natives frequently find the eggs and nests, but they seldom see the old birds, which are very timid and quick-sighted. They run very fast, like the Emu, roost on trees, and live for a long time without water, but drink when it rains. The natives state that the Entozoæ which I found in the bird mentioned above were unusual, and that it must have been in ill health.
“It is a remarkably stout, compact bird, and appears, when alive, to have as large a body as the female turkey, but it is shorter on the legs.”
To this valuable account I may add the following, furnished by Mr. Gilbert:—
“Wongan Hills, Western Australia, September 28, 1842.
“This morning I had the good fortune to penetrate into the dense thicket I had been so long anxious to visit in search of the Leipoa’s eggs, and had not proceeded far before the native who was with me told me to keep a good look-out, as we were among the Ngou-oo’s hillocks, and in half an hour after we found one, around which the brush was so thick that we were almost running over before seeing it; so anxious was I to see the hidden treasures within that in my haste I threw aside the black fellow and began scraping off the upper part of the mound; this did not at all please him, and he became very indignant, at the same time making me understand, ‘that as I had never seen this nest before I had better trust to him to get out the eggs, or I should, in my haste and impatience, certainly break them.’ I therefore let him have his own way, and he began scraping off the earth very carefully from the centre, throwing it over the side, so that the mound very soon presented the appearance of a huge basin; about two feet in depth of earth was in this way thrown off, when the large ends of two eggs met my anxious gaze; both these eggs were resting on their smaller apex, and the earth around them had to be very carefully removed to avoid breaking the shell, which is extremely fragile when first exposed to the atmosphere; this mound was about three feet in height and seven to nine feet in circumference; the form, as left by the bird, was in outline the segment of a circle. About a hundred yards from this first nest we came upon a second, rather larger, of the same external form and appearance; it contained three eggs. Although we saw seven or eight more mounds, only these two contained eggs; we were too early; a week later and we should doubtless have found many more. To give you an idea of the place this bird chooses for its remarkable mode of rearing its young, I will describe it as nearly as I can:—The Wongan Hills are about thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, in a north-north-east direction from Drummond’s house in the Toodyay; their sides are thickly clothed with a dense forest of Eucalypti; and at their base is a thicket, extending for several miles, of upright-growing and thick, bushy plants, so high in most parts that we could not see over their tops, and so dense, that if we separated only for a few yards, we were obliged to cooey, to prevent our straying from each other; this thicket is again shadowed by a very curious species of dwarf Eucalyptus bearing yellow blossoms and growing from fifteen to thirty feet in height, known to the natives as the spear-wood, and of which they make their spears, digging sticks, dowaks, &c.; the whole formation is a fine reddish ironstone gravel, and this the Leipoa scratches up from several yards around, and thus forms its mound, to be afterwards converted into a hot-bed for the reproduction of its offspring. The interior of the mounds is composed of the finer particles of the gravel mixed with vegetable matter, the fermentation of which produces a warmth sufficient for the purpose of hatching. Mr. Drummond, who had been for years accustomed to hot-beds in England, gave it as his opinion that the heat around the eggs was about 80°. In both the nests with eggs the White Ant was very numerous, making its little covered galleries of earth around and attached to the shell, thus showing a beautiful provision of Nature in preparing the necessary tender food for the young bird when emerging from the shell; one of the eggs I have preserved shows the White Ant’s tracks most beautifully; the largest mound I saw, and which appeared as if in a state of preparation for eggs, measured forty-five feet in circumference, and if rounded in proportion on the top would have been full five feet in height. I remarked in all the nests not ready for the reception of eggs the inside or vegetable portion was always wet and cold, and I imagine, from the state of others, that the bird turns out the whole of the materials to dry before depositing its eggs and covering them up with the soil; in both cases where I found eggs the upper part of the mound was perfectly and smoothly rounded over, so that any one passing it without knowing the singular habit of the bird might very readily suppose it to be an ant-hill: mounds in this state always contain eggs within, while those without eggs are not only not rounded over, but have the centres so scooped out that they form a hollow. The eggs are deposited in a very different manner from those of the Megapodius; instead of each being placed in a separate excavation in different parts of the mound, they are laid directly in the centre, all at the same depth, separated only by about three inches of earth, and so placed as to form a circle. I regret we were so early; had we been a week later, the probability is I should have found the circle of eggs complete. Is it not singular that all the eggs were equally fresh, as if their development was arrested until the full number was deposited, so that the young might all appear about the same time? No one considering the immense size of the egg can for a moment suppose the bird capable of laying more than one without at least the intermission of a day, and perhaps even more. The average weight of the egg is eight ounces, and four of them on being blown yielded nearly a pint and a half. Like those of the Megapodius, they are covered with an epidermis-like coating, and are certainly as large, being three inches and three quarters in length, by two and a half in breadth; they vary in colour from a very light brown to a light salmon. During the whole day we did not succeed in obtaining sight of the bird, although we saw numerous tracks of its feet, and many places where it had been scratching; we also saw its tracks on the sand when crossing the dried beds of the swamps at least two miles from the breeding thicket, which proves that the bird, in procuring its food, does not confine itself to the brushes around its nest, but merely resorts to them for the purpose of incubating. The native informed us that the only chance of procuring the bird was by stationing ourselves in sight of the mound at a little distance, and remaining quiet and immoveable till it made its appearance at sun-down; this I attempted, and, with the native, encamped within twenty yards of the mound about an hour before sunset, taking the precaution to conceal ourselves well with bushes from the quick eye of the bird, but leaving just a sufficient opening to get a fair sight with my gun; in a half-sitting, half-crouching position I thus remained in breathless anxiety for the approach of the bird I had so long wished to see, not daring to move a muscle, for fear of moving a branch or making a noise by crushing a dead leaf, till I was so cramped I could scarcely bear the pain in my limbs; the bird did not however make its appearance, and the native, with the fear of wading through the thicket in darkness (for there was no moon), became so impatient, that he started up and began to talk so loud and make so much noise, that I was compelled to give up all hopes of seeing the bird that night; however, just as we were passing the mound we started the bird from the opposite side, but from the denseness of the thicket and the darkness closing around us, I had no chance of getting a shot at it. Mr. Roe, the Surveyor-general, who examined several mounds during his expedition to the interior in the year 1836, found the eggs nearly ready to hatch in the month of November, and invariably seven or eight in number; while another authority has informed me of an instance of fourteen being taken from one mound.”
In a subsequent letter Mr. Gilbert states that the flavour of the egg is very similar to that of the Tortoise or Turtle, and that when mixed with tea its similarity to the peculiar roughness and earthy flavour of that of the Hawk’s-bill Turtle is very remarkable.
Genus Megapodius, Quoy & Gaim.
The members of this genus inhabit all the Indian and Philippine Islands and Australia. Mr. G. R. Gray informs me that “the females of some species associate together in bands during the night and deposit their eggs in a cavity which they dig to the depth of two or three feet; that the successive deposits of eggs amount to a hundred or more and are left to be hatched by the solar rays; that some cover them with sand and others with the remains of plants; and that the eggs are extremely large for the size of the birds, and are generally of a cinnamon colour.”