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Updated: May 11, 2025
The flesh of the 'Megapodius' is dark and flavorless, being a mass of hard muscle and sinew. birds, which may be called game, are not numerous. Fish are in abundance, and in great varieties; some of them of strange form and singular brilliancy of coloring. The grey mullet, the bream a fish much resembling in general appearance the English pike and several others, are excellent eating.
Numbers of Nicobar pigeons left the island as we approached, having apparently used it merely as a roosting-place. Heavy showers and thunderclouds passed over at intervals during the whole morning, rendering our shooting not quite so successful as it might have been; still we procured about fifty pigeons and a few of Duperrey's megapodius.
Of this rubbish the Megapodius forms immense mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty or thirty feet in diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparative ease, by means of their large feet, with which they can grasp and throw backwards a quantity of material.
They are all characterised by very large feet and long curved claws, and most of the species of Megapodius rake and scratch together all kinds of rubbish, dead leaves, sticks, stones, earth, rotten wood, etc., until they form a large mound, often six feet high and twelve feet across, in the middle of which they bury their eggs.
The megapodius or mound-maker, an ash-coloured bird about the size of a small fowl, grasps sand or soil in the hollow of a powerful claw, and throws it backwards into mounds six feet high, wherein the eggs are deposited, to be hatched by this natural incubator, through the heat of the vegetable matter contained in the rubbish heap.
The maternal instinct of the megapodius ceases with the laying of eggs, and, having supplied a safe cradle for the rising generation, she takes no further thought for her precocious progeny, capable of securing a livelihood in the unknown world from the moment of their first appearance in public.
The noise made by this megapodius while scratching among the dead leaves for food may sometimes be imitated with such success as to bring the bird running up within gunshot. When suddenly forced to rise from the ground it flies up into a tree, and remains there motionless, but exceedingly vigilant, ready to start on the approach of anyone, but on other occasions it trusts to its legs to escape.
I now recollected having heard from Mr Hooker of a bird called the megapodius, which lays its eggs in large heaps. It is said that a number of birds make these mounds together. For this purpose they are furnished with large feet and long curved claws, to enable them to scrape up the dirt and rubbish.
They are from South America; the tinamous, from the warmer parts of the Continent; and the megapodius, of Australia and the Asiatic islands. It now remains for the visitor to notice a few of the paintings suspended in this compartment, above the wall cases. These paintings include a copy of Klingstad's portrait of Peter I. of Russia, three historical portraits, presented to the museum by the Rev.
The 'Megapodius Tumulus' is also worthy of mention, on account of the surprising structure of its nest. Some that I have measured are upwards of thirty feet in diameter at the base, and rise at the natural angle to a height of fifteen feet or more. It is wonderful how birds so comparitively diminutive can accumulate so large a pile. These birds live in pairs, and several pairs use the same mound.
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