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ABC Radio Interview about brush-turkeys in Sydney, August 1st, 2023
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Why they are amazing
- The Ancient Brush-Turkey: A Unique Approach to Incubation: Brush-turkeys, with a lineage spanning at least 1.3 million years in Australia, are truly ancient birds. Unlike other birds that incubate their eggs by sitting on them, brush-turkeys employ an unconventional method. They create large mounds of organic matter—composed of decomposing vegetation—and rely on the heat generated by this process for incubation.
- The Mound Builders: Male brush-turkeys play a pivotal role in this process. They meticulously construct mounds of the right size and composition to achieve the optimal incubation temperature. These devoted males then regulate the temperature daily for several months, adjusting the mound material as needed. Both male and female brush-turkeys possess temperature sensors in their beaks to assess the warmth of the mound.
- Self-Sufficient Chicks: Remarkably, brush-turkey chicks receive no parental care whatsoever. From birth, they are essentially orphans, yet they instinctively know how to fend for themselves. After hatching, they face the challenge of digging through layers of soil and leaf litter—a task that takes nearly two days. But what happens next? How do they survive without parental guidance or protection?
- Eggshell Innovation: Brush-turkey eggs defy the odds when incubated in mounds teeming with bacteria. Their eggshells are coated with tiny nanoparticles of calcium carbonate, which reduce bacterial penetration. This unique adaptation ensures the survival of their precious offspring.
- Temperature and Sex Ratios: Incubation temperature influences the sex ratios of hatching. Warm mounds tend to yield more female hatchlings, while cooler mounds favour males. It’s a fascinating phenomenon that adds to the brush-turkey’s mystique.
- Ecosystem Engineers: Beyond their intriguing reproductive strategies, brush-turkeys serve as ecosystem engineers. By turning over leaf litter, they create air pockets in the soil, enhancing decomposition and nutrient release. This benefits plant growth and reduces leaf litter accumulation, potentially mitigating bushfire intensity. Additionally, brush-turkeys disperse native tree seeds and occupy a crucial niche in the natural food chain, serving as both predator and prey.
Read “Amazing Annoying Birds” to find out more about these native birds from an ancient Australian lineage.
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Why they are perceived as annoying
While brush-turkeys just want to feed and incubate their eggs, their activities can pose the following challenges and quirks to the human-bird interaction in gardens and neighbourhoods, especially for those citizens who cherish well-maintained outdoor spaces:
- Garden Damage During Mound-building: During 6-8 months of the year, when brush-turkeys construct their mounds in gardens or backyards, they can wreak havoc on the landscape. Within a brief span of time, a garden may lose most of its mulch, topsoil, and plants—all heaped into a sizable mound, sometimes as large as a compact car. While this mound-building behaviour serves as the birds’ natural incubation method, it often clashes with the preferences of gardeners. These green-thumbed enthusiasts endure financial losses and emotional distress as they witness their cherished gardens suffer.
- Access Issues and Unsightly Mess: When brush-turkeys construct their mounds near pathways leading to building entrances or emergency exits, it creates potential access problems. The leaf litter strewn across these paths becomes a slippery hazard for pedestrians and can be quite an eyesore.
- Garden Damage During Feeding: While foraging, these feathered excavators vigorously rake the ground in search of invertebrates and seeds. Unfortunately, their enthusiastic digging can wreak havoc on both vegetable and ornamental gardens. Gardeners often find their carefully nurtured plants uprooted and dishevelled.
- Potted Plant Predilections: Brush-turkeys harbour a particular fondness for potted plants. They eagerly delve into the soil, seeking out tubers—their prized delicacy. Unfortunately, this culinary exploration can leave potted plants looking worse for wear.
- Roosting and Droppings: At night, brush-turkeys gather in groups and roost high up in trees. However, their droppings can pose slipping hazards on walkways or driveways positioned directly underneath these communal roosting spots.
- Intimidation Factor: Some residents, particularly small children and elderly individuals, feel intimidated by these sizable birds—especially if they’ve never encountered them before. It’s worth noting that brush-turkeys have no history of attacking people, but their boldness can lead them to approach humans, especially if they’ve been previously fed.
- Tail-Pecking Males: During the breeding season, male brush-turkeys may follow small dogs and peck at their tails. This behaviour stems from their natural instinct to defend their mounds. In the wild, they often peck at the tails of natural predators like monitor lizards.
Chicken Troubles: Owners of free-ranging chickens have their own set of complaints. Brush-turkeys not only pilfer chicken food but occasionally harass the chickens themselves.
Read “Amazing Annoying Birds” to hear the voices of managers who have to deal with such conflict, and those affected by it throughout the year.
Why they are returning now
The Brush-Turkey’s Struggle for Survival
In the early 20th century, brush-turkeys faced a precarious situation. They were considered exceedingly rare around cities and were even on the brink of extinction. Several factors contributed to this decline:
- Hunting Pressure: Brush-turkeys were indiscriminately hunted year-round. People sought their meat and feathers, and eggs were taken from nests. Several cookbooks from that time feature recipes for brush-turkeys. Additionally, adult turkeys were poisoned to prevent crop damage.
- Habitat Loss: The clearing of their native habitat significantly impacted brush-turkey populations. As forests, especially rainforests, were transformed into urban areas or agricultural land, suitable habitats dwindled.
- Introduced Predators: Invasive species like cats and foxes preyed upon brush-turkeys, exacerbating their decline.
A Positive Turnaround
Fortunately, change was on the horizon. In the latter half of the 20th century, hunting restrictions were put in place, allowing brush-turkeys to slowly reclaim their former range. Even in urban environments, these resourceful birds adapted, finding niches in leafy areas of major cities like Sydney and Brisbane.
The ban on hunting, combined with increased fox control, played a crucial role in their resurgence, allowing brush-turkeys to thrive once again. Their story serves as a testament to the importance of conservation efforts and the resilience of nature.
Read “Amazing Annoying Birds” to find our more reasons why they are returning to our suburbs, and be shocked or amused by an extract of a cookbook that features brush-turkey recipes.
Why they are important
1. Mental Well-being: The COVID pandemic has demonstrated the importance of urban wildlife for mental well-being. Brush-turkeys offer the opportunity to watch some fascinating and unique behaviours up close, right at ground level and close to people. Such connections with native wildlife have been shown to boost moods and combat anxiety and depression. Many people cherish the opportunity to have brush-turkeys up close, and in 2021, they even voted these birds as the 5th most popular bird in Australia (The Guardian “Bird of the Year” Poll).
2. Ecosystem Engineers:
When raking and shifting leaf litter, brush-turkeys create pockets of air in the soil, and they also speed up the decomposition of litter and thus the release of nutrients into the soil. All of this greatly benefits the growth of plants. In addition, they greatly reduce the amount of leaf litter, and it is likely that this also reduces the fuel load for unwanted bushfires.
Brush-turkeys also help our ecosystems by dispersing seeds of the many fruit they like to eat, often far away from the shading parent plant, where the seeds have a better chance of survival. These birds are also part of the natural food chain – they eat termites, centipedes and other creepy crawlies, and they get eaten by powerful owls and other birds of prey that we try to encourage in our neighbourhoods.
And did you know? Brush-turkeys keep the snakes away! Read up why, and other details about their roles in our ecosystem, in “Amazing Annoying Birds”.
Significance for indigenous people
Brush-turkeys hold a significant place in Aboriginal lore and stories, and are an important totem animal for many Indigenous clans. Please read my book “Amazing Annoying Birds” to hear the traditional stories told to me by Darug man Dr. Shane Smithers, who has given me cultural permission to share his ancestors’ lores in this book. Find out how and why the brush-turkey, with its habit of hatching from a mound of earth, symbolises life emerging from the Earth and has such an important ceremonial role as a symbol of creation for many Aboriginal people.
How you deter brush-turkeys
If brush-turkeys are causing too much destruction in your garden, there are a number of deterrents you can try to lure them away from your prized plants:
- Do not attract them: Remove all food sources, such as open compost heaps, bird feeders, or pet food that is left outside. You may also need to remove all sources of water, even though these benefit other wildlife as well.
- Protect your plants: Use tree guards around sensitive plants or seedlings. Use pebbles instead of mulch, and place large branches or, even better, vertical stakes, between your plants to stop the brush-turkeys from raking. Raised garden beds can protect your plants, as can Vegepods or similar enclosed structures to grow your plants in.
- Deter the birds from coming: Some people report success with spraying the birds with a hose, several times a day, or using an automated sprinkler system that sprays water at them every time they walk past. Be watchful early in the breeding season, which is July/August in Sydney and May/June further north. This is when the males start building their mounds and it is the only time when you can still remove these incubators and deter the birds by spraying them with water. Once a male has established his mound, he will be determined to stay and it will also become illegal to remove the mound once it contains eggs.
- Control mound-building: Early in the breeding season, when the females have not yet laid eggs in the mound, it is legal to either remove the mound all-together, or prune some branches above the mound. The males prefer a shady location for their mound and may move on if too much sun reaches the mound. Also cover any loose piles of mulch or garden clippings with a heavy tarp, to not encourage mound-building. If you have a large property, you may dedicate a far corner to these birds and provide them with a pile of mulch or garden clippings. They may move there and take it over, as you have already done some of the work for them.
- Time your gardening: Try planting sensitive plants in the non-breeding season, which is from about February to June/July. Also plan your garden in stages, so that you can pay more attention to protecting individual plants while they are still small and more fragile.
- Choice of plants: If you would like to plant flowering ground cover, choose species that provide a thick ground cover with flowers. Examples include plants from the prostrate grevillea family, clumping lomandra and dianellagrasses.
PLEASE REMEMBER: Brush-turkeys are native birds and protected by law. Harming the adults, chicks or eggs can incur penalties of up to $133,000 in QLD and $22,000 in NSW.
Please read “Amazing Annoying Birds” to find out more details about deterrents, including those that are doubtful or harmful to these birds.
How you can help brush-turkeys
Limping birds: Rescue organisations often receive reports of brush-turkeys with an injured leg. They tell us that often it is better to wait before intervening because the birds cope quite well in adapting to their leg injuries As long as the bird is observed still feeding itself, it is better to leave it alone. We have heard of several instances where a liming brush-turkey healed itself and walked normally again after some weeks. However, a call to a wildlife hotline is warranted if there is a serious threat to a brush-turkey’s wellbeing or if the animal is suffering from bad injuries and requires euthanasia.
Entanglement: With their long claws, brush-turkeys often become entangled in fishing lines or other strings. Please remove any such lines or strings you find lying around, and report any brush-turkeys that need these strings removed.
Helping chicks survive: The majority of chicks in suburban areas get killed by cats. Please ensure your cats are kept indoors.This not only protects brush-turkey chicks, but also a number of other native birds and small mammals.
Feeding brush-turkeys: Please refrain from feeding these birds. They are very capable of finding their own food, and your food may not match the variety of food they consume naturally, thus making them sick. Also, the population of local brush-turkeys will quickly increase and reach a size that it would not reach in a natural situation without additional food. In cities, this will cause more conflicts with people and lead to more calls to get rid of them. In bushland, too many brush-turkeys scratching for food will disturb the soil so much that new saplings cannot grow. As a result, there will be fewer plants covering the ground, leading to soil erosion.
While supplementary food is undesirable, you may like to provide a bowl of drinking water on the ground, especially during droughts and heat waves. The brush-turkeys and all other native species will appreciate it. Remember to place a tall rock in your bowl to allow smaller birds to find refuge if they become waterlogged while bathing, and to change your bowl’s water frequently.
Brush-turkey relatives
Brush-turkeys belong to a small group of birds called megapodes. There are 22 species of megapodes and they only occur in the Australo-Pacific region. They are also the only birds world-wide that use external heat sources rather than body heat for incubation. In addition, they are the only birds in which the young receive no parental care after hatching.
In Australia, we have three species of megapodes: the brush-turkey, malleefowl (in inland Australia) and orange-footed scrubfowl (in northern QLD). They all build mounds for incubating their eggs.
Outside Australia, megapodes occur from the NIcobar Islands (India) in the West to the Tonga islands in the East. Some are also mound builders, but others, such as the maleo in Sulawesi, dig burrows in warm sand and deposit their eggs in there. They use solar heat for incubation. A third group uses volcanoes as incubators, such as the Polynesian megapode (Malau) featured in my book “Volcanic Adventures in Tonga”.
All megapode chicks live completely independently and are highly precocial. They instinctively know what to eat, where to hide and which native predators to watch out for. While chick mortality is high, the females can also lay more eggs than other birds as they do not have to sit on them for incubation or rear their young.
Most megapodes are now endangered, threatened by habitat destruction, introduced predators, and in some species such as the Polynesian megapode also by human consumption of their eggs. Unfortunately, our Australian malleefowl is also threatened by habitat destruction, introduced predators and frequent fires. You may like to visit the website of the National Malleefowl Recovery Group.
For a detailed account of our Australian mound-building birds, you can read “Moundbuilders” (CSIRO Publishing, Darryl Jones & Ann Göth, 2008). This book is out of print, but available as ebook or from libraries.
Malleefowl. Photo: Jessica VanderWaag