|
Re megapodes.
During the 8 years I lived on Bougainville I came across megapodes quite
frequently. Heard far more often than seen. A nest I saw dug out was
between the flanges of a giant forest tree. The locals took 26 eggs out some
buried deeper than a man's arm. My friend was lying on the ground and had
to reach well down inside to get the eggs. I noticed some were lying vertically
rather than horizontally as you might expect. They were laid right around the
tree between all the flanges.
I've also seen birds digging in warm sand on offshore atolls. When I
climbed Mt Balbi last year, signs of megapodes were present to over 1000m.
Mike Tarburton mentions 'eremita' as the species in our area. For an
alternative view Schodde uses 'freycinet' in his 1977 paper on Papuasian
Ornithology.
Neill mentions that the only book he could find when in Honiara was the
small boy scout book. It was the only book except for Mayr's Birds of the
South-west Pacific published in 1945. I wrote Birds of the North Solomons
published by the Wau Ecology Institute in 1981 (I'm currently rewiting it) The
first Field Guide to the area was Doughty's on Birds of The Solomons, Vanuauta
and New Caledonia. A major recent work is Mayr and Diamond's Birds of Northern
Melanesia.
Don Hadden ![]() has notified the sender that this message has been received. |
| 