Ground and Underground Nests 



covered with vegetation, whose decay, aided by the sun's 

 rays, completes the process of incubation. 



Although the brush-turkey eschews sitting upon its 

 eggs, the male bird is loath to leave them to Fortune. He 

 displays considerable solicitude for his future chicks. By 

 some wonderful instinct, he knows just when the tempera- 

 ture within the nest is becoming too high or too low. In 

 the former case, he scrapes off the covering from above 

 the eggs and so allows them to cool ; when the tempera- 

 ture falls he adds a covering of leaves. Many times a 

 day he tends his eggs in this manner. Another Australian 

 mound-builder is well provided for by nature. Termites, 

 to their undoing, crowd round the eggs within the mound, 

 without, however, doing them any harm. Why they should 

 do so has not been satisfactorily explained, but their 

 presence is welcomed by the chicks when they hatch, for 

 they serve as the first food of the hungry youngsters. 



The coot, the moorhen and the dabchick all build 

 nests which, to all intents, float upon water, though the 

 moorhen occasionally selects some spot near to, but not 

 upon, the water. Take a stroll along the bank of any tree- 

 bordered stream and notice that where the branches of 

 the overhanging trees touch the water there are, here and 

 there, clumps of vegetation, brought down by the stream 

 and caught in the branches. Most of these masses are 

 merely drift-weed ; some may be the nest of a moorhen. 

 A rudely built structure of grass and other water-side 

 plants, the nest of this bird is frequently anchored to 

 some tree branch, where it dips into the water. Six to 

 eight eggs are laid at a time, yet one may pass nests 

 again and again without seeing a sign of them, for the 

 careful birds always cover them with loose herbage when 

 they leave their nests, unless they are disturbed and com- 

 pelled to leave in a hurry. 



This habit of covering the eggs is common among 

 water-side birds. By some the object is thought to be to 

 retain the warmth during the absence of the mother, but 



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