THE TALEGALLA 
Talegalla lathami. 
Plate XL. 
In the whole economy of the class of birds, there is nothing more remarkable than the reproduction of the 
family of the Megapodes ( Alegapodidw), to which the Talegalla, or, as the Australian colonists call it, the 
Brush-Turkey belongs. 
Instead of hatching their eggs by incubation in a nest, the whole of these birds, so far as their habits are 
yet known, construct a mound of earth, leaves, grass, sand, or other materials capable of generating and 
retaining heat, in which the eggs are buried by the female, and carefully watched by the male until matured. 
The young birds then issue forth stout, strong, and so fully feathered as to be capable of flight on the first or 
second day of their existence. 
The male Talegalla, when the time of breeding is at hand, on being removed into an enclosure with an 
abundance of vegetable material within reach, begins to throw it up into a heap behind him, by a scratching 
kind of motion of his powerful feet, which projects each footful as he grasps it to a considerable distance in 
the rear. As he begins to work at the outer margin of the inclosure, the material is thrown inwards in 
concentric circles, until sufficiently near the spot selected for the mound to be jerked upon it. As soon as the 
mound is risen to the height of about four feet, both birds work in reducing it to an even surface, and then 
begin to excavate a depression in the centre. In this in due time, the eggs are deposited as they are laid, and 
arranged in a circle, about fifteen inches below the summit of the mound, at regular intervals, with the 
smaller end of the egg pointing downwards. The male bird watches the temperature of the mound very 
carefully. The eggs are generally covered, but a cylindrical opening is always maintained in the centre of the 
circle for the purpose of giving air to them, and probably to prevent the danger of a sudden increase of heat 
from the action of the sun or accelerated fermentation of the mound itself. In hot days the eggs are nearly 
uncovered two or three times between morning and evening. 
On the young bird chipping out of the egg, it remains in the mound for at least twelve hours without 
making any effort to emerge from it, being at that time almost as deeply covered up as the rest of the eggs. 
On the second day it comes out, with each of its wing feathers well developed in a sheath which soon 
bursts, but apparently without inclination to use them, its powerful feet giving it ample means of locomotion 
at once. Early in the afternoon, the young bird retires to the mound again, and is partially covered up for 
the night by the assiduous father, but at a diminished depth as compared with the circle of eggs from which 
it emerged in the morning. On the third day, the nestling is capable of strong flight, and on one occasion one 
of the young birds in the Society’s Gardens, being accidentally alarmed, actually forced itself, while on the 
wing, through the meshes of the strong netting which covered the inclosure. 
Besides the Talegalla two other members of the same group of birds are found in Australia—namely, the 
Ocellated Leipoa in Western and Southern Australia, and a species of llegapode (Megapodius tumulus, Gould), 
in Northern Australia. The remaining species of the family are mostly scattered over the great Papuan and 
Indian Islands, reaching on one side to the Nicobar Islands in the Gulf of Bengal, and on the other to the 
Philippines. 
