Australian Brush turkeys build enormous nest-mounds

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I noticed this large mound of vegetation beside a walking trail. As I walked further, I could hear leaf litter being shovelled and spotted this male Australian Brush Turkey tending to its nest-mound. I returned a few times over the next month and noticed the nestlings had already dug themselves out.
The Australian brush turkey, also known as the bush or scrub turkey, has a bad reputation of tearing up gardens digging for food or building nest-mounds. Loss of their natural habitat brings turkeys into conflict with people. Introduced predators, especially cats, kill many vulnerable brush turkey chicks.
Interesting facts about the Australian Brushturkey:
1. Brush turkeys are the most ancient member of a family that dates back 30 million years and includes chickens, quails, peacocks and pheasants.
2. The largest of these extinct birds weighed 8 kilograms and was about four times the size of today's brush turkey.
3. Their egg incubation process - dumping them in a mound and abandoning them - is an extraordinarily primitive nesting behaviour, closer to a crocodile than a normal bird's.
4. After hatching from their egg they spend the first two days of their life scrambling vertically through a metre of dirt and compost to reach the surface and are immediately independent.
5. During the Great Depression when jobs and food were scarce the brush turkey became a reliable source of meat and eggs and were almost wiped out. The eggs are bigger than a goose egg and are 80 per cent yolk.
Sources:
ABC Science (Anna Salleh, James Bullen)
Birdlife Australia
Australian Brushturkey | Alectura lathami
"Large black bird with a vertically-fanned tail and massive strong legs and feet. Obvious red head. Male develops large yellow pendulous neck wattles (mauve in Cape York subspecies). Endemic resident of tropical rainforests along the eastern coast of Australia. It can be a common in cosmopolitan parks and gardens in places such as Cairns, Brisbane. Roosts at night very high up in trees. Builds large nest-mounds of leaves and mulch." (eBird)
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