The Mallee Fowl (1957)

An account of the nesting habits of the Mallee Fowl (Leipoa ocellata) a member of the Megapodiidae family of mound builders. These birds do not brood their eggs. They lay them on a bed of organic matter and cover them with a mound of earth, leaving them to be incubated by heat from the fermenting vegetable matter and the natural heat of the Sun.

A Mallee Fowl lays between 10 and 30 eggs each season at the rate of one a week, and each egg takes about eight weeks to hatch. During the entire egg- laying and incubation period, the male is responsible for keeping the egg chamber at a constant temperature.