D620   Face of an Australian scrub / brush turkey in the wild. Male scrub turkeys construct a huge mound using vegetation from the forest floor that they scratch together into a heap that can be several metres in diameter and more than a metre high. Once a female has laid her eggs in the mound, she has nothing more to do with her offspring. The male bird continually checks the temperature of the mound and adds or removes vegetation as required to maintain the correct temperature for successful incubation of the eggs. When they hatch, the tiny chicks claw their way to the surface of the mound, and from the moment that they emerge into the daylight they are on their own in the big wild world around them

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