Breaking News: Nest in Garden

In a previous post it was hinted (by me) that bush-turkeys do what they do (mostly scratching) for no reason and serving no purpose to anyone. Must hereby withdraw this statement. As it turns out, their actions are very deliberate. Atleast this time of year. Nest-building time of year.

Garden, ten minutes ago:

Bush-turkey surveying progress on the right hand side of picture, at top end of nest:

This may appear to be nothing but a hot compost. Hubby briefly tried to pretend that it, indeed, was a compost heap - since he lives here he practically built it himself.

For the purposes of the blog, however, am going to remain as close to the truth as possible. Where this enormous heap of leaves now lies, there used to be nothing but a small flower bed. Covered in weeds of course, but still.

You see, have googled this. Am now something of an expert on the breeding habits of bush-turkeys. They build gigantic nests exactly like the one pictured above and place the eggs underneath it so that they (the eggs) can be in constant temperature of 30-33 degrees. Building these skyscrapers of the bird-world obviously takes some time, so breeding season goes from around now - until December.

Then we should start to hear the pitter-patter of little claws, should we be so lucky.

We are letting this activity continue as garden is, well, a "work in progress" anyway. To put it kindly.
May as well let the bush-turkeys do all the hard work in terms of clearing and gathering leaves - so it will be easier for us to convert garden into heavenly Bali-inspired retreat as soon as we can get to it. Sometime in the next five years.

Meanwhile, let the bush-turkeys raise their chicks! Who cares! Not us! We are animal lovers and on road to becoming qualified hippies.