Bush-turkey Madness

In keeping with my great tradition of writing informative blogs about local wildlife; the time has come to speak about one of our most important - as it is such a big part of day-to-day life in this area - members of the fauna.

The Bush-turkey (also know as Brush-turkey / Scrub-turkey) is defined as follows on Wikipedia:

"...a common, widespread species of mound-building bird from the family Megapodiidae found in eastern Australia from Far North Queensland to Illawarra in New South Wales. It has also been introduced to Kangaroo Island in South Australia. It is the largest extant representative of the family Megapodiidae and is one of three species to inhabit Australia. Despite its name, the bird is not closely related to American turkeys."

This is it here:

For a closer look:

This is possibly the dumbest bird alive. Have chosen to call it bush-turkey as this is a play on words; turkeys are stupid - someone called "Bush" is also pretty unintelligent, hence hubby have nicknamed all bush-turkeys "George." As in "Dammit, another George in the garden!" Or "Look at what the Georges' have done to our driveway!" Etcetera.

It is, in fact, a total mystery that there are so many of them. With a tendency to hop out right in front of cars, on top of what we have assumed to be extremely poor vision (highly unusual for birds) - as well as a tendency to make loads of noise - one would think this pitiful circumstances under which to thrive. But thrive, they nonetheless do.

Their favourite activity (when not hopping out in front of cars, which they then cannot see) and their main purpose in life is to scratch. Preferably leaves, dirt, planted garden beds, and so on. Highlight of their lives is if they may scratch this stuff from side of road or path - and ONTO actual path. May I use a few pictures taken in our garden yesterday to illustrate:

The bush-turkey, or George, has stood on side of path for what must have been hours - and systematically scratched dirt in general direction of bricked path (which was, by the way, carefully weeded and swept last week).

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot... until the desired result has been achieved. Serving absolutely zero purpose to anyone.

You often see them sitting in trees:

This behaviour (sitting in trees for hours on end) is usually displayed because the bush-turkey is avoiding other bush-turkeys. Whenever you see this, there is always another one standing below the tree, scratching and waiting.

Eventually the first bush-turkey (the one in the tree) must make a move, or else starve to death. When this moment comes it sounds almost like herd of elephants stampeding across garden - as the bush-turkeys make a mad dash for the next tree / roof / fence.

You can have a little harmless fun by sneaking up on one.
This is unbelievably easy to do, as they are nearly blind (my theory) or just plain oblivious to what goes on around them. You will get very close, am talking within a metre of the animal. Then you can stamp foot lightly, say "hello" or anything else that will draw the bush-turkeys attention to your presence. It will become terrified, make clucking noises and run away as fast as it can. Which looks hilarious.

Not to worry.
No bush-turkey is ever harmed by this. It will simply run a few metres, stop, look around - fail to see you - and start scratching again.