Next To These Come The Kingfishers, Including Sixteen
Species, Almost All Of Which Are Beautiful, End Many Are Among
The Most Brilliantly-Coloured Birds That Exist.
One of the most curious groups of birds, the Megapodii, or mound-
makers, is very abundant in the Moluccas.
They are gallinaceous
birds, about the size of a small fowl, and generally of a dark
ashy or sooty colour, and they have remarkably large and strong
feet and long claws. They are allied to the "Maleo" of Celebes,
of which an account has already been given, but they differ in
habits, most of these birds frequenting the scrubby jungles along
the sea-shore, where the soil is sandy, and there is a
considerable quantity of debris, consisting of sticks, shells,
seaweed, leaves, &c. Of this rubbish the Megapodius forms immense
mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty or thirty feet in
diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparative ease, by
means of their large feet, with which they can grasp and throw
backwards a quantity of material. In the centre of this mound, at
a depth of two or three feet, the eggs are deposited, and are
hatched by the gentle heat produced by the fermentation of the
vegetable matter of the mound. When I first saw these mounds in
the island of Lombock, I could hardly believe that they were made
by such small birds, but I afterwards met with them frequently,
and have once or twice come upon the birds engaged in making
them.
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