Moluccan foot fowl
This article was based on formal or substantive deficiencies in the quality assurance biology in the section "birds" registered for improvement. This is done in order to bring the quality of the biology articles to an acceptable level. Please help improve this article! Articles that are not significantly improved can be deleted if necessary.
Read the more detailed information in the minimum requirements for biology articles .
| Moluccan foot fowl | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Moluccan big foot chicken ( Megapodius freycinet ) |
||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||
| Megapodius freycinet | ||||||||
| Gaimard , 1823 |
The Moluccan big-footed chicken ( Megapodius freycinet ), also called the Freycinet big-footed chicken, is a 45 cm large chicken bird . The birds have a dark brown back plumage, the head and the belly are colored gray. The skin around the eyes and ears is not covered with plumage. The beak is orange and the legs are reddish in color. There is no gender-specific external coloring of the birds.
Distribution and way of life
The bird lives on the coast of East India, North and Northeast Australia, New Guinea, New Britain, the Solomon Islands, Moluccas, New Hebrides and their offshore islands. There he lives in the dense rainforest, bush and mangrove thickets. Its diet includes various berries, seeds and insects.
Brood
During the breeding season, the rooster builds a brood pile up to 5 meters high and 16 meters wide from plant parts. In these the female lays up to 10 light brown eggs, which are then hatched by the heat of rotting. To regulate the incubation temperature, the bird piles up or removes material. The incubation period is 60–80 days, depending on the habitat of the animals. The fully developed young birds have to free themselves from the nest pile on their own. Then both adult birds guard and care for the brood.
Subspecies
There are several subspecies:
- Megapodius freycinet renwardtii , inhabits Queensland, New Guinea, Lesser Sunda Islands (size: 35 centimeters)
- Megapodius freycinet eremita , occurs on the Bismark Archipelago, the Solomon Islands
Danger
The IUCN lists this species as Least Concern , although no exact inventory of the species is available.
literature
- Philip Whitfield (ed.): The great world empire of the animals. Planet Medien AG, Zug 1992, ISBN 3-8247-8614-1 , pp. 226-227, German. Translation from English.
- Wilhelm owner (ed.), Erna Mohr: Encyclopedia of the animals. Volume 2, Weltbild, Augsburg 1991, ISBN 978-3-89350-361-2 , pp. 304-305.
- Jiří Felix (eds.), Alena Čepická, Jaromír Knotek, Libuše Knotková: Wildlife of Australia and the Antarctic. Translated from the Czech by Ingeborg Šestáková. Arita, Prague 1986, pp. 39-41.
Web links
- Megapodius freycinet inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2012.2. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2013. (English)