The march of the brush turkey

摘要

AT FIRST ITHOUGHT I was seeing things.There had definitely been no over-indulgence the previous evening, but I nevertheless awoke bleary-eyed to the sight of a very large, blackish bird perched awkwardly on the wall of my upper storey balcony. BecauseI live on Military Road, one of Sydney's busiest thoroughfares, it seemed a strange place for an Australian brush turkey to roost.The natural range of the bird - also known as the bush or scrub turkey - stretches along the east coast from far north Queensland to the Illawarra, south of Sydney. It has never been endangered, but after several centuries of habitat loss and predation by cats and foxes, it did become scarce across large areas.