Page:Bird-lore Vol 05.djvu/23

 8 Bird < Lore

size, being about four or ﬁve feet high; but laying had not commenced. While waiting in ambush for Riﬂe Birds (Birds of Paradise), Scrub Fowls would frequently pass Close by me. runningr over the ground through the scrub, The Scrub Fowl, although the smallest of the three mound— building birds, raises by far the largest mound. The largest, according to the dimensions (maximum diameter ﬁfty feet, height ﬁfteen feet) furnished by Gilbert and Matgilh'vray, must have contained nearly nine thousand cubic feet of matter. Into these immense heaps the Scrub Hen appears to burrow for from six to sixty inches. according to circum~ stances, to deposit her egg—not like the NIallee Hen and the female Scrub Turkey, which open up their mounds for that purpose.

The beautiful buffrtinted eggs most resemble those of the Nlallee Fowl, but are slightly smaller, the shell being extremely thin and fragile. It is said that only one pair of birds frequent the same mound (a point by no means settled), and that the complement of eggs to a clutch is eight or ten. The temperature of llegnpode mounds has been registered at ninety-four or ninety-five degrees‘ or about the same as that recorded for the other species of egg-mounds

EGGVMUUND or THE SCRUE HHVL (.‘lrg/l'mlmr! From a photograph. by I) Le Smir‘l