Birds Of Sandy Island: 8. The Sandy Island Monarch

THE SANDY ISLAND MONARCH (Neolalage terrestris)

As with the Dwarf Du, the discovery of the Sandy Island Monarch provides a companion to a species previously considered alone in its clade. In this case, the species in question is the Buff-bellied Monarch of Vanuatu, which the Sandy Island species now joins in the genus Neolalage. Though clearly related, several aspects of its niche and behavior expand the niche packing and behavioral potential of not only the genus but of Monarchidae in general. The Sandy Island bird is the only terrestrial monarch sensu stricto; only the grallinines or “mudlarks”, now generally considered to have joined the family’s ranks though some still gift them their own family, have a similar lifestyle among the monarchids. Slightly larger than the Buff-bellied, the monarch of Sandy Island has a shorter tail and longer, lark-like legs. The color pattern is similar to its congener, but with the black and white of the head nearly reversed: a black head with white hindcrown and supralorals, and a white breast-band. The lower breast and back are both marked with short brown streaks. These pattern and shape differences make the bird almost resemble more a chat, antbird, or bunting than a monarch. Juveniles are patterned similarly to juvenile Buff-bellieds, while subadults resemble adults but with spotted rather than streaked underparts.

The most unmonarchly feature of the Sandy Island Monarch is its nest. Even the terrestrial grallinines build mud nests in trees; the Sandy Island Monarch is the only monarchid that nests on the ground. Its oven-shaped nest is constructed from leaf midribs, and vaguely resembles that of a water ouzel. Both sexes incubate. It is assumed that if Sandy Island had any mud, the monarchs would use that to build their nests instead.

Sandy Island Monarchs walk on the ground with a lilting, stilting gait, hunting for terrestrial and near-terrestrial insects, and are very rarely met with perching in bushes; they are not seen in trees. The monarchs are sassy birds that rank high in the pecking order: above woodswallows, whistlers, and cuckooshrikes, but below Giant Fantails and Robber Starlings. The song is a distinctive slurred whistle, “peeowit-o-weeowit”, but more frequently the bird utters churring scolds not unlike other monarchs along with a tweezy “zeep”.

Birds Of Sandy Island: 7. The Giant Fantail

THE GIANT FANTAIL (Rhipidura ingens)

This species, like the Great-billed Crake, is an example of evolutionary malleability in a genus that was not believed to be so variable prior to the species’ discovery. As its name implies, the Giant Fantail is by far the largest of all fantails. A foot long, it is proportionally shorter-tailed but just as fat-headed and short-billed as most other fantails; the combination of size and proportion recalls a cuckoo or nightjar. The latter comparison, however far-flung, is accurate; the Giant Fantail’s gape bristles are certainly luxurious, and the species does appear to be crepuscular from time to time. The fantail’s coloration is very variable, with well-defined forms but many intermediate individuals. There is a pied form, black-and-white very similar to a Willie Wagtail but with less white on the belly, and a barred form with the same pied head pattern in dark brown instead of black, the underparts also dark brown heavily barred with buff. A similar form exists with streaked rather than barred underparts, which can also be black and white instead of brown and buff. Yet another form is entirely rufous. All of these forms can also have a white or buff throat, rump, and/or wing bars. The bill and legs are often black, but especially rufous-form birds can have a horn-colored bill. This polymorphism appears to be mostly unrelated to sex, as several combinations of two forms have been observed mating; however, all barred birds observed have proven to be males. Juveniles are generally gray with a faint head pattern and wing bars.

The Giant Fantail approaches the cuckoos, none of which breed on Sandy Island, in both appearance and niche. It has developed a unique system of brood parasitism that is ultimately cuckooish but with several kinks. The plumage polymorphism is an adaptation related to the broad range of host species, compensating for the absence of egg color polymorphism. Females appear to parasitize the host species they resemble the most: pied ones lay in the nests of White-breasted Woodswallows or Long-tailed Trillers, buff-bellied ones choose Melanesian Whistlers, rufous ones Island Thrushes, streaked ones Robber Starlings, and one all-black female was observed around the nest of a Melanesian Cuckooshrike. Fantail chicks dominate by outcompeting, rather than throwing host eggs out of the nest as cuckoos do. A female fantail probably identifies the male of a host pair by his song; she then spies and sneaks by skulking, waiting for him to replace his mate on the eggs. In the middle of his shift, the fantail spells him; they appear to know the host species’ contact calls and fool them thus despite the difference of size. This vocal mimicry of the host extends to the male song, as it does in those charitable parasites, the whydahs. Here, however, it is rather unusually adapted as the song’s quality of mimicry is rather poor. For example, the triller imitation is usually at only half the speed. The whistler impression is an octave lower, frequently with three whiplashed phrases instead of one. As for the thrush, the fantail’s version sounds like a thrush run through a highpass filter and a distortion pedal. The most remarkable quality of the fantail’s song is its double mimicry; as the woodswallow is already a mimic, a fantail will occasionally imitate other birds in a woodswallow’s typical order, but much more sloppily! 

But the fantail is only a sloppy mimic when singing. Not only is it a brood parasite, but it is also an incorrigible kleptoparasite. Like its cousins the drongos, it has a wide variety of alarm-type calls with which to fool other species into dropping the yummy grubs they may have found. Several non-passerine calls are imitated for this purpose, including the “krawk” of the Dwarf Du. It is interesting to note that all the endemic Sandy Island birds essentially lack an alarm call; that “krawk” is mostly used to summon other Dwarf Du. The only bird predator on Sandy Island is the Barn Owl, which eats a lot more lizards than birds on small islands.

Color variations of the Giant Fantail.

Birds Of Sandy Island: 6. The White-backed Myzomela

THE WHITE-BACKED MYZOMELA (Myzomela warburtoni)

Not much seems to differentiate this species, known locally as a “Tree Shank”, from the many Myzomela honeyeaters elsewhere in Melanesia and Australasia in general. It is certainly uniquely colored and patterned, both sexes having a red head with a black loral stripe, a bright white back and rump bordered by black scapular stripes, and black wings and tail. The underpart pattern is also unusual, with the red throat grading to yellow on the chest, separated from white flanks by a broad black band; the central belly to vent are also black. The juveniles, like those of other myzomelas, are much drabber. At first the juvenile plumage was thought to be the adult female, as drab-plumaged individuals are very common, but once nesting was observed the truth was revealed. Adult plumage is not attained until the bird is at least two years old, which identifies an individual’s rank as this species is a cooperative breeder, with immatures helping adults to feed the nestlings. The delayed adult plumage brings to mind the “jackbird”, that protracted juvenile stage of the Tieke from South Island, New Zealand. However, the White-backed Myzomela shares more in common with another callaeoidean, the similarly nectarivorous Hihi; cooperative breeding sounds like a Hihi-esque strategy even though it is not such a thing, due to the Hihi’s protracted juvenile stage. It is possible that a certain true Hihi technique is in fact prevalent in the myzomela of Sandy Island. Warburton was an amateur ornithologist and former missionary; bushwhacking with his crew on Sandy Island, he once abruptly about-faced with his hand covering his eyes. Wrye asked him what disgusted him so, and his response was, “The blessed myzomelas.” Wrye never asked Warburton what he meant, but he had already guessed; the Hihi’s sexual position, generally regarded as unique among birds, may be duplicated by the White-backed Myzomela. More study is needed…

Like other myzomelas, the White-backed is mostly a nectar feeder; it pollinates various shrubs and vines, especially the glasper vine so beloved by the Dwarf Du. Flocks feed together. The nest is a standard songbird-style cup. The myzomela’s calls include a very high-pitched “skeedeek skeedeek skeedeek”, hard “stich” notes like a Hihi, tooth-sucking noises, and a very fast nasal contact call something like “shank-shweenk”.

Birds Of Sandy Island: 5. The Bare-chested Parrot

THE BARE-CHESTED PARROT (Gymnopsittacus sandinensis)

Those who would argue that the Giant Pigeon is not the most unique and bizarre Sandy Island bird are invariably arguing that the title goes to the Bare-chested Parrot. It is certainly one of only two contenders for most unique and bizarre among the parrots, the other being the Kakapo of New Zealand - to which the Bare-chested has some striking similarities. The Bare-chested is a very large parrot, smaller than some macaws but still around 25 inches in length. Though it is believed to be closest related to the lorikeets of the genus Vini, its body shape is most similar to that of an Amazon, with a relatively very short tail. The throat and chest are completely unfeathered and form a large pink patch of bare skin. The plumage is otherwise a typical parrot shade of green, with a red forehead and rump, light blue nape and dark blue vent. The bill is orange and the legs pink. The Bare-chested is the only flightless parrot besides the Kakapo, and certainly the only flightless arboreal parrot. The wings are shorter relative to the body than those of the Kakapo. One physical feature separates the Bare-chested Parrot from all other birds: its feet lack a middle toe. It grips a branch with one toe in front and two behind, though the outer (rear) toe can be swiveled outward like that of a turaco.

The Bare-chested Parrot’s two main idiosyncracies are its symbiosis with the wattle palm and its extreme behavioral sexual dimorphism. Male Bare-chested Parrots may have the smallest territories of all birds when measured in land area. They are each restricted to a single tree, as they are - like fat Giant Pigeons - flightless and walkless. They are not as inconvenienced as the pigeons, for their one method of locomotion is quite agile - branch clambering in typical feet-and-beak parrot fashion. Necessarily, as the wattle palm is their only home, male Bare-chested Parrots are especially intensely symbiotic with the palms. The flowers, buds, fruit, and seeds are their only food; they eat the fruits while they are still attached and only approaching ripeness, before they fall and are gorged on by Giant Pigeons. In one of the most unusual quirks of wattle palm biology, the seeds remain attached to the tree when the fruits fall off. There are enough seeds on one tree that the parrots cannot deplete the resource at any time; the flowers and fruits form behind the old seeds. The male parrots can squirt their droppings a remarkable distance in order to disperse the seeds. The wattle palm, which is named for the thick involucre of fronds at its crown forming a flattened, acacia- (wattle-) like shape, has evolved a built-in nest site for the parrots. The depression at the center of the involucre is a deep pit, large enough to house ten or eleven nests and protected from rain by large overhanging side-fronds. Only the males incubate; as discussed below, this species is the only polyandrous parrot (the same wags who came up with “incubus incubation” call it “polly-androus”). They have no reason to leave the nest, as the fruits are attached near the nest pit where they are easy to reach. For this reason, Robber Starlings never bother them; the parrot’s beak, adapted to cracking the large hard wattle palm seeds, is certainly strong enough to sever a starling’s neck.

The clutch size of the Bare-chested Parrot is always only one egg. The chick is fed on the larva of a beetle-mimic fly, the palm’s pollinator, which infests the overhanging fronds at exactly the time of chick-rearing. Female chicks are more precocial than males, as they have typical walking leg muscles and can walk. (Males’ leg muscles are partially atrophied as a result of their obligatory walklessness.) The females fledge when the fruits fall; these “debutantes” clamber down from the nests and live terrestrially, walking gingerly with a high-heeled gait and eating fallen wattle palm fruit with the flocks of Giant Pigeons. As the pigeons do later, the female parrots sustain themselves on other fruits and seeds once the wattle palm fruits are all devoured, though they occasionally clamber up into the wattle palms to eat buds and flowers with the males. Not long after the fallen fruits are gone, the male parrots begin their courtship. As with the Kakapo, this consists only of a vocalization; the Bare-chested’s “song” is an extremely loud, long, screechy skronk that ascends in pitch followed by a descending series of shorter, softer honks. The entire population of male Bare-chested Parrots essentially forms a small number of permanent leks based on the locations of the wattle palm groves. Each tree is literally a family tree, as its resident male parrots are always grandfathers, fathers, sons, and/or grandsons. As with other polyandrous birds, there is essentially no pair bond; females will mate with several males each year and lay eggs in many trees’ nests, including sometimes multiple nests within a tree.

The exact timeline of the Bare-chested Parrot’s life cycle has not been studied in detail yet, including the age of sexual maturity. It seems that the female’s “debutante” stage extends over several years, but this is not known for certain; the equivalent point in the male’s development appears to be a period of clambering among his palm’s fronds and working up his courtship call, resulting often in comical “sub-skronking”. The nests are obviously used for generations and as such do not need to be “built”, but at the start of the breeding season males begin to replenish them with strips torn from the overhanging fronds’ midribs. It appears that if there are more adult male parrots in a tree than the nest site capacity in the tree’s involucral pit, the older males will stop displaying and breeding to make space for new nesters.

Bare-chested Parrots seem to have a low mortality rate. Their only predator is probably the Barn Owl, which often nests in holes in wattle palm trunks and takes parrot chicks. Like other parrots, Bare-chesteds are frequently idle and playful. Young ones enjoy teasing Rainbow Lorikeets (the island’s only other parrot species) by pulling their tails.

Birds Of Sandy Island: 4. The Great-billed Crake

THE GREAT-BILLED CRAKE (Porzana carcinophaga)

Until the discovery of this species, it was generally assumed that crakes are not, in an evolutionary sense, malleable. The only significant differences between most island crakes and those of mainlands are the island forms’ flightlessness and their unwariness. The Great-billed Crake of Sandy Island is the only crake known thus far to have an obvious physical modification coming from island evolution. Specifically, its bill is proportionally larger and thicker than those of other crakes. It is not truly wedge-shaped like those of the Purple Swamphen and Takahe; instead, it is conical and evenly tapered. This almost toucan-like beak is attached to a large head for a crake; it is not however otherwise a robust bird. The legs are longer and slenderer than those of other island crakes, approaching the proportions of the mysterious Ua Huka Rail. The coloration is similar to Baillon’s Crake, from which it doubtless evolved; the underparts are a warmer shade of gray, and the flank barring is not reduced as in the Laysan Crake. The bill is relatively bright green, with a dark ring around it near the tip. Though its wings are much shorter than in mainland crakes, the Great-billed is not flightless. The nesting of the Great-billed Crake has yet to be studied in detail; it does not seem to differ from other crakes in this regard. Chicks have been seen walking with adults in typical crake fashion.

With its outsized mandibles, the Great-billed Crake covers a very different niche from the Spotless Crake, which is also found on Sandy Island. The Great-billed’s principal prey is the robber crab. A full-grown robber crab is several times the size of a crake, so the crakes generally attack young crabs. Above a certain size of crab, crakes may hunt in packs. As many as 6 or 7 crakes will endeavor to seize a crab’s legs, avoiding the claws, and pull away from each other so that the crab is essentially drawn and quartered. Alternatively, crakes may ride crabs’ backs and attack the interstices between the carapace joints. (The robber crab is really a shelled hermit crab, and its carapace is jointed where a hermit crab’s abdomen is soft.) Robber crabs form only one part of the crakes’ diet. Another important element is bird eggs, which they can easily crack with their outsized bills - even the thick-shelled Giant Pigeon’s. The crakes are the scourge of Dwarf Du during their “bornge”, though not quite as depredaceous as the Robber Starlings. As megapodes’ eggs have especially thin shells, it is an entertaining sight to see the crakes crush Dwarf Du eggs wetly like boba. Due to their breeding in the austral summer, Great-billed Crakes are in turn the victims of egg-hungry migratory Bristle-thighed Curlews.

The Great-billed Crake is a noisy bird. Its piercing screams are one of the most frequently heard sounds on Sandy Island. The Warburton expedition likened the crake’s vocalization to the tenor saxophone extended techniques of Illinois Jacquet, but more recent accounts have contended that they are much closer to those of Sam Weinberg. All manner of courtship and aggressive displays are exhibited by the Great-billed Crake after the fashion of other crakes, with a great deal of “deep knee bends” that seem to strengthen the pair bond.

It has been posited that Cacroenis inornatus, a mysterious name for a Tuamotu rail used by Bruner in his bizarre book of French Polynesian birds, actually could apply to the Great-billed Crake. The genus name could be loosely translated as “crab-dove”, and it is certainly possible that Bruner wound up on Sandy Island thinking it was part of the Tuamotu archipelago, as many land features on Sandy are very similar to those on some of the Tuamotu islands. The kind of storm described at the beginning of The Cruise Of The Kawa would lead to this level of South Pacific confusion.

Birds Of Sandy Island: 3. The Sandy Island Rail

THE SANDY ISLAND RAIL (Hypotaenidia conditicioides)

Not much is yet known about the Sandy Island Rail, the most elusive of the endemic Sandinian birds. Only one specimen was collected by the Warburton expedition. It is quite similar to the Lord Howe Island Rail, but slightly smaller and more pedomorphic - as if the Conditicious or Kiribati Rail, the assumed identity of a famous juvenile Lord Howe specimen, were an actual species. It is reported to be a thicket dweller, seldom venturing out of deep cover. However, it has been seen perched in trees, which must be a difficult task because it is certainly flightless. The wings of the examined specimen have an unusual modification which may hold a clue to the perching behavior of this rail. The digits of the wing have knob-like tips, and these are theorized to be in the process of evolving back into claws. If this is proven, then the Sandy Island Rail is reverting to an ancestral state of clambering in tree branches with its toe and “finger” claws, probably sailing down from the trees with its short wings extended. In short, it is attempting to occupy the niche of Archaeopteryx. This is the same sort of reversion as whales’ resemblance to fish, only with a twist due to the clambering niche’s being long extinct. It may represent an improper thinking-through on the part of the rail, to whit, a smart-sounding stupid idea.

A loud, snarling growl is attributed to this rail, whose nest and eggs have not yet been found. The rails also cry almost like human babies, and make a sneezy wheeze. It is assumed that they are omnivorous but eat mostly insects.

Birds Of Sandy Island: 2. The Sandy Island Giant Pigeon

THE SANDY ISLAND GIANT PIGEON (Neoraphus immobilis)

The Giant Pigeon is arguably the most unique and bizarre inhabitant of Sandy Island. Considering that flightlessness and gigantism in pigeons has only occurred in a very few other places - the Mascarenes, St. Helena, and Fiji - the Sandy Island species offers a great comparison with the others. This species is usually slightly smaller than the Mauritius Dodo but still an enormous pigeon at around 26 to 29 inches in length. Like the Dodo, the Sandy Island Giant Pigeon has very small wings. Its legs, however, are rather shorter and slenderer than those of other giant flightless pigeons. The neck and bill are also not quite as long and thick as the Dodo’s; the gape is just as wide. The head is surmounted by a brushy tuft of filoplumes like an egret or a silkie rooster. The tail is short and tapered, not plumous as in the Dodo. This species’ general coloration is gray, like the Dodo; similarly, the face is unfeathered and dark grayish. Rather unusually for a pigeon, the eyes are quite large.

The most remarkable characteristic of the Sandy Island Giant Pigeon is related to its seasonal fat cycle. This species times its breeding with the fruiting of the wattle palm, and as the palm’s fruits fall they become the pigeon’s only diet. The pigeons gorge on the fatty palm fruits, which makes them the fattest of all wild birds - and at that time they are not only flightless, but walkless. The Giant Pigeon is the only species of bird that is (at least temporarily) incapable of locomotion both on wing and on foot.  A fully fattened Giant Pigeon moves by rolling on the ground, usually sideways but occasionally end over end. The motion is similar to the trajectory of a thrown balloon full of yogurt, or a closed plastic garbage bag full of milk on a sloping Slip ’n’ Slide. For obvious reasons, Giant Pigeons mate before they get quite to that stage; only once the eggs are laid do they become truly walkless. The nest is a mere scrape in the ground, if that - the island’s lack of terrestrial predators means that Giant Pigeons can just lay their two white eggs (rarely three) on the ground. These eggs are too large and thick-shelled for a Robber Starling to crack, though Great-billed Crakes occasionally crake them; it should also be noted that the Giant Pigeon’s (and Dwarf Du’s) breeding season is in the northern hemisphere summer, when migratory Bristle-thighed Curlews, also notorious egg thieves, are elsewhere. 

The Giant Pigeons have a unique incubation system brought about by their walklessness. Their circadian rhythms during the fat season are essentially arbitrary; they eat until they tire of eating, regardless of the time of day. When they can no longer eat they roll to the nearest available nest and sleep on the eggs. (This is surely why the eggshells are so thick!) The nests are close enough together that this takes little effort; when a pigeon wakes it simply rolls off the nest in search of more fruit. The bird’s large eyes are a testament to its occasional nocturnal wakings. Whenever one wakes, it gives the eggs a turn so that they will be properly incubated by the next sleeper. With this system of random incubation (termed by some wags “incubus incubation” but really a modified creche system), there is no guarantee that a Giant Pigeon will ever incubate the eggs that will hatch its own offspring. Once the chicks hatch, the adults continue the same behavior, with some unique twists. The chemical digestive process that in other pigeons creates “pigeon milk” has been repurposed for a different way of feeding the young. It is not entirely understood, but the ultimate effect is that it causes wattle palm fruits to be indigestible, and the adults must regurgitate them - into the chicks’ mouths. This is also how the adults lose weight. By the time the young leave the nest (quite early for a pigeon), the wattle palms have stopped fruiting and the adults begin to regain their walking abilities.

At the start of the nonbreeding season, Giant Pigeons frequent beaches, where they take advantage of the newly arrived Blue Noddy breeding colonies, eating eggs when they can and sometimes even noddy chicks. The pigeons kill noddy chicks with a technique that is unknown elsewhere in the bird world: despite their lesser weight than during the breeding season, the pigeons are still hefty enough to catch downy young noddies by lying down on them and squashing them. This is a decidedly rare occurrence. When there are no more noddy eggs, the pigeons do not risk squashing a lot of noddy chicks. Instead, they go after robber crabs, attempting to crack the shells of small individuals and scavenging crab carcasses when they find them. Success in this endeavor is limited; there are usually enough fallen fruits and seeds from other trees to tide the pigeons over until the wattle palms fruit again.

The Sandy Island Giant Pigeon is not a noisy species. In the nonbreeding season it occasionally utters pig-like grunts and squeals. The same sounds are adapted into a chattery call frequently uttered when rolling to and from the nest - the Warburton expedition thought that if they were ever slaughtered by colonizing humans, the chattering and squealing of the dying birds would resemble the group laughter in the Beatles’ “Revolution 9”, reversed. Breeding males call with a low, blown-bottle-like “brooowlt-brooowlt-brooowlt-brooowlt”.

Birds of Sandy Island (Ornithologia Sandiniensis): 1. The Dwarf Du

The Turnstone is back with a new series of posts concerning speculative biology. Lately I've been fascinated by this genre of nature writing, so I decided to share a project that I've been working on for a while. Sandy Island is a "phantom" island in the southwest Pacific, west of New Caledonia. Despite being shown on maps for about a century, it never existed. Reading about this, I wondered what birds would live on Sandy Island if it was real. I came up with a list of 49 species that might breed on this island, most of which are real birds that would conceivably be there given the ecology and biogeography of the surrounding region. I made up ten of these species, which would live on Sandy Island and nowhere else. Here on The Turnstone I will post descriptions of each of these imagined birds. For reference in this project, I used two of my favorite books: Birds of Melanesia, by Guy Dutson, and Extinct Birds, by Julian Hume and Michael Walters.

A note on the writing style: Birds Of Sandy Island is written in a pretentious style with a lot of self-mockery. There are quite a few internal references that the reader is not always expected to "get". Also, extinct birds are frequently mentioned as if they are still with us. With that out of the way...

THE DWARF DU (Microsylviornis xenicus)

As many Pacific islands are inhabited by scrubfowl (Megapodius), so Sandy Island has a representative of this broad group. Sandy Island’s scrubfowl, however, is much more than a mere Megapodius; it is a member of that highly evolved offshoot of the tribe that contains Sylviornis, the giant Du of Grande Terre. With the discovery of Sandy Island’s dwarf Du, it is now obvious that size does not define Du-ality. The Dwarf Du is only about eight inches long, less than an eighth the size of Sylviornis. Its flightlessness makes it the only non-flying bird of its size that isn’t a crake or a grebe. Roughly scrubfowl-shaped but with a proportionally shorter, thicker neck, the Dwarf Du is feathered all over with fluffy rusty-blackish plumage, texturally similar to that of the Mauritius Red Rail. Like its giant cousin it has a thick rounded bill and a bony frontal casque; its eyes are surrounded with a patch of bare skin that can be distended in the male’s courtship display. In fact Wrye, the naturalist of the Warburton expedition that discovered Sandy Island, first considered classifying the breeding male as a separate species: the Wattle-eyed Du. Once he finally saw one at the point of beginning the courtship display, Wrye famously remarked, “Oh, Wattle-eyed Du now!”

Megapodes famously use heat to incubate their eggs, and the Dwarf Du is no exception. Like most megapodes, it buries its eggs in a mound of dead leaves. Though not quite the massive constructions of the Grande Terre Du, famously once believed to have been human burial mounds, formidable heaps are created by the Sandy Island species. Still, they are the smallest of all megapode mounds; in some places they appear as mere pimples—which would make adaptive sense if Sandy Island was volcanic (so they would get the rest of their heat from geothermal activity). Unfortunately, it isn’t. The Dwarf Du doesn’t seem to know that, though. Its small head, while not exceptionally small, is mostly jaw. More on that later.

Anyway, Dwarf Du differ from other megapodes in their habit of laying eggs in well-defined clutches within the mounds. Four is an average clutch size; the mound is only finished once the eggs are all laid, to ensure that the chicks hatch and emerge from the nest together. The interim period between egg laying and mound finishing, referred to by the islanders as “the bornge”, would be much more dangerous if Sandy Island had monitor lizards or snakes. As it is, it is still dangerous; eggs are predated by Robber Starlings and the occasional Great-billed Crake. Giant Pigeons do not take eggs, as the Dwarf Du coordinate their breeding with that of the pigeons so that there will be no Du eggs during the pigeons’ oophagous nonbreeding season.

Like other megapodes, the Dwarf Du is omnivorous. Insects and a variety of seeds are easily crushed in its proportionally heavy beak, but its preferred food is the seeds inside the fruits of the glasper vine. This strangler fig-like plant, which engulfs shrubs and small trees with a seeming lack of self-awareness, has very hard seeds which the Du’s jaws are adapted to crack. The Dwarf Du has a decidedly prehistoric facial appearance, with the large jaws taking up most of its flat head. Its call is usually a chicken-like “kek-kuk”, becoming an upslurred “krawk” when excited. The displaying male walks with a high step, shaking his head from side to side before stopping, head held high, and uttering an accelerating series of accented “keeark” notes. Young Dwarf Du begin displaying shortly after emerging from the mound.