Megapodius nicobariensis, Blyth.  
The Nicobar Megapode.

Megapodius nicobariensis, Bl., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 803 sextus; id. Cat. no. 803 oct.

The Nicobar Megapode breeds in most, if not ad, the islands of the group from which it derives its name. On Table Island, an islet of the Great Cocos, I had reason to think that they also Occurred and bred.

While in these islands both Mr. Davison, who obtained numbers of their eggs, and myself endeavoured to learn ad we could of the nidification of the Megapodes, and I shad quote here what he and I have already recorded (Stray Feathers, vol. u, p. 276 et seq.) on this subject.

Mr. Davison says ; - " J have seen a great many mounds of this bird. Usually they are placed close to the shore, but on Bompoka and on Katchall I saw two mounds some distance inland in the forest. They were composed of dried leaves, sticks, &c., mixed with earth, and were very small, compared with others near the sea-coast, not being above three feet high and about twelve or fourteen feet in circumference ; those built near the coast are composed chiefly of sand mixed with rubbish, and vary very much in size, but average about five feet high and thirty feet in circumference ; but I met with one exceptionally large one on the island of Trinkut, which must have been at least eight feet high and quite sixty feet in circumference. It was apparently a very old one, for from near its centre grew a tree about 6 inches in diameter, whose roots penetrated the mound in all directions to within a foot of its summit, some of them being nearly as thick as a man's wrist. I had this mound dug away almost to the level of the surrounding land, but only got three eggs from it, one quite fresh and two in which the chicks were somewhat developed.

" Off' this mound I shot a Megapode, which had evidently only just laid an egg. I dissected it, and from a careful examination it would seem that the eggs are laid at long intervals apart, for the largest egg in the ovary was only about the size of a large pea, and the next in size about as big as a small pea. These mounds are also used by reptiles, for out of one I dug, besides the Megapode's eggs, about a dozen eggs of some large lizard.

" I made careful inquiries among the natives about these birds, and from them I learnt that they usually get four or five eggs from a mound, but sometimes they get as many as ten ; they ad assert that only one pair of birds are concerned in the making of a mound, and that they only work at night. When newly made, the mounds (so 1 was informed) are small, but are gradually enlarged by the birds.   The natives never dig a mound away, but they probe it with a stick or with the end of their daos, and when they find a spot where the stick sinks in easily they scoop out the sand with their hands, generally, though not always, filling in the holes again after they have abstracted the eggs. The Nicobarese and the Malay and Burmese traders take numbers of these eggs, which they generally cook by placing them in hot ashes ; but they also sometimes boil them quite hard, and they do not seem to be very particular whether the egg is fresh or contains a chicken in a more or less advanced stage of development. The Nicobarese at any rate appear to relish a boded or roasted chicken out of the egg quite as much as they do a fresh egg.

" The eggs are usually buried from 3| to 4 feet deep, and how the young manage to extricate themselves from the superincumbent mass of soil and rubbish seems a mystery. I could not obtain any information from natives on this point, but most probably they are assisted by their parents, if not entirely freed by them, for these latter, so the natives affirm, are always to be found in the vicinity of the mounds where their eggs are deposited.

"We obtained about seventy of these eggs, sixty-two of which were preserved ; these vary much both as regards colour and size, and they undoubtedly darken very materially by being buried in the sand, for I have found that eggs containing chickens in a more or less advanced stage of development were dark-coloured, the depth of shade increasing as the eggs approached the hatching-point ; but it does not follow from this that all dark-coloured eggs will be found to be not fresh, for very often very dark-coloured eggs are laid. There are three types of eggs - a dull clayey-pink, an earthy-yellow, and an earthy-brown - of several shades.

"The surface-soil of the mounds only is dry; at about a foot from the surface the sand feels slightly damp and cold, but as the depth increases the sand gets damper but at the same time increases in warmth."

I saw a considerable number of these mounds, chiefly at Galatea Bay, and there I examined some of them very minutely. These were situated just inside the dense jungle which commences at spring-tide high-water mark. It appeared to me that the birds first collected a heap of leaves, cocoanuts, and other vegetable matter, and then scraped together sand which they threw over the heap, so as not only to fill up all interstices, but to cover everything over with about a foot of pure sand, - I say sand, but this term is calculated to mislead, because it does not contain much silex, but consists mainly of finely triturated coral and shells. After a certain period, whether yearly or not I cannot of course say, the birds scrape away the covering sand-layer from about the upper three-fourths of the mound, cover the whole of it over again with vegetable matter, and then cover the whole in again with the sand. In the large mound, an old one, into which I carefully cut a narrow section from centre to margin, this arrangement was very perceptible ; in it I thought I could trace, by the more or less wedge- shaped portions of pure sand along the base (the remnants of successive outer coverings of sand, the basal portions of which have never been removed), ten or perhaps eleven successive renovations of the mound ; even the central portion was perfectly cool. The vegetable matter had in a great measure disappeared, leaving only the hard woody portions behind, but showing where it had been by the discoloration of the sand. The decay of the vegetable matter and the bird's habit (as I judge from appearances) of not removing the basal portion of the sandy covering at each renovation, suffi­ciently explain why the mounds increase so much more in radius than in height.

A smaller mound, one as I take it still in use, though I could find no eggs in it, contained a much greater amount of vegetable matter, and was sensibly warm inside. I could make no section of it, as it was too full of imperfectly decayed vegetation. I believe that the bird depends for the hatching of its eggs solely on the warmth generated by chemical action. The succulent decaying vegetation, constant moisture, and finely triturated lime, all combined in a huge heap, will account for a considerable degree of artificial heat.

I am by no means satisfied that only one pair of birds use the same mound ; on the contrary, the Nicobarese I had with me that day explained, as I understood, that though one pair begin the mound, they and all their progeny keep on using and adding to it for years, and as " Cussem," or whatever the wretch's sobriquet was, interpreted, the men with us had, during the previous month, taken at one time some twenty eggs out of one and the same mound, which also they took us to see, and which was perhaps five feet high and sixteen or eighteen feet in diameter, and which was the freshest-looking I had seen.

The eggs are excessively elongated ovals, enormously large for the size of the bird. They vary a great deal in size and a good deal in shape ; all are much elongated, but some are more like Turtle's eggs than those of a bird. When first laid, they are of a uniform ruddy pink, as we know from having obtained one before the bird had time even to bury it; after being buried, so long as the egg remains quite fresh, it continues a pale pink, but as the chicken develops within, the egg becomes a buffy stone-colour, and when near about hatching it is a very pale yellowish brown. The whole colouring-matter is contained in an excessively thin chalky flake, which is easily scraped off, leaving a pure white chalky shell below ; this outer coloured coat seems to have a great tendency to flake off in spots, specks, and even large blotches as the chicken is developed within. Quite fresh-laid eggs rarely exhibit any white marks of any kind, while those more or less approaching hatching (one cannot say incubated in this case) are invariably more or less mottled with white. Occasionally fairly fresh eggs are dug out, bearing along their entire length on one side two parallel white lines made apparently by the claws of the mother bird when scraping the sand over them. The eggs are always a little pointed towards one end, and some, especially the less cylindrical ones, are conspicuously SO. The shell is entirely devoid of gloss, and the surface is everywhere roughened with innumerable minute pores, which occur equally in the exterior coloured flake and the white, somewhat less chalky, shell beneath.

In length the eggs vary from 3.01 to 3.4, and in breadth from 1.9 to 2.25 ; but the average of sixty-two eggs that I have carefully measured is 3.25 by 2.07.