Darryl N. Jones; René W. R. J. Dekker; Cees S. Roselaar: The Megapodes. Oxford University Press 1995

The Megapodes are a group of extremely interesting birds, probably best known for their rather reptilish way of „child care“, the eggs not being incubated by the birds themselves but by the aid of either microbial decomposition of organic matter, geothermal activity or solar radiation.

To me personally these birds share a somewhat prehistoric „aura“.

The book is a monography, so contains all information regarding the family Megapodiidae known at the date of the writing, all species are depicted, yet, because of the small number of species, however, there are only 8 plates and only a very small number of subspecies is depicted (as far as I remember, it is actually only one – I’m too lazy right now to walk to my book shelf to look again ….

The book even contains some interesting facts about the former distribution of many of these species, including eyewitnesses accounts and reports of eggs found at strange places and so on.

All in all I can only recommend this book, at least to those who are interested especially in this bird family.

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edited: 20.08.2018