Research is currently under way that involves wing-tagging Australian Brush-turkey’s (Alectura lathami) within the Sydney region, Australia. Our aim is to learn about Turkey’s behaviour: site-loyalty, population size and foraging, roosting and breeding habitat preferences.
Wingtags allow all of us to identify and learn about individual birds. We encourage everyone who sees a Turkey with wingtags to report their sighting using the Wingtags app – even if it’s the same bird day after day, we are interested! This information helps us learn about individual bird’s and the populations behaviour.
In addition to reporting wingtag sightings using the Wingtags app we are asking you to report sightings of Turkeys, their communal nocturnal roosts and their breeding mounds to: the BRUSHTURKEYS app or website, Report A Turkey or brush.turkey2@gmail.com. We’ve joked that there is a ‘Turkey tsumani’ spreading across suburban Sydney, your observations will help us quantify where the birds are located and how they are adapting to survive in the suburbs.
This project commenced in late 2017 when Matthew Hall started his PhD at Sydney University in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Garden and Taronga Zoo.
The Australian Brush-turkey is also known as a 'Bush-turkey' and 'Scrub-turkey' in different parts of their range. This species in endemic to Australia; 'endemic' means a species does not occur in any other country. Brush-turkeys' occur along the eastern States of Australia from the Illawarra region, south of Sydney, to Cape York, North Queensland, and inland to Narrabri, New South Wales, and Upper Dawson, Queensland.
- EllyT (005) strutting around Taronga Zoo, female Brush-turkey.
- Mhal (001), the pioneer of the Brush-turkey Wingtags Project; an adult male indicated by the long bright wattle.
3. Brush-turkey nest; males build mounds May-August and tend their mound until February, chicks hatch from October to February.