Noticed more Bush Turkeys around? Here’s why.

Have you noticed there are more Bush Turkeys around lately? You certainly wouldn’t be alone. Figures from Wildlife Research show that not only have bush turkey populations been booming, but they have increasingly shifted towards suburban and metropolitan areas. 

The Lorikeet chatted with Ann Göth, an ecologist and researcher of bush turkeys — who has written two books on the birds — to find out what has been driving this shift. 

Not an invasion, but a return

The first thing Göth made clear was that this is a return, not an invasion or a boom, of bush turkeys. 

“They're coming back to where they used to occur”, Göth said. 

“People hunted them almost to extinction in the Great Depression … they just managed to retreat to the few little pockets of rainforest where they could hide, and then later after the hunting became illegal — legislation was introduced to stop all the hunting of native birds and wildlife — they then started to recover slowly.”

What is driving this return?

Legislation against the hunting of native birds — in NSW, the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 — may have saved bush turkeys from extinction, but what’s driving them back into the suburbs? According to Göth, a combination of reduced fox populations, more diverse gardens, and a variety of enticing food sources for the turkeys. 

“We have more natural looking gardens now, instead of the old-fashioned English lawns that were really boring for the turkeys … Now we have nice mulched gardens, which they really love, to build their mounds and search for food.” 

Bird food, cat food, and compost heaps are among the food sources that have attracted bush turkeys to suburban areas, Göth said.

What do people get wrong about bush turkeys?

The most common misconception Australians hold about bush turkeys, Göth states, is that they are a pest or invasive species. “They're native fauna … not invaders like the cane toads.” 

While acknowledging that some people dislike bush turkeys “because they destroy gardens in the process of building their mounds and searching for food”, Göth also said that “there's a lot of people who really love them and build really personal relationships with them, and only feed them blueberries and just love them to death.”

A fact not commonly known about bush turkeys, Göth told us, is that they belong to a unique group of birds called Megapodes, of which there are only two others in Australia: the Orange-footed Scrubfowl, and the Malleefowl. 

These birds are known for incubating their eggs in mounds, and their young are able to live independently from birth.

You can find more information about bush turkeys on Ann’s website.

Photo Credit: Chris Andrawes on Unsplash