Tag Archives: Megapodius sp. Andaman Islands

Megapodius sp. ‘Andaman Islands’

Andaman Islands Megapode (Megapodius sp.)

The Andaman Islands are the northern part of a chain of islands in the Golf of Bengal, the southern part is made by the Nicobar Islands.

The Nicobar Islands are inhabited by an endemic megapode species, the Nicobar Megapode (Megapodius nicobariensis Blyth) (see photo below), which occurs there with two subspecies which are separated by the rather narrow Saint Georges Channel.

There are some accounts which mention megapodes from the Andaman Islands.:

Although we only obtained this species in the Nicobars we saw what were apparently mounds made by this species on Table Island off the [island of] Great Cocos, and the Lighthouse-keeper described to me brown hen like birds with large feet that he had shot on the island on several occasions, and which can scarcely have been anything but this species.” [1]

This account most likely did not refer to the Nicobar Megapode but to another, now extinct form.

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The British Museum of Natural History in London, Great Britain, keeps a six days old chick specimen that apparently was collected on Preparis Island even more northerly in the Andaman Island chain, which obviously clearly differs from the chicks of the Nicobar species by its more pronounced sooty grey and rufous bars on the upper wings, tertials, lower mantle, and back, and by broad pale cinnamon fringes and black submarinal marks on its secondaries. [2]

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References:

[1] A. Hume: The islands of the Bay of Bengal. Stray Feathers 2: 29-324. 1874
[2] Darryl N. Jones; René W. R. J. Dekker; Cees S. Roselaar: The Megapodes. Oxford University Press 1995

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Nicobar Megapode (Megapodius nicobariensis Blyth)

Photo from: ‘C. Boden Kloss: In the Andamans and Nicobars; the narrative of a cruise in the schooner “Terrapin”, with notices of the islands, their fauna, ethnology, etc. London: J. Murray 1903’

(not in copyright)

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edited: 06.03.2020