The Australian Brush Turkey is a distinctive, large ground-dwelling bird, located along eastern Australia, from Cape York Peninsula, south to suburban Sydney and the Illawarra region of New South Wales.

Identified by its mostly black plumage with pale scalloping on its belly, the Brush Turkey has a bare red head, yellow throat wattle (mauve in Cape York Peninsula birds!) and laterally flattened tail.

These birds are the largest of Australia’s three megapodes, which are mound-building birds. As with other megapodes, the Brush Turkey does not incubate its eggs using a conventional method of sitting on them, rather building a mound 4m wide x 1m high, and laying eggs within a hole in the mound.