noun
definition
Any of several chicken- or turkey-like birds in the family Megapodiidae, which incubate their eggs by burying them where they receive warmth from decaying vegetation, solar radiation or geothermal heat.
Examples of megapodes in a Sentence
The birds of paradise, the racquet-tailed kingfishers, Tanysiptera, the largest and smallest of parrots, Calyptorhynchus and Nasiterna, and the great crowned pigeons, Goura, are very characteristic; and so are the various Megapodes.
Next stands the order Gallinae with 4 " cohorts "; (I) Tetraonomorphae, comprising 2 families, the sand-grouse (Pterocles) and the grouse proper, among which the Central American Oreophasis finds itself; (2) Phasianomorphae, with 4 families, pheasants peacocks, turkeys, guinea fowls, partridges, quails, and hemipodes (Turnix); (3) Macronyches, the megapodes, with 2 families; (4) the Duodecimpennatae, the curassows and guans, also with 2 families; (5) the Struthioniformes, composed of the tinamous; and (6) the Subgrallatores with 2 families, one consisting of the curious South American genera Thinocorus and Attagis and the other of the sheathbill (Chionis).
Megapodes are found in the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, Samoa, Tonga, the Carolines and the Marianas.