Malleefowl

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A stocky, ground-dwelling Australian bird that buries its eggs in a large mound of decaying vegetation to incubate them
2. An Australian megapode that constructs huge earthen mounds of leaves and soil in which its eggs are warmed by natural heat
3. A mound-building bird native to Australia that relies on decomposing plant matter rather than body heat to hatch its eggs

Etymology: The malleefowl is an Australian ground-nesting bird, and its name comes from the mallee, a low, multi-stemmed eucalyptus that grows across the dry scrubland of southern Australia. The bird builds enormous mounds of leaf litter and sand, sometimes several metres across, in which the eggs incubate on heat generated by the decaying vegetation. "Mallee fowl" was the original spelling, with the two words kept separate, and the mallee provides both the bird's habitat and the material for its nest. The "malleefowl" spelling is simply the same term written as one word, with no change in meaning. Nothing about the name points to any other origin, so the bird is named for the plant that surrounds it.