Dusky megapode the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Dusky megapode The dusky megapode or dusky scrubfowl ("Megapodius freycinet") is a medium-sized (about 41 cm long), blackish bird with a short pointed crest, bare red facial skin, dark legs, brown irises, and dark brown and yellow bill. The male and female are similar. This terrestrial species lives in forests and swamps, including mangroves, of the Maluku and Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia. Like other megapodes, it lays its eggs in a mound made from earth mixed with leaves, sand, gravel, and sticks, as big as in diameter and stand nearly tall. Many
Tongan megapode in Polynesia. Similar extinctions occurred in Fiji and New Caledonia, which apparently had three species in prehistory. The species itself once had a more widespread distribution, occurring across most of Tonga, Samoa and Niue. The cause of all these extinctions and declines was the arrival of humans on the islands, and the associated predation on adults and particularly eggs, as well as predation by introduced species. On Niuafo'ou the small human population and remoteness of its habitat probably saved the species. The only megapode to survive human arrival in Western Polynesia, "the megapode nesting grounds were carefully controlled by the