"In the afternoon I took the camera ashore to get photos of a nest-mound. Just as I was entering the jungle by the mound, I noticed that earth was being thrown in a continuous shower from the top. Soon a bird ran out from a depression there; I shot it, and at the noise another jumped out for a moment and then went on digging, but appearing again a few seconds later, I got it also. It was about to lay, but the shot had unfortunately broken the egg: there is no external difference in the appearance of the sexes, but these were a pair, and it is therefore evident that when the hen is about to deposit the egg, the male assists in excavating the hole in which it is to be buried for incubation. The mound on which they were busy was between 7 and 8 feet high, and rather more than 100 feet in circumference, and had a large coco palm growing through the centre. It would certainly be the work of a number of birds, and must have taken many years to build."
We got four more megapodes on February 1, one of them containing an unbroken egg of a size remarkable for so small a bird; it measured 3-3/8 inches by 2-3/16 inches.[30] The shell is very thick, and when new of a pinkish colour, which changes in the earth to a dirty buff. The temperature of a nest-mound, which we dug into without success in a search for eggs, rapidly increased towards the centre: it was composed of light sandy soil, with apparently no addition of leaves or grass other than that lying about on the earth employed by the birds; the species does not seem purposely to include vegetable matter for causing heat by fermentation.
We failed, whilst here, to obtain a single specimen of a rat; the island is much cut up with holes, high and low, but they are those of crabs, who here also--as on Barren Island and in Kar Nicobar--made off with our baits, leaving behind in some of the traps a quarry we did not at all desire. The only mammal obtained was a large fruit-bat (_Pteropus nicobaricus_), of which Abbott found a camp up the stream and shot several for specimens. Tracks of pig were seen.
The island is uninhabited, and seems to have been in the same state for some time. In Hamilton's _Voyages_ some account is given of the adventures of a shipwrecked crew, whose vessel, commanded by a Captain Owen, was lost there in 1708. They found the place unpeopled, and, making fires in the night, were taken off by several canoes that came across from the Nankauri group.