Halvina Grasela Saiya
One type of bird with an average weight of ± 0.5 kg has a complicated strategy to ensure the sustainability of its generation. In The Malay Archipelago, Wallace describes the Moluccan Scrubfowl (Eulipoa wallacei) as a charming bird. In the following years, various researchers such as Jones, Gray, Heinrich, Ripley, Siebers, Toxopeus, Dekker, Heij and many other researchers explored various islands in the Wallacea region to collect data about this bird.
What is exciting and is still being studied until now is the complicated strategy of this bird in carrying out reproductive routines in each cycle. This bird lives in a primary forest in the highlands in the Maluku archipelago. Living by making nests and foraging in the forest, this bird is often referred to by local people as the ‘wild chicken.’ Moluccan Scrubfowl’s morphological appearance is similar to a chicken, making people call it that. However, when it comes to reproducing, this bird is willing to leave its home and travel quite a distance to the sandy coast to lay eggs. Uniquely, the Moluccan Scrubfowl is not the type of bird that can fly for a long time. It is a more active bird on the ground, and for long trips, it relies heavily on forest vegetation and coastal vegetation.
Arriving at the coast, the Moluccan Scrubfowl doesn’t lay eggs right away but instead maps out the locations. The female bird will look carefully where it is safe to spawn. This bird is good at making lots of trick holes. There will be 5-6 holes for one egg, and only one hole actually contains eggs. This bird can dig sand to a depth of more than one meter. And after laying the egg in the hole, the female will return to the surface by making a new path. After laying eggs, she returned to the forest.
What happened to the chick? After about 40-60 days on average, the eggs will hatch, and the newly hatched chicks will be able to crawl slowly until they reach the ground. The chicks must live independently and immediately defend themselves from predators from then on. The chick will never know its mother. This bird has a high survival instinct even since they were born.
The threat to this bird becomes even worse when its reproductive strategy is threatened by the conversion of forest and coastal land that threatens its habitat. In addition, the impact of climate change on small islands is also making this worse. Thus, conservation efforts are certainly needed to protect this bird from the threat of extinction.
Its vulnerability to extinction is a real, very threatening thing, and local people who really know this bird are trying continuously to preserve the existence of this bird in its habitat. Habitat conservation must be done and passed on to future generations. However, this is not enough. Scientific intervention in the form of captivity is also essential. This is so that the bird population can be controlled and also at the same time protect birds and eggs from predators. In short, this endemic bird cannot be left to fend for itself to avoid extinction.
