Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
that they emerge they are the most precocious of baby birds, as expert at for-
aging as a month-old chicken. Because of this expertise they are immediately
able to take up an independent life, in many cases without ever encountering
their parents.
Megapodes (“big feet”) are relatively common in Australia, where they
are known as brush turkeys. Some of the megapodes are good fl yers, which
has enabled them to spread far to the north and colonize island groups like
the Solomons. Pigeon-sized megapodes have even made it to middle-ocean
islands like Palau and the Mariana Islands, far from their center of origin.
The eggs of megapodes are much-sought and delicious. (They have a
richer and more intensely “eggy” fl avor than chicken eggs—don't embarrass
me by asking how I know.) As a result of uncontrolled egg predation, mega-
podes now only tend to survive far from human activity.
One of these spots is the tiny, mildly active volcano of Savo in the Solo-
mon Islands. This heavily forested islet marks the entrance to a vast protected
anchorage called Ironbottom Sound that lies to the north of Guadalcanal,
the main island in the group. All the islands that surround and shelter the
sound were pushed up by the collision of the Indo-Australian and Pacifi c
tectonic plates.
Ironbottom Sound was once called Sealark Sound. It got its new name
as a result of the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942-3, which littered the sound's
fl oor with the remains of more than fi fty American and Japanese ships.
Recently I ventured across the sound to Savo in a little “tinny,” a fl at-bot-
tomed aluminum boat powered by a decrepit outboard motor.
The people of Savo, like most of the Solomon Islanders, are Melanesians.
They live of the crops that can be grown in abundance on the island's rich
volcanic soil. Their diet of manioc, fruit, vegetables, and fi sh is varied by wild
megapode eggs.
The villagers' diet is healthy, but they live in a dangerous world. As we
climbed up to see the megapode nests, the headman of the little village of
Reko told me (with a kind of perverse pride) that his villagers all suf er from
repeated bouts of three out of the four dif erent kinds of human malaria.
On the forested outer slopes of the Savo volcano the ground radiated a
gentle warmth that I was able to feel through my boots. Hot rock lies so close
