- Nov 9, 2013
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Hey, LMC. Welcome.
Here's the background: emooos make a range of noises, but most of those are made by both the males and females. Moreover, for me -- observing wild emus -- there are great clues in how the birds move about. For example, if wild birds come on to the turf of a breeding pair, it's almost certainly the female who'll ante up against the interlopers. She'll be all chest feathers at maximum puff and walkin' sideways and foomphing.
That is, I think a lot of confusion over vocalisations comes from emus being in smaller spaces than in the wild.
Now let's tackle your problem:
do your emus go 'guurk' or 'foomph'? Only the females have a vocal sac. Once you've heard them vocalising with it, you'll no longer be in doubt. They often hunker down, and do the 'swan neck' thing. If your birds are tame enough to pet, then you may be able to feel the vocal sac under their puffed-up feathers as they foomph. It feels literally like a big ballon under their chest feathers. If you observe carefully, you can see the female's diaphragm sorta 'pumping' just a little on the underside of her body as she foomphs.
(Why can't the Internet get the emu-sound thang right? I don't know. One emu-sound clip showed an ostrich.)
And: over years we've had many a good laugh about folks building nice night-time shelters for their emus, which the emus just ignore. They do roost under trees in the wild. Maybe your birds like sitting in their feather pyjamas, watching the night sky.
PS Do you hear strings of vocalisations at night, usually in the early am? Probably between six and sixteen each time? At intervals of a couple of minutes? That's females. And again, the squashed-together thing is relevant. In the wild, the females will roost at different compass points. I'm not sure how night-time vocalisations go when birds are in closer proximity.
I can sometimes even tell which female is which from the number of foomphs.
Supreme Emu
Here's the background: emooos make a range of noises, but most of those are made by both the males and females. Moreover, for me -- observing wild emus -- there are great clues in how the birds move about. For example, if wild birds come on to the turf of a breeding pair, it's almost certainly the female who'll ante up against the interlopers. She'll be all chest feathers at maximum puff and walkin' sideways and foomphing.
That is, I think a lot of confusion over vocalisations comes from emus being in smaller spaces than in the wild.
Now let's tackle your problem:
do your emus go 'guurk' or 'foomph'? Only the females have a vocal sac. Once you've heard them vocalising with it, you'll no longer be in doubt. They often hunker down, and do the 'swan neck' thing. If your birds are tame enough to pet, then you may be able to feel the vocal sac under their puffed-up feathers as they foomph. It feels literally like a big ballon under their chest feathers. If you observe carefully, you can see the female's diaphragm sorta 'pumping' just a little on the underside of her body as she foomphs.
(Why can't the Internet get the emu-sound thang right? I don't know. One emu-sound clip showed an ostrich.)
And: over years we've had many a good laugh about folks building nice night-time shelters for their emus, which the emus just ignore. They do roost under trees in the wild. Maybe your birds like sitting in their feather pyjamas, watching the night sky.
PS Do you hear strings of vocalisations at night, usually in the early am? Probably between six and sixteen each time? At intervals of a couple of minutes? That's females. And again, the squashed-together thing is relevant. In the wild, the females will roost at different compass points. I'm not sure how night-time vocalisations go when birds are in closer proximity.
I can sometimes even tell which female is which from the number of foomphs.
Supreme Emu
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