Recent content by briefvisit

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    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    So, if you were committed to serious observations, what might you do at this point? You would ‘gear up’ for observations – in winter, for example, a cushion, jumper and jacket, binoculars, and a handful of dried fruit – and set up an observation point away from the house-clearing. If the...
  2. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Finally: perhaps the moments I enjoy most are like this one. All the tame emus here somehow understand that the non-emu gives them wheat. They aren't afraid of him -- heck, some I've known since they were tiny. The fun to me is that they have no idea that this is 'my place' or 'the...
  3. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Notice that U.E. has a distinctive neck plumage. She has no 'ruff' at all, with instead a sort of nice black 'V'.
  4. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    We’ve seen The Other Dad – the wild one with five chicks – both yesterday and this morning. No photo yet. So, here is ‘circuits’! (and below: How Observations Are Undertaken). Wild Dad and Co. have been sighted four times – albeit briefly. And each time by the fig tree, which is a food source...
  5. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    So, U.E. has no leverage whatsoever with Limpy Chick. But otherwise, she struts about foomphing as though she owns the world.
  6. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    We've lost a chick. Limpy Chick and Co. were here at dawn -- four-day absence -- but there are only six chicks. I felt stupid, as though counting and re-counting would reveal the seventh chick. And the cold-hearted business of observing wild emus? Toosh Toosh lost one of his five at about this...
  7. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Oh, she has been a happy emu! No one chasing her off -- indeed, she's driven off two groups: the Dad with the five chicks, and a group of wild birds who snuck in behind the fig tree. [Just a minute ago I saw a chick down by the fig tree. It is like Wild Dad and his five.] SE
  8. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Limpy Chick and Co. may have gone bush: no sighting for four days. This is good. The chicks are half grown, and a part of their childhood education is to learn all the places – water sources, food sources – that Limpy Chick himself knows. And it’s groovy that Limpy Chick himself learned...
  9. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    'I remember you talking about the circuits before!' It's really only patient observations of wild emus that answers the question here, Antique -- but it's a thing about which some data is lacking. We once observed sixty somethings wild emus pass through the house-clearing in a single...
  10. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    'Do the Dads not have their own territory? Like this Dad is infringing on Limpy Chick's space, isn't he?' This is a fun question to answer! So, ‘territoriality’ is a range of things. If a breeding-pair, for instance, is getting close to mating, they will defend their territory fiercely...
  11. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    'when a younger pullet was introduced because she finally had someone to peck.' Yes. A female emu who can't peck anyone on the head is at the very bottom of the totem pole!
  12. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Yesterday at dusk: a brief observation of a wild Dad with a clutch of five -- though it took us a minute to figure out that it wasn't Limpy Chick and Co. Undersized Emu was ecstatic because the interlopers were afraid of her, a new experience. Were the five chicks just a little smaller than...
  13. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Undersized Emu's belligerence is just silly; but otherwise, she is perhaps the smartest emu of all. She is the only wild emu in 18 years to just sorta figure out the free food/tameness thing. Take a step back: of course, we don't say 'bird brain' for nothing. Over the years, though, it's been...
  14. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

    Perhaps these are the moments that I enjoy the most. Undersized Emu -- who wanders in and out of the carport any old time -- has no idea that this is 'my place.' Here she is, on a warm afternoon, having a little rest under the plum tree. (Has she still not worked out that plum season is...
  15. briefvisit

    Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

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