Group Research Project

[NutrientDensePermaculture]

They go boom

 

[Cyprus]

They go boom

Boom clap...

Okay, sorry

 

[briefvisit]

Whooo!
One: 'Briefvisit' is really Supreme Emu: 'Planet Rothschildi' [ https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/planet-rothschildi.714603/page-11 ]

My observations of (tame-)wild rothschildi emus are in their twelfth year.

'but mine definitely make a multitude of sounds at dawn and dusk' Lest we bite off more than we can chew, NDP, can we focus on a specific set of data, the pre-dawn female calls? (Which don't include the rare 'conversations' that may occur between a female and males, in the early a.m., in late winter.)

'May I suggest that you make some recordings' I am half blind and ill, and my tech abilities are creeping along years behind the curve. I can now upload a few seconds of video, but without sound! Indeed, we need (and I have called for) a glossary of recorded calls, particularly as members so often ask about vocalisations differentiating male and females.

And there's a cheekiness woven in here: I hope you learn from me. I sure do learn from you. My point is that we have so rarely found a project that we can both work on. But this is such a one.

SE

 

[briefvisit]

Further Notes

Planet Rothschildi: Day 4,200

It is not pretentious to ask for academic rigour. It just means careful observation and analysis.

And I promise you guys that you will find out a lot of interesting stuff about your beloved cheepers by cross-referencing their small-environment experience with that of the project here -- looking out the window before me, it's fifty miles to the next house.

And one thing you guys miss is what is core to the wild-emoo reality: territoriality* Wild-emoo existence is a life-long ballet of behaviours that range from breathtakingly subtle to being flogged off your feet, and then spending a year or two skulking in exile on the edge of the pasture.

And vocalisations are central to territorial behaviours. And there are many vocalisations.

And one that you guys can audit -- through open windows, while lying in bed -- is the early-a.m. strings of booms that, to my knowledge, all female emus make. And it took me some years before I noticed that these 'strings' varied. Then I started cross-referencing the female to the calls: if you sit in my garden at late dusk, you often literally see a female or a pair step into the scrub to roost (and ditto emerge at dawn**). So you know, from the direction of the calls the following morning, which female it is.



*You get it in a micro version, but not so much across time and space.
**Have you ever seen a textbook mention of how Dad and chicks sleep in a circle? breast to breast? Nuh. But we have observations of Eric and his chicks Alpha and Omega because I'd get up before dawn, and kneel in the wet grass with binos, to get a first-light glimpse of them, quite literally, getting up in the morning. And that is how we knew what a 'poop ring' is -- they're not mentioned in the literature either!!

 

[briefvisit]

'I'm not sure but I know Brief raises Emus.'
No. Supreme Emu (me) observes wild rothschildis. At present, it seems I'm the only person to ever observe multiple generations.

 

[briefvisit]

'Don't Emus typically live in pairs?'
Nope. The species is gynocentric. Generally -- certainly what the literature claims -- each summer, the female finds a consort, and if they form a breeding-pair, they breed that winter, and then the pair dissolves. Note also that the males incubate a clutch of which perhaps only half bear their DNA ('cause the female mates with other males, but lays into her consort's nest). This is a splendidly unusual behaviour.

SE