I am new to Emus....

[Haida]

Haida, serious question:

do the eggs really wiggle in response to being talked to? I wonder how Dad knows when it is time to up stakes and move at the end of the hatch. I am privileged to have seen exactly this in the wild, but at that time I was ignorant of the whole Wiggling Thing.

Now I guess that Dad is getting signals underneath him during the entired second-half of the hatch -- must help him from getting bored!!

And now I see how Dad knows that -- when he has hungry thirsty newly-hatched chicks standing about him -- that the last egg or two is infertile simply because it's not signalling.

Watching Dad during the hatch if flat-out funny: when he stands, he doesn't move his feet, so he won't step on the chicks. He stands looking in under himself, down at the chicks milling around his skyscraper legs.

[and Boy Emu was observed eat the membrane of the eggs.]

se

Sorry, SE, I missed this! Whoops!

Let me see if I can't upload this horrible video... you can turn the volume all the way off if you want (in fact, I recommend it) simply so you guys don't have to hear my awful baby-talk voice.I mean, they did wiggle on their own, but not as much or as "violently" when I would babble to them.

Just for fun, here they are now (they are 6 weeks old today):



They're just about 30" tall when they stand up all the way. And yeah, I have to figure out a new waterer... they're getting too big for the little one in there now... omg... OH, and I don't really baby talk to them so much anymore, but I imitate their whistles and they'll respond back! So neat! So now I've taken to whistling to everything, hahaha.