The Big Ballet of Emoo Life
U.S. emu owners get to enjoy their birds close up. Which I don’t.
But watching them in the wild allows you to see The Big Patterns:
any emu(s) at any time and/or place is involved in some part of The Big Ballet. It could be looking for a mate. It could be exploring new territory with a new mate. It could be ‘flocking up’ in autumn (which is also a part of looking for mates). It could be fighting to gain control of territory – to mate. It could be sitting cold and wet in roaring wind and rain to keep a clutch of eggs warm.
On one historic autumn afternoon, Supreme Emu observed more than 50 emus pass through the house-clearing.
[Drab-colored clothes, cushion, binoculars; sit very still at a vantage point.]
There were breeding-pairs. There were Dads with clutches. There were small flocks just schmoozin’ around.
Fig season is a similar time: there are breeding-pairs. There are home-team defenders. There have been mobs of a dozen to about eighteen jockeying about in the scrub behind the fig trees, hoping to get in on the action.
Just this week, on the way to town: Dad with six healthy looking black-heads following him in a raggedy gaggle. From the moment those chicks hit the road, they’ve been experiencing and memorizing territory to which they will return to all their lives – we know for certain that Eric the Emu brought five different clutches of chicks to the house-clearing here over ten years.
So this is why it’s interesting that Tooshtoosh and Mrs. have remained a pair all through the ‘off’ season.
It’s a behavior for which we have almost no data.
Another such behavior is: how often do Dads stay with their clutches for a second year? It’s a mode of behavior that definitely exists, but we very little data on it.