Long-Term Breeding-Pair?

[briefvisit]

Tooshtoosh is now in his fourth year. We don’t know Mrs. Tooshtoosh’s age. They formed a breeding-pair last year, on the usual schedule; but they didn’t breed.

Now, normally – successful breeding – they’d break up. But they didn’t. And now we’re observing something new: a long-term breeding pair: almost a year now.

What does it all mean? Don’t know. But it’s data. I t h i n k that Eric the Emu spent more than one season with Mrs. Eric. And there’s logic in that.

Watch this space.

 

[sourland]

Still watching.

 

[briefvisit]

Tooshtoosh and Mrs Tooshtoosh, the pair in question, were here for breakfast: almost a year together.
The other pair -- Limpychick and Sandy -- seem to have 'broken their orbit': haven't seen them for some time.

SE

 

[briefvisit]

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.