Mating-Season in Australia

[Tame Emu Guy]

Greedy, Felicity, Mohawk . . .

Could it be . . . umm . . .
Perhaps maybe . . .

What if Mohawk is struggling to find a willing female at this very late point in the season? There is a lot going on, but I am too ignorant to quite understand what It is. (Though I got a really good look at M. through the binos, by sitting patiently.)

I really think M. was trying to coax F. out of the clearing (away from me?) this morning.

I think I heard a wild bird this morning. M. certainly seemed to be paying attention to something.

I have seen two matings this season. Eric and Mrs. were the first, and it was before the season even officially started.

Then G. and B.E.

Think about it: Eric is an experienced alpha bird. Mrs. Eric is obviously way up the list, or she wouldn’t have been Eric’s mate all this time. (Three years that I know of, readers.) So, evolutionarily, they don’t need to fuss and fidget. (Guys, do you think that Eric is sitting now?)

Next is Greedy, another alpha bird, but young and inexperienced. (Who has also, we note, been with her mate longer than The Book says. Over eighteen months.) Still, they got it right, even if the clutch size will be small, what we’d expect from a ‘pullet.’ (Wa ha ha – 125-pound pullet!)

Felicity, though, is evolutionarily rudderless. She’s nearly four, and yet to gain a mate – we just aren’t going to count Foxtrot Charlie emu. It’s already late late in this season – it’s Spring, readers. The swallows have turned up. The days are perceptibly warmer.
So, a runty old bird – Mohawk – turns up. If he’d succeeded in mating this season, he wouldn’t have turned up because he’d be sitting somewhere. Both resident females are potential mates, and he can also choof off at any time to try his luck any time a female bird calls – though he would have got hisself booted out a just four or five weeks ago, but Felicity’s being in charge of the clearing has changed all that.

??????

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Whoops

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Egg-turning Observed:

I got to count the eggs five weeks ago, just after they were laid. But this is actually the first egg-turning that I've seen.

Nearly panicked ‘cause the eggs aren’t readily visible – I wasn’t close close. Boy Emu lined up to sink back into place as carefully as a 747 pilot lines her plane up to kiss the tarmac, and then dropped bits of fluff and stuff around his own edges afterwards.

And he no longer scratches. Nope. Not at all. Otherwise, he’s well. Slow but not dopey.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Greedy is sitting in the pouring rain, doing an impersonation of a statue of an emu sitting in the pouring rain.

[Mohawk has left, and Felicity was enthusiastically booming earlier.]

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Good morning, readers. Have you kept track of the arithmetic of it all? The earliest possible hatch-date for B.E.’s eggs is only a fortnight away!

I’ve figured out that there is a small group of enthusiastic readers, so let’s use this last fortnight or so to really enjoy ourselves. Please post any and all observations and questions.

I am unsure as to whether the night-time vocalisations are diminishing. They seemed to be, but in the last two nights, there have been quite a few, especially toward dawn. Last night, I thought: ‘Ah – that might be because Felicity is back in the mate-market because Mohawk has left.’ – but I’m not sure of that. I am not sure of anything much!

For example, if the female stores the male’s sperm for up to ten days during the every-second-day egg-laying, the actual matings of this season may be very nearly finished – there will be egg-laying and incubation, but the matings may have finished. So, if the matings are nearly finished, we have only a few more days to try to wring knowledge from our observations.

For example, I’m not even sure if both my birds are vocalising at night. I think it’s only Felicity. I think Greedy is done for the season. That’s why I was so intent on observing G. and F. and M. here in the clearing, to see if Greedy is still in the game, indeed, to see if even Felicity is in the game.

[G. and F. have scoffed their breakfast and left. I had music on, so I don’t know if there were calls.]

It is indeed Spring here, guys; but that doesn’t mean that Winter is over. We had over an inch of rain yesterday. So, tomorrow morning, we are all going over to Oudman’s. The rain has given us a blank slate on which to observe the tracks of the wild birds’ movements.

I have mentioned the electricity ‘right-of-way.’ It’s a strip of open space along which the power poles run. From the high point near the house, it provides a view over five-hundred yards of this place and a half mile of the place next door. I want to spend some hours up there, merely in order to see if groups of birds are visibly moving about on this block. While I am there, I shall check the fences, to see if I can find any ‘crossing-points.’

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

What do wild birds eat?

Well, I couldn’t get a wild bird to co-operate . . . so I took Greedy.



She eats kangaroo pooh! We shall confirm this factoid, but I sat and watched her scoffing up these little black balls that looked like some sort of seed. But no. Pooh.






It may not be until the following day, but no grain of wheat is ever forgotten. (The ring-necked parrots get a bit. They even eat undigested wheat out of the emu’s blessings.)


Greedy did eat a little besides wheat and roo poo. I would like to better understand whether emus identify edible morsels by sight or smell. She stopped a couple of times to peck up . . . something. She also intersperses her search for food with other emu-life stuff – stopping and looking about with eagle eyes.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

I rang my bushie mate Ken to ask him about tracks after rain etc. He immediately understood the thing about wild birds favoring the old-sheep-yard grass, and he reckons:

the sheep 'take up' a great deal of nutrient when they graze -- superphosphate puts nitrogen etc. into the ground; it goes into the sheep; the pooh goes into the yards; and that nutrient -- it's inches and inches deep under my shed -- in turn enriches the grass in the old yards. So, he reckons, that grass is not just long and lush-looking, it's particularly nutritious, and the emus have obviously figured that out.

Does this make sense?

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Greedy was here almost all day – finished mating?

Felicity was away almost all day – still looking?

This afternoon, I walked around a big chunk of fence-line. Well, there’s no doubt about it, mobs of wild emus punch their way through fences all over the place -- at least the fences on my and my neighbour's place. This influences mating-season behaviour: the wild can come and go, perhaps across matrices of properties with yummy grass, almost at will -- and remember, my birds sometimes spend months with these wild birds. It would be interesting to know how far they've travelled. I've posted about this above, but we've learned a lot since then. Could it be that F. or G. have in fact been miles into the National Park? It starts only a quarter of a mile from my front gate.

There is a semi-swamp paddock at the bottom end of the corridor, guys. It’s on my neighbour’s place, but I can still observe it. I counted over forty wild ducks, and a number of other species. Just beautiful.

Supreme Emu

 

[Raptor65]

Gerry would eat Chicken poo when he was little, I assumed it was for the calcium in the urates (The white stuff you see in bird and reptile poo). But he occasionally eats broken up horse poo too, which aside from rabbit poo would be the closest analogue to Kangaroo poo here in Idaho.
With how fast things run through their digestive system they probably do it to take advantage of the predigested food and Kangaroos no doubt have a lot of gut flora which would further help the Emus digest food. Gut Flora doesn't simply occur, it must be obtained and that often means eating someone's poop.

I'd expect they identify food by sight too, remember Emus can probably see ultraviolet like Dinosaurs and other Birds, so the world to them is as much a vibrant display of color as a darklight in a hotel room. Something that appears perfectly camouflaged or hard to see to us might stick out like it was painted bright orange to them, they'd simply need to read the colors to decide what is what.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Oh, Raptor, thank you! This is great information: hmmm, a sort of ‘ultra violet’ vision? Okay! I’ll think about that too.

I don't know what the ground in your pens looks like. Eating grass is too easy: you just crop and swallow as fast as you can.

But the ground in the bush, guys, is a different kettle of fish. The 'litter' (correct term) is often a couple of inches deep, and comprises all manner of different things; and those little beaks go peck peck peck peck at amazing speed.

S.E.