Mating-Season in Australia

[Tame Emu Guy]

Good question, M.L. I chose at the outset to not approach him. I’ve only had one quick look at the eggs in the nest. Five, I think. What is a normal success rate?

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Wild Chicks!!
​

One of my final tasks is to get some photos. Emu Hugger mentioned liking the terrain, so I decided to get out of the house – late afternoon, intermittent heavy showers – and walk across to the high point of ground on the next property. From there, I can get a good shot of a goodly chunk of my place.

You’ve heard me speak of the ‘gum aisles.’ B.E. is literally sitting in one. I was walking down one that leads down towards the corridor, but well to one side of my usual route. As I was walking, it occurred to mention that I can – especially on wet days – smell the wild birds.

Then, right in front of me, an emu appeared – seemed to jump right up out of the ground. Just a second later it propped, and uttered a good loud call (which I can at last identify as a male call). Then, I noticed, no more than ten or twelve feet away, two tiny chicks labouring through the leaf litter – which is interlaced with sticks, which, if counted as part of the litter, make it eight or ten inches deep in places.
I was shocked and enjoying myself at the same time. Looking back to the bird, which had called again, but not moved more than about thirty or forty feet away, I noticed more chicks, which were running in the other direction. All together, eight.
I moved directly away, then to the end of the aisle, and marked it so I can find it tomorrow. So, faithful readers, advice, please: shall I go back tomorrow, and carefully observe? The chicks were really small, I guess not more than a day or two out of the egg. They are probably still in the nest – there might even be an unhatched egg or two.

Or, we simply let them be. What do you think?

If nothing else, I can return in a week, and quarter the area until I find the nest, and photograph it for you.


Before we go to the next report, a note: you may recall I mentioned a male that brought a single young chick to the fig tree one day. The first two weeks is the time of maximum vulnerability. The litter is quite clearly a seriious obstacle for them, and any predator that can outmanouevre dad could easily catch one. By the time the chicks are, say, a month old, I imagine they'd be truly fleet of foot -- still highly vulnerable, but much much faster over ground.
Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Report Two of Four​

There are really only two ways of moving over distances for this project. The first is you just walk. The second is the scan-and-move mode. My point is that you can’t do both – you’d never get to the National Park and back in a day if you observed the whole way. This means that you regularly startle groups of birds that you could observe if you got the drop on them.




About five minutes after seeing the chicks, I reached the fence-line. Looking to the left, I saw and counted nineteen roos heading over the fence, into the Coffey’s paddocks. Then, looking to the right, I saw a group of seven or eight wild birds. If I'd been moving more cautiously, I would have had a good chance to observe them.

They trotted around the corner of a row of gums. I walked up – snuck the last twenty yards – to a spot from which I could carefully look towards where they’d disappeared.

So, here are some photos from that spot and nearby. These will give you a feel of the mosaic of environments I spoke of:

the photo below shows the fence-line between my place and my neighbour’s. The tree on the left of the fence at the bottom is the bottom end of the corridor where we go observing wild birds. Some readers are knowledgeable enough by now to recognise ‘islands of scrub’ in several places. The gums on the left are ten years old. Those on the left about two.


This photo is at right angles to the one above. This is where the emus went. Think about all the fuss I’ve made about human impact on the emus. The juxtaposed environments show in this photo are, for good or ill, representative of the environment of most of those birds in the south west that are not in the Big Green. Again, you can see islands of scrub. Think about how hard the birds in the actual National Park have to work to fill their bellies, but by crossing the fence-lines, from, say, the right here to the left, they can access the sort of grass in the photo below this one.




‘Kay, now we move down to the ‘swamp paddock’ that you can see to the right in the first photo. What you see here is stand of swamp gums. Tomorrow, I’ll post some photos taken from closer. My point here is that you can use ‘data’ such as a clump of trees like this to try to mentally reconstruct the pre-European-settlement bush. (If a single reader asks, I’ll post photos of the swamp here on my place. It’s not an emu thing, but it’s an amazing place.) These gums were probably originally part of a swamp a mile long. That original swamp would have included the part that’s on my place still. (This is open country, the chunk on my place is enclosed, very different.)




The Category Six birds of that time would have frequented it in Spring. Can anyone guess why? You get really lush grass on the edge of such swampy spots as they shrink to nothing as Spring progresses. Wild birds don’t at all mind grazing right to the edge, where the grass is growing out of the water. Moreover, there were no dams here then, so there were fewer bodies of water. Thus, the demographic density of emus would drop rapidly as you move up hill/away from water. Let's jump to the next frame.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Report Three of Four​

We’ll make this a sort of grab-bag text. Firstly, look at the photo below. Can anyone identify this plant (from this sad mobile-phone-camera photo)? It grows long around here, and the emus like it.


Secondly, a thought from Ken: he suggests that the Government policy of not burning broadly and regularly has greatly changed the nature of the country around here. We shall give his suggestion due consideration because he was riding his bicycle around this property in the 60's. He suggests that the deep litter that accumulates when the bush is not throughly burnt results in more of some species of plants, and fewer of other species. He offered the emu-berry bush as an example, claiming that it was much more common when he was a kid -- apparently the berries are quite tasty. I rang him to check what I wrote about the wild birds and the dams and the surface water and the swamps before I posted it. He says I'm right. He recalls seeing wild birds grazing down at the swamp with his dad's sheep. Finally for this Report: he reckons the island of scrub with all the blesssings in it -- over near the national park -- is a roosting spot. We got a laugh out of the fact that emus can't roost in trees. Can you imagine how crazy it would be to see an emu roosting in a tree?

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Report Four of Four
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Mohawk was here this afternoon. So was Greedy. Felicity has been gone days now. It seems to be more than the away-a-day-and-back-again flits we’ve seen during the mating-season. I note that Greedy has been oddly flighty in recent days. I have no idea if it’s significant.
It’s intriguing to see how fast the wild birds become less wild. When I walk out of the house, you can almost see the cogs in their brains going around: ‘Yeh . . . okay . . . it’s that weird emu again! Run wildly away? No . . . wait . . . yeh, it should be okay. (Might get some more of that wheat!!) I’ll just mosey over here behind this tree/bush/shed/sheep yards.’

Supreme Emu

 

[RingedTeal]

I got a good laugh out of the emu conversation.And I imagine it would be quite scary to seee an emu in a tree !!!

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Wild chicks!!

There are four Reports above. The first is about wild chicks. Shall we observe them?

Supreme Emu

 

[chickenzoo]

Yes we should.....lol. Loved the pics S.E..... Helps me visualize it better.

 

[Gold Griffin Chicken Mom]

Wild chicks!!

There are four Reports above. The first is about wild chicks. Shall we observe them?

Supreme Emu

I am really enjoying reading this thread and boring my children with it, lol. I've said for a few years now that I want a few emu. There are farmers in this town (the largest land size-wise, in Virginia) that own or have owned emu. I got all excited when I walked into a feed and seed store and discovered an emu egg sitting next to the register. It was an empty shell, blown out and cleaned, ready for a crafter to carve designs on it. The proprietor laughed and pointed at a field outside. "I had emu right there a few years ago. Then I sold them..."

Enough about me. I do enjoy reading your observations about these wild birds. I would say if you can get to the general area of the nest with chicks and just "hang out" without disturbing them, by all means "visit" them! Snap a few photos, even with a cell phone camera, if the opportunity presents itself.

I have a "point & shoot" digital camera. Liked it so much, I bought the next model in two other colors. It makes it easier to keep up with who borrowed which camera from me. Using a memory chip (4 meg?) and set on next-to-best resolution, the two newest take 700 pictures. Each. We download into our computers and decide what to print from our printer. My oldest daughter has mastered the use of flash drives for carrying pictures to be printed at a store.

Gah, that is a long way of saying I think you should get a simple, inexpensive digital camera and go crazy snapping photos! If you really like it, look into the cameras with inter-changeable lens for distance photos. Some people detest digital photography and going the expensive route first and discovering that is, well, expensive!

Most cell phones with camera are low resolution. Those two newest cameras are now three years old. They cost just under $100 and I think their resolution is 8 megapixels. A neighbor just showed me his similar camera that he bought for $20. Deals are out there! Decent quality pictures and no film processing!

It's my bedtime now. East coast US is after 11 PM. Good night all and sweet dreams!

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, guys. We are a la bunker at this second. Some weeks ago, I mentioned that we needed rain. We are now getting that rain. Classical ‘Gully weather’: cold, windy, and wave after wave of heavy showers. Third day now. Not a complaint. But it brings the Project to a halt.

B.E. is e.p.h. 6. [It’s gonna be hard to not adopt the chicks, but it would be a mistake – a cute mistake perhaps, but a mistake nevertheless.]

Only Greedy was here for breakfast.

Hi, G.G. Chicken. It’s delightful to have readers. For various reasons, I would probably only borrow a camera to get a few shots. I am surprised at how good the mobile-phone shots are, though it would be great to have much better shots.

Question: I (think I) see ‘pooh spots’ where there are inordinate amounts of blessings. Any ideas? Could these be roosting spots?
Well, E.H., would you like some shots of the swamp?

S.E.