Mating-Season in Australia

[Tame Emu Guy]

Details to follow. This is not good. S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

My coming upon the male and his chicks yesterday has precipitated a disaster. It’s not the mating-season-project’s fault. I walk around here all the time.

This morning, I went down very very carefully to check the spot where I saw the male and the chicks. While sitting on the electricity right-if-way (a strip of open ground), I could hear . . . thought I could hear . . . emu chicks peeping. I sat and watched and listened. The peeps were coming from several directions. It just didn’t seem likely – I have been fooled before by birds that sound like emu chicks.

Then I saw a little brown streak disappearing into the trees. It was peep-peep-peeping, clearly in distress. I followed it at a distance, not sure if I could or should catch it. I watched and listened, and then a chick popped up only about twenty feet away, bushed, and trapped in the litter I mentioned last night. I dashed over, and had no trouble catching it. Then I wrapped it in my jacket, and set off in the direction of the other audible peeps. This chick I had to chase through the fence and into the gums, but caught it.

Now, I shall try to place them with Boy Emu’s chicks, or perhaps even with Mohawk if he turns up (!?). Perhaps I can find someone in town who wants them.

These chicks are fox bait. I’m most surprised they survived eighteen hours. If I can’t find a parent for them, I’ll have to put them down. That’s ugly, but what else can I do? Here, where I live, these chicks aren’t cute exotic creatures. They’re vermin. I very very seriously thought of putting them down on the spot, and lying to everyone here; but it's not my style.

Greedy is the only bird here today.

The chicks are gorgeous. I am trying not to handle them (apparently, you can rub them down with a herb ball of aniseed etc. before you try to place them with a parent).

They are, I guess, less than a week old. What should I feed them? Please please post any and all suggestions.

Supreme Emu

 

[Gold Griffin Chicken Mom]

Whatever you feed to the adult emus, try soaking it in water before offering to the chicks. Cooked grains and beans work. If you had human baby cereal handy, oh well.

So sorry you are in this position. May you have a better day!

 

[chickenzoo]

I hope you don't put them down....didn't you say someone else had an emu chick????? here in the US we feed them chicken chick starter. If you feed th the grasses and plants chopped up..that they eat around you that would be a good start....dog food. ...perhaps...scrambled eggs....you have to peck with your finger or hand...they learn from dad.....put sand in it to help digestion. you can see if a parent might take them...but its a.gamble.they may try to stomp them.... You could....raise them for six months and them see if they bond with your tame flock..... Keep looking for Dad in the area.....

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, Emu Hugger. I know I know I know how callous it sounds -- and we're all speaking in confidence in this tiny hidden corner of the e-world -- but to go about in my community asking if anyone wants an emu chick would be to get labelled a loonie. Not all the crackers on this planet live in the U.S. They's plenty to go round!!

Yes, a local woman (who has chickens) has a chick; but I wouldn't feel easy about offering her more. She lives in a village, and two or three chicks would require a lot of space.

Okay, I know that there are ten or more people reading regularly. I guessed that this would happen the moment I threw my jacket over a shivering and exhausted emu chick trapped in the leaf litter. How about this: I will not kill the chicks. Hope One: Boy Emu takes them. Hope Two: Mohawk takes them. Hope Three: someone from town takes them (my mate is already asking around). Final Option: they live in the chicken pen for six weeks, and then I'll release them.

Please post your thoughts, even p.m. me.

E.H., they are vocal and distressed -- gee, it's hard not to handle them -- but otherwise, uninjured and energetic. Okay, they can have names. (I didn't want to give them names.) They shall be 'Aisle Five' and 'Aisle Seven.' Aisle Five is just a little smaller. They have learned to peck.There's plenty of good food for them: lettuce, broccoli, silverbeet, soaked lentils, soaked wheat, and the pen has foot-long grass in it. Ken reckons they might have a chance in the wild at two months, which is seven weeks from now. We'll see.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

There's a wildlife refuge. They are going to call.
S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Aisle Five and Aisle Seven have a home -- so I can bring them in and coddle them today, handle them. It will give me some experience with chicks, a first for me.

Anyway, just to put this thread back on a humorous basis, can anyone guess what the picture is of?


Answer: it's a perfect patch of wheat growing from an emu blessing.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

​

Listening post: it’s still pretty cold. There’s a little wind, rain threatening. I was at the post at first light. Yes! It is Greedy that has the characteristic call, with the ‘babooms’ at the end. I actually saw her emerge from the gums in the half dark. She welcomed the morning with ruff raised. Her brekkie was a half ration.

I can distinguish patterns, though there’s lots of conjecture below: she interrupts her eating to Stare Hard in One Direction. I can now tell – got it right three times in a row – when she will vocalise:

she lifts her head higher, and straightens her neck, Staring Hard in the direction of the female she can hear. Her ruff slowly rises. Then she drops into the swan-neck position.

After she finished eating, she vocalised, and I heard a reply. Faint faint faint, but I definitely heard it. Three replies to three calls on Greedy’s part.

Let’s look to the bigger picture. As usual, we are theorising in a flimsy way; but hey, that’s our prerogative:

let’s call the male with the chicks ‘Peter Parent.’ Now, I could still stuff the smaller chick back into an egg if I had to. My point here is that I think we can assume that I saw P.P. pretty close to where his nest was/is. (Does the male emu ‘base itself’ near the nest for a few days after the last chick hatches – we’ll soon have an answer to that question.)

Now back to Greedy. The female I heard was off to the south west. But Greedy also did the head-high-and-still-then-Stare-Hard-then-vocalise thing while pointing to the north east – that is, the same direction from which I heard calls on the morning on which I heard two females calling.

Okay, I didn’t hear the north-east bird; but let’s assume its existence.

Now recall the morning that we walked to the river, and heard the three wild females calling. The closest of those was about a half a mile from the house hear, and to the south east. True, we have not since then heard a female call from that direction, and we are ‘stacking’ data from different days; but the pattern is too interesting to ignore:

if we had a white board, we could mark the presence of several fairly-evenly-spaced females at three of the four compass points around the farmhouse. The farmhouse itself is greedy's turf. (Let’s put aside the fight for supremacy. Greedy is the breeding bird.) We could then add the two females I heard down by the river. They were close together (surprisingly close, I noted); but they sounded as though they were ‘talking’ to different males. That is, both those females had their own little mating-dynamic going on. This extends our map to around two miles square. In that area, the females are fairly evenly spaced out.

[Excellent! I was just outside, and heard the female to the north east calling. So that is both females – north east and south west – audited this morning.]

Next, guys, think of those transparent sheets that go on an overhead projector. Let’s imagine that we’ll mark the positions of the nesting males on one of those, and lay it over the map of the vocalising females:

Boy Emu is smack in the middle of Greedy’s turf. Peter Parent is less than a half a mile away, as the crow flies. Could we assume that he’s the consort of the bird that controls the turf adjacent to us? If we assume that I didn’t see him too far from where the chicks hatched – they’re still pretty small, only days out of the egg – then that makes some sense. (Okay, now pop down and read The Extra Bit, then come back.)

So, now mark Peter and Boy Emu on the second transparent sheet, and lay it over the map of the females’ positions. We have a sound bit of data – Boy Emu; and we have a poor bit of data – Peter. But a picture emerges: pairs centre on a turf of perhaps a half a mile square, a spot with the best pasture that the female can fight for, win, and hold. They mate; the female lays; the male nests right there. (I wonder if there are turfs on which two males are nesting on eggs laid principally by the same female?!)

Next – to continue our wild conjecture, and thanks here to Raptor for ideas provided – we make another transparent sheet to represent birds that are ‘free-floating’ at this time. Within ten minutes of seeing Peter, I saw six or eight wild birds less than two hundred yards away. All adults. No chicks. Over near the National Park, I saw nearly twenty birds. All adults. No chicks.

Hmmm . . . over to you, readers: how many of those birds are female? Are there spinsters, male and female, in these groups? The point here is that although these other birds are in the same geographical location, they are all doin’ they own thang.

[I’ve been down the back listening. Greedy is booming, but I don’t know what she’s up to. There’s a wild bird down there. The house-clearing is a wee bit of a madhouse at this second. Greedy is down the back with a wild bird. Felicity is Out There Somewhere. So are Mr. and Mrs. Eric. The two chicks are cheeping plaintively in the chicken pen. Boy Emu is quite possibly listening right now to peeps from his eggs.

You would have laughed outright this morning at one point during my observation. Greedy was Staring Hard off to the south west. Then she swung around and stared at the side of the house -- the two chicks, in a box in my bedroom, the only warm room in the house, had started cheeping.]

The Extra Bit​

I’m intrigued by how similar Peter Parent’s choice of nesting-site is to Boy Emu’s. I have posted all manner of thoughts about grass vis a vis the birds’ general movements. The house-clearing here is a nexus. The gums are the ‘jumping-off point’ to it, the retreat, the base.

It’s as simple as this: B.E. is sitting in the litter in an aisle of gums, which provide a good all-round view, with good good pasture about a hundred yards away. We know he’s on his-and-his-mate’s turf. Peter was, when I came upon him – though I haven’t found his nest – sitting in the litter in an aisle of gums, with a good all-round view, with good good pasture about a hundred yards away. According to the notion of the map that I am constructing, Peter is – at a little under a half a mile away – perhaps smack in the middle of his and his mate’s territory. Just a thought.






Supreme Emu

 

[chickenzoo]

S.E.... It looks like those tiny chicks have taken over the house. ...lol. Glad you found a place for them to go. those little buggers can really pull at your heart strings...... They do a lot of crying....unless they are sleeping.....

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Luckily, E.H., all the bits that I've read from people who have emu chicks -- the closest I'd ever been until now was the one that the male brought to the fig tree -- has helped me look after them.

S.E.