Mating-Season in Australia

[Tame Emu Guy]

Supreme Emu is the only emu here at present.

Supreme Emu

 

[Toast n Jelly]

Very good pictures! Your blog helps me face the day with a smile and also gets me through a giant cup of tea lol! Thanks

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Greedy and Boy Emu are back. The pattern is fairly clear: they drift off with passing emus. They stay away just for a day. They come home and get extra wheat.

And I'm bursting to add this: The silhouettes of the three emu sub-species just have to be mislabelled: the birds here -- rothschildi -- are the ones with droopy tooshes (not, as in the silhouettes in the 'textbook,' the novaehollandiae). So, if you are trying to work out what sub-species your birds are . . . do they have markedly large and droopy toosh ffeathers?


The Observation of Wild Birds Project shall be added here. My new binoculars are a game-changer. I just meed to get the Wild Birds to co-operate.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Well, there’s nowhere like the house-clearing to make observations:


I’ve just been out watching and listening to wild birds in the dusk. I moved quietly quietly up the track, looking down each ‘aisle’ of gums as I went. Found a pair of wild birds. Sat and watched until deep deep dusk: it’s where they go beddy byes! I have never got around to learning this. They wouldn’t sit while they knew I was there. But it’s surely where they’re going to spend the night. I’ve noticed plenty of times that my birds pop out of the gums just a minute or two after I call them in the morning.

S.E.

 

[mz.candiz]

Amazing thread!! I loved reading about the emu adventures; wish we had wild ones to observe here. I don't think I would get anything done though if we did.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Okay, readers. The Tick Drama is over. Back to mating-season:

yes! Greedy and B.E. spent the night in an aisle of gums just 80 yards from the house. I checked in the early early early dawn light. Not side by side, but quite near.

Although sick, Greedy was glukking at strange emus this morning. She's exhibited teh first real sideways boogie of the season in the last wekk.

There was a wild pair of birds that I bet are just two years old: just-not-quite full size, with glossy glossy feathers.They looked rather like they were going to mate.
A number of wild birds about the clearing also this morning.

 

[Ashburnham]

I love your work mate!

I wish we had emus around here - there were a few that were "let go" when emu farming
went bust, living up the road on the edge of the bush, but I havent spotted them since Black Saturday.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Cool vocals: right outside the living-room window here, some wild emu making lots of the most energetic noise of the season yet. Males perhaps. Really good and loud.

S.E.

 

[RingedTeal]

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Half-Way Report
​

Well, readers, we’re half-way through the mating-season. Felicity is away – she left early on. Eric and Mrs. Eric the Emu are away. They also left early. Greedy and Boy Emu are in residence. I’ve observed two matings.

There are clearly fewer birds moseying about than is the norm. I haven’t seen a chick for ages. I still do see birds near the house and further afield; but overall, the birds’ movements are rather less drift-about-and-feed-and-squabble than usual.

There is also a particular phalanx of birds in orbit. I don’t know if they are male or female. Greedy and B.E. have a number of times drifted off overnight with a passing gaggle of birds. Greedy herself also seems to leave Boy Emu behind sometimes. I am not quite sure of this, but I have seen B.E. on his own a little lately.

If Greedy is going to lay eggs, it should be soon. I wonder if the lazy life of the house-clearing is having any affect on G. and B.E.’s mating instincts.

Greedy has become a little more vocal in the last week. I haven’t seen any really good displays of walking sideways yet.

Supreme Emu