Mating-Season in Australia

[Raptor65]

Gerry is always most eager to run and dance in the morning too, usually takes a lot to get him going in the afternoon unless he's got someone other than me to show off to (He really is all about the showmanship, if I let him out in the front field while other people are watching he'll do laps around it for about 10-15 minutes straight till he comes back and flops down next to me, but if no one else is watching it's time to take it casual and eat the dandelions).
Dunno what it is either, but he'll run up to me do a dance then take off running at full speed, come back and do it again till he gets bored and then it's time to stuff his face.
Whistling or talking to him while he's going only eggs him on too, one of these days I'll catch his morning routine on video but he's really hard to get on camera with how fast he is, he goes from filling the camera frame to being a speck in the distance in nothin flat.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, R65 – ahhh!! The notes are so helpful! Running more in the morning? Yes. Running and spazzydancing at the same time? Yes.

An interesting calculation came to mind yesterday as I watched F. finish off the last lilly pillies: there’s around fifty percent difference in the daily diet of the two house-clearing birds here. For a start, the dominant bird gets more to eat: to feed a weaker bird, I need to throw down a bit of extra wheat to keep the dominant bird at bay. Next, in respect of grass, it doesn’t matter much. But for All the Extras around the Clearing? The dominant bird gets the lion’s share. Full stop.

At the other end of the scale are the birds on Oudman’s. Their diet is almost entirely cropped grass. Last are the ‘bush birds,’ who live in the National Park. They must be somewhere in between.

If it’s interesting, guys, you can place me on a map of Oz: far far left bottom corner, to the south east of a place called ‘Manjimup.’ Note that there are no towns north west of Albany. That’s because there’s nothing there except National Park; and this is all ‘emu stuff,’ guys. For example, people sometimes talk about what the original bush out here actually looked like.

[We say ‘bush’ where you would say ‘forest.’ Some stands of timber down here rivalled in quality anything anywhere ever – big! It’s a really hostile environment, guys; and being out in this timber gets almost a bit crazy, cold, streaming wet, with nothing but column-like trunks of trees in all directions; and not a lot grows on the ground under gums – so were there emus in that bush? Gee, I s u p p o s e so.]

That is, what sorts of balances of diet were the rothschildi down here squabbling over a (hundred) thousand years ago?. I ruckon it’s fair to think about all this. What was the diet like in the open country? In the dense bush? Desert? How much grass? and drier foods, like pods and seeds? Wild plums?

A lot of the information on the Net is just . . . umm:
pop off to Youtube ‘Desert Emu.’ Check out the environment. Do we think that these birds drink three to five gallons of water a day?


[Life out here is kaleidoscopic: a couple of local lads turned up at midnight, and left me three live miniature fresh-water lobsters (‘marron’) for breakfast. One of the lads, readers, originally thought The Whole Emu Thing was just silly (he used other words); but some time ago we were sitting on the back step here, and a male and five chicks cruised right past us. He thought it was great! Dogs are so much a part of the farmhouse culture here that I don’t think some people understand how much less you see when there are dogs around.

So you better believe it, readers, farmhouse breakfast this morning is lobster with olive oil and soy sauce, and broccoli and coriander from the garden.]

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Gee, perhaps Greedy won’t crack the code! and will not regain her alpha status! Felicity chased her for hundreds of yards – at least six hundred – around and around the clearing yesterday afternoon. This morning, when I came out to feed them, Felicity had her pinned down in the gums at the far side of the clearing. Greedy is getting her share of food, and Felicity tolerates her coming very close to do that; but Felicity is still in charge.

It’s cold and raining hard, and the fire is burning here in the Emu Observation Facility. There’s a wild bird grazing just outside, but I’ll observe him in the morning.

Ah! I’m not losing my mind. Greedy’s neck and head have got darker!

‘A study done by Taylor et al (2000) showed that on average 51% of chicks in a nest are not fathered by the male that is sitting on the nest and only 11% of nesting males fathered all the chicks in their brood.’

Hmm . . . can it be that the males may not sit on the nest until ten or twelve or fourteen days after the first egg is laid? Sure feels counter-intuitive: that means that that first egg might lie on the ground, perhaps in pouring winter rain, all that time.

‘Seemingly huge numbers of the birds were gathered to take advantage of local feeding spots greened by isolated storms.’

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

It’s a little after dawn, and we’re going to have a day of observation, with some ‘personal admin’ – like getting a fire going – thrown in. It’s cold.

Greedy and the visiting male are spazzy dancing together out the back.

We now cross live to Supreme Reporter:
‘Good morning, viewers. Hungry emus here this morning, all looking for more than their share of yummy, protein-rich wheat, all looking to hold their spot in the evolutionary matrix.
The venue, for those of you who’ve just tuned in, is the legendary Black Flag Farmhouse clearing, known for miles around for its variety of Things that Are Yummy for Emus – but it’s a hard gig for the random interloper, as it’s controlled by a legendarily aggressive father-and-daughters trio -- they’re not only aggressive, they’re well-fed and aggressive.

The Feeder has emerged from the Facility. He’s moving around, a liitle uncertain of where to put the wheat. The Feeder is old and cold, and he’s not sure whether to put the wheat out in the centre of the clearing, where G. and F. can joust at will, or put it out the front of the house, where he can observe all three emus and still have warm toes.’


Has anyone heard of Napoleon Chagnon? [To know of him is not necessarily to endorse his theory.] He undertook a very well-known study in which he filmed an extensive brawl between Yanomamo villagers, and then minutely analysed the film, in order to try to identify the biological relationships between the players and their actions. You can guess where I’m going with this:
Think how much we’d learn if just for a single hour we could know that Display ‘A’ was territorial, and Display ‘B’ was mating-behaviour, and Display ‘C’ was just siblings being grumpy for no good reason. I mean, is it still ‘mating-season’ here? Is this wild male (?) being tolerated as a prospective mate? If so, by F. or G.?

[Ahh!! Here’s an insight into why S.E. hasn’t shut up about the G.-F. squabble! Think how weird it is that the only breeding bird is subordinate to the non-breeding bird – see how obviously back-to-front that seems?]

For example,, yesterday evening I poked my head out at one point, and G. and F. were grazing quietly with the wild bird. An hour later, I hear them working together to drive him into the gums – what gives?

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Hmmm . . . what I said above! I’ve just been out to identify the wild bird . . . but it’s gone.

Profile: well, it might have been Mohawk. I’m not sure because I didn’t get a good look at it – but it has been here before. We know that because it didn’t bolt outright when it saw me. It kept moving, in order to keep something between me and it.
I think it’s an old bird – gee! Why do you say that, S.E.? Not quite sure, readers. It had – I’m being serious – a rather battered-lookin’ head (like Eric . . . wa ha ha) It was small. An old small bird? Hmmm . . . Might that mean it has a ‘nuggety’ character? That it’s a survivor?

[Wait! A bit in brackets: thank you, E.H., again, for your observations. They keep filling gaps for me: ahh!! Big doesn’t simply equal dominant! An emu will run away from a turkey!]

Maybe Mohawk is still a good ‘genetic catch’ for a female?

Whatever, that bird and F. have choofed off. Greedy is here, and was grazing with another wild bird. Can you guess where they were? Bingo! On the ten-feet-square patch of sheep-pooh-juice-enriched grass way over where the gums meet the clearing. It was a wild bird: it bolted flat out as soon as it saw me.

[There’s a ring-necked parrot standing on one foot, about twenty feet from the keyboard, eating a nut from the pencil pine. They are black and green and yellow and cheeky and raucous and hang upside down to get the nuts. The infinite blend of shades between yellow and green make their feathers a real sight in sunlight.]

Anyone know what a ‘bungarra’ is? It’s the name for one of the species of goanna that is native around here. These lizards are yet another truly dinosauric life-form that is native to Oz. The komodo dragon of Indonesia is the biggest in the family, in the same way that the ostrich is the biggest ratite. The goanna is the emu of this lizard family – not nearly as big as a komodo, but still plenty big. Well, an article I read yesterday listed them as a predator of emus, and I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of that. Some species grow over six feet long in some parts of Oz. I’ve seen one at least five feet long (over east, where I grew up). They wouldn’t attack a bird or chick – but I ruckon they’d knock off the eggs, which brings us to:

wow, guys! Who remembers E.H. providing info on whether there is a gap between the female laying and the male nesting? Well, here’s a new term: ‘pre-nest.’


How about this:

the male emu makes a sort of ‘pre-nest’ of the female’s eggs. He hides the eggs under a layer of litter – first one egg, then a second, then a third and fourth – while the every-second-day egg-laying is underway. Then, when the fifth egg is laid – an article says the fifth egg is the ‘trigger egg,’ meaning that five eggs is enough to make viable the male’s investment in sitting for sixty days – the male sits on the eggs. This piece of the jigsaw puzzle came from Youtube ‘Finding an Emu Nest.’

Now, it’s just a fantastic co-incidence that I was, when I arrived here, studying the relationships between biological sexual predisposition (in homo sapiens) and environment. This perspective draws you into looking for and thinking about all sorts of patterns and ‘investments' and outcomes -- whether in emus or homo sapiens or any other life-form.

One such question, for example, is: why do the male emus do the parenting? What evolutionary twist at what point in pre-pre-pre-history resulted in the jump from the Probable Case (females nesting) to the Improbable Case (males nesting)?

[Ostriches share the nesting. Rhea males are almost the same as emu males. Kiwis share. Cassowaries are like emus. Moas?]

I can’t answer that one yet – but think about the ‘trigger-egg thing,’ readers. It makes sense. The male is saying, ‘I’m not risking a whole prime-of-life breeding-season for a maybe or two! When you have five eggs for me, I’ll sit!!’

F. is back. I just snuck her some sultanas. When she’s alone, she just my innocent, hard-done-by runt. I’ve been sneaking her extra food almost all her life.

S.E.


He's a sweetie, isn't he -- I'd trust him with my eggs.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Readers, it’s like a series of doors behind each of which is a room a little larger than the last:

a cold and tired Supreme Emu coasted home with the last twenty minutes of full winter sun on his back. When I crossed the fence into the battleaxe block, I disturbed so many roos that for six or eight seconds you could hear ‘thud thud thud thud thud’ over one hundred and eighty degrees.

I spent perhaps forty minutes observing two wild birds in the clearing at Oudman’s before I even saw the third, the two-year-old. It was fully an hour later, as they were drifting away, that I saw the fourth. So, a problem of success: Oudman’s is going to expand our horizons, guys – more on that in a moment – but I need to revamp my technique. Oudman’s seems to have a sort of ‘back’ and ‘front’ like my place. That is, the highway is up the front; and plainly, the wild birds are coming and going from the ‘back.’ I need to get in the right place, so I can observe them more directly. I ended up a bit bino-loopy this afternoon because the old yards were between the birds and I, and I was watching through a screen of trees. This tricks you into making endless useless adjustments to the binos because you are always looking at things the depth of which you can’t judge.

So, report: four wild birds at Oudman’s: three adults and a two-year-old. They didn’t know I was there until I started moving when it was time to come home (at least an hour and a half of observation). Heard no vocalisations. Splendidly quiet: no calls, no schmoozing, no grumpiness. They just grazed quietly – and guess where they were half the time?? In the old yards, where the sheep-pooh-enhanced grass is!

After observing, I went for a walk – and here’s the thing about the many doors: I am now gathering information from (a) the breeders and emu-lovers here at BYC, (b) the Net, (c) different parts of my environment, (d) knowledgeable locals. As I was walking, I found myself piecing together a matrix of information and questions: ‘Kay, these birds come to the clearing from this direction. How far did they come? What state is the fence in there and elsewhere? Where do they cross the fence line(s)? Where would they be camping at night? Do I see lots of blessings? What is their composition?’

Rubbish! You say – what does far-flung emu pooh tell you? Well, I guess that these birds don’t live on the plantation as such. So, they are travelling over a half a mile to get to the clearing. From another dietary environment. Hmmm . . .

Now, S.E. is gonna get all academic on those blessings tomorrow; but today’s initial sample – patient examination of a dozen wild birds’ blessings – reveals, except for chomped grass . . . not a thing (stones and sand). Not a lizard skeleton. Not a fruit or berry seed. Not a seed pod. Nix. Nada.

Interesting, hey!! Can we construct even the vaguest ‘map’ of numbers of birds/behaviour/diet/travel?

Last thought for this section: do you think, guys, that prime food indicates prime birds? Is it possible that the alpha birds of the area are dotted about on areas that have, for whatever reason, lush grass?

Sometime last year, I posted about the hourly speed of travel of a flock of birds that I observed. Okay, that’s what I saw. What’s clearer now is that, at least at this time of year, my birds are pretty solidly anchored to the house-clearing – gee, I could almost literally hit B.E. with a rock thrown from the front verandah. Both my birds sleep within two hundred meters of the feed-room. They travel away from the clearing once or more every day . . . but not too far . . .

Yet across the road – the very next decent patch of grass – there are birds that are probably travelling much much further in their daily lives. Are places like the Oudman clearing hotbeds of ratite schmoozing and fighting? If I watch patiently, will I see birds madly chasing each other around and around? (Pretty sure: no)

Let’s get some pictures over there! I noticed a beautiful thing: among the rows of gums are a few trees that were clearly shade-trees in the old sheep paddocks: they’ve been surrounded with a triangular jarrah-plank fence held together by bits of rusty wire. The trees are splendid stumpy gums of some sort, marooned by time and circumstance.

Got to observe Mohawk here for ten minutes at dusk. Heard the quietest quietest vocalisation ever from a bird. Perhaps the male version of Felicity’s happy-camper call.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Pictures:

Swamp Gum

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Oh no! Have I killed my readership?

This is part of the clearing at Oudman's. There are ten kangaroos in this shot, two with joeys in their pouches. (You can see it clearly through the binos. They look like they have a football up their jumper.)


Found this glade tucked away up the back. The emus don't like the grass, but there were eight wild ducks on the dam.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

These two environments are seventy-five paces apart.




This is on Oudman's. Many a dream was born or perished over a cup of tea under this tree. Plenty of stories.


And home to G. and F. and the visiting wild bird, Mohawk.



Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Dawn. There’s an endangered species ground-feeding in the clearing, and a pair of kookaburras hunting.

Boy Emu is well. Observing him is hard for me. The ground is cold and wet. Have only seen him stand on one occasion, the day we discovered the nest; but I see him facing different directions, so he does get up. It’s now only just over three weeks until the first chick might hatch – wow!! Every morning, at nine, a window of direct sunlight passes across him. It must be the highlight of his day – right now there is still ice in the shade behind the house.

Mohawk is here for the third day. His presence doesn’t seem to be mating-season-related. He and my two females pay almost no attention to each other . . . so . . . why is he here? Got a good look at him – yeh, small but battered looking. An odd bird.

Supreme Emu