Planet Rothschildi

[Tame Emu Guy]

Update:


oh, yes! Oh, yes! Felicity is systematically pushing Eric’s buttons by coming right up to the house.

Eric chases her off. She returns. It’s only 7:45 a.m., and she’s already made at least four forays into the clearing.

[Go, Felicity!!]

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Best Observation in Four Years

Eric has been deposed by a foreign bird, and is at this moment – with both chicks:

cowering on his belly in submission!!

Detail later (got an adventure planned); but I have never seen anything like it. All three birds had, at one point, their necks stretched out on the ground.

As fast as I can type: this bird is leanin’ on Eric’s dream. I think it’s a female. Big (not all birds are big, guys. I only say they’re big when they’re big. Felicity is probably 20% smaller than this bird.) Tremendous ‘flare’ of feathers.

Eric Plus have retreated to the plum tree. The new bird is advancing cautiously into the clearing. The chicks are cheeping periodically in distress.

There’s a pair of the new birds. It could even be Speckles and Sarah – I have had a good look, but you have to be close to Speckles to pick his markings.


S.E.

 

[kbgh]

Did this foreign bird come into the clearing on her/his own or was he following one of the regulars?

From what you've said before, maybe it is a female looking for a mate. Perhaps Eric!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did she/he come after the wheat? of is it for the plums and apricots?

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

[resting]

Hi, K.B. Yep, the foreign bird just turned up. I suspect that such birds have either remembered this ‘pasture,’ or they can smell it.

Eric Plus are here this morning. Felicity too, but I can’t see Felix.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Why Do The Males Parent?​

‘ . . . the effort of producing . . . huge eggs is . . . exhausting.’

Jared Diamond
​

Suppose the female emu followed the general avian pattern of laying-then-immediately-incubating her eggs. Because emu eggs take such a long time to hatch, if the female incubated them, she would suffer back-to-back depletions of her body’s resources: egg-creating then the long incubation.

Now recall Supreme Emu’s thoughts to the effect that the parenting males have to work hard in spring to ‘bulk up’ while they are parenting the chicks. Well, if the female normally parented the chicks, by the time spring came, she would have been under strain for some time.

If it should happen that all this followed a ‘starvation migration,’ then we would know that any given female would be embarking on her laying-incubating-parenting activities in sub-prime condition.

It’s too hard . . . so the males took over the parenting.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

[Still resting]

Felicity and Felix were in the house-clearing today. An Emu Ruler doesn’t necessarily lose all their turf in a moment. It gets whittled away.

Well, Eric is under concerted whittlement at this second! F. and F. ended up feeding quite close to Eric, though out of sight.

The chicks are clearly increasing their ‘comfort zone,’ and this morning, while Eric was chasing F. and F. away, he got to a good fifty or sixty yards away from them. Yes, they cheeped piteously (and Eric rushed back, grunting reassurances as he came); but the point is that Eric was moving in a different ‘mode,’ leaving the chicks momentarily ‘stashed,’ so to speak, rather than all of them moving as a unit.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Excursion to a New Plantation: Pinticup



K.B. and S.E. found a lagoon on a blue gum plantation visible on a satellite photo. The plantation is a little further than S.E. has travelled thus far, perhaps two miles further west than the ‘back of Oudman’s.’

We aren’t going to observe on this block. If nothing else, it would be hard hard work because there are hardly any emus there. We went to see the lagoon, and to sharpen our emu-logical skills.

Firstly, then, the lagoon: it’s actually a part of the ‘wetlands system’ of ‘Lake Muir.’ It’s almost dry at this second, and smells like a beach. No critters regularly drink there because the mud is thick. One enthusiastic young kangaroo (or wallaby) tried, and left this fine series of tracks.








Here are two photos of the lagoon that show most of it.







I think what is most interesting about the lagoon is that it belongs to the wetland system, and the wetland system tells us a lot about the boom-and-bust nature of emu life (both in this area and as a species). Only a couple of lakes in the whole system hold water all year around.

Now, we walked over 2,500 yards on this block, and noted a lot of ‘soaks,’ that is, places that are swamps in winter. There is even a reed swamp. Supreme Emu stomped his way out into the swamp to get a photo for K.B. It’s bone dry.





It’s easy to see that there is abundant grass, on the soaks and elsewhere, on this block in winter and spring. It’s also clear that that grass doesn’t last. It only recently that I have learned to note where there are species of grass that have few seeds on top after they've died, and species of grass that have a nutritious head of seeds left after they've died. Blessings shows that the emus eat a great deal of these grass seeds when they are available.

So, a significant area of this block is wet wet wet in winter, and bone bone dry in summer. If you are emu-attuned, you really can sense how it goes: the emus foray forth each spring with their clutches, while the water and grass are abundant, then wham! Water gone, grass gone.

There’s no doubt about it, life on this block would be hard in late summer and autumn.

Here is a shot of a typical patch of ground:




Here below is a shot of the only decent pasture I saw. It’s sixty yards across. For purposes of comparison, there is surely ten times as much pasture per acre on my place as there is on Pinticup.




(Note also, readers, that human-made environments like this almost completely lack the 'upper level' of food that a prehistoric environment had. The bushes that emus graze on -- 'emu-berry bush' -- are just not present here. The grass seeds are the only 'upper level' food.)

Overall, guys, this is a starvation block. It’s population is small. The block is around 1,000 acres. As I noted, I don’t think there’s much coming and going. Just to keep ourselves in practice, we’ll guess that there are perhaps twenty or twenty-five birds living on the whole block. I saw three fresh blessings, two near water. There is fair water – dams.

We note that there are probably even fewer birds per acre in the adjacent areas of the National Parks. This takes us back to the squabble about the thickness of the scrub in the N.P. I’ve now had a look at a number of spots in the N.P. People tell me there is a good deal of ‘more-emu-friendly’ N.P. out there, but I haven’t seen any yet.

However, emu life goes on: I found an emu chick’s track at a muddy little rainwater puddle, which I thought was delightful.

Note also that S.E. has been mistaking emu skeletons for kangaroo skeletons. So, there are far more emu skeletons lying about than I thought. Saw two at Pinticup. Both by the fence. Emus do cross this fence, but I don’t think they often bother.





It would be very very interesting and worthwhile to know the movement-patterns of the birds on this block (over several years?). I think it would tell us a lot. Do some birds stay for years in very small areas? (barring the years of starvation migrations). Why don’t the birds on Pinticup pull up stakes and move? Are they literally weaker? And have wound up on Pinticup because they can’t gain access to other, better pastures? (This is one of the reasons why Stinky Creek interests us. It would be a good ‘clear’ place to watch just such ‘big picture’ power-plays.)

Finally, one for E.H. This tree was originally big; then got burnt out; then got infested with termites; then decided not to die; then grew a whole new tree out the top.









Supreme Emu

 

[kbgh]

Wow, S.E.

That was some hike. Pictures are awsome. I guess the trip to the lagoon was worthwhile, alabiet long.

I would have thought more water since you said it has been raining quite a bit. I checked the Flash map again and the lagoon appears to be some distance from Lake Muir. But when zooming in and out it becomes apparent that there is quite a bit of swamp land between the 2. I realize the swamps there do nearly dry up and then replenish. I wonder if the emu population in the area increases during the rainy season when both water and I assume food gets better. Perhaps a later trip during the rainy season will shed some light on this. K.B.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Bingo, K.B.!! I did know that the ‘wetland system’ was pretty big; but I didn’t know, until we started using Flash Earth, just how far it extended.]

Yes, I thought there’d be more water in it; but I was wrong (and the bit that is there is salty). I guess that it’s normally empty in summer, and the little that’s in is that rain water.

Well, the emu population does increase during the rainy season, the winter – that’s when the chicks hatch. Hence the notion of the ‘roller coaster’: the emus reach a ‘high point’ – a moment of higher population – then head steeply down the far side, into the months of ‘The Big Jump.’

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Waiting for The Plums to Drop!!


I wasn’t sure about this, but now I am (sorry about the photos, guys; this is data.)

The ring-necked parrots – the ‘twenty eights’ – make an elegant sufficiency of noise when they are in the plum trees, eating plums. Well, I am now sure that the emus listen for them, and come over to eat the plums that the parrots drop. Here is one chick, standing under a twenty eight, literally waiting for the next plum to fall.




This is the other chick. It came in to check for plums on the inside of the fence.





Now look carefully at this last photo. Eric is actually standing, looking up, watching the twenty eight above him (‘cause the chicks are almost as good at snatching fallen fruit as he is: as you sow, so shall you reap. Wa ha ha . . . )



S.E.