Planet Rothschildi

[kbgh]

LOL Ok ya got me with the camera, but the pictures are still great. Kerry

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

No no, K.B. I was trying just a little harder with the old camera, thinking about getting a better overall quality of photo.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Time of Year: December, forming-of-breeding-pairs time.
Subject: lone emu, observed at unusual length.
Age: unknown – but observer senses the bird is old, experienced. No scars visible. No identifying features visible.

Behaviour: extraordinarily unafraid, exhibiting (present tense – it’s still standing out the side of the house) almost a disinterest in the observer. Has moved from fig tree to grapes to plum tree to lilly pilly tree. No vocalisations at all. Moved almost stealthily.
This bird certainly recognised the sound of the plums falling as the parrots above were eating. (Got to see this really well this morning -- first time ever -- through the binos.)
Audacious could also see me sitting under the plum tree. We watched each other at length as he considered approaching me, then he decided to go after more figs (still unripe, but Yummy for emus).



Morning, shivering-far-away readers. It’s gonna be as hot as Hades here today, and S.E. is both fasting and scrubbing floors in preparation for a real-estate inspection; but we shall alternate between observing emus and observing floors.



Eric Plus have been and gone and come back already. Audacious Bird came and went between times (?). I have already heard two females nearby – so that’s a total of six emus by eight in the morning. I predict that we will have a great day, and I look forward to your company.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

The presence of water and shade (particularly the ‘screen’ of gums on the eastern side) keeps the garden cooler longer. This morning’s observation of Audacious Bird were made from various spots in it. There is a positive riot of bird life here this morning; and there’s a vigilance-network thing apparent: if S.E. moves quietly and smoothly about the garden at length, the birds come to semi-ignore him. (I am photographing with the ‘new’ camera; but we won’t see those shots for a while. We’ll make a gallery of them.) The non-complaining of the flying birds certainly assists the observations of wild birds.
Four different ‘flights’ of black-tailed cockatoos also passed over, a real treat.

‘Communication’ without vocalisations: gee, I don’t know, aficionados . . . but I do see that birds stand stock still for long periods while looking in one direction. Perhaps it is just that S.E. hasn’t heard the vocalisations. Perhaps the birds are sharp-eyed enough to see other birds at distances. Smell?

[Audacious Bird is still here!




See how it is skirting the clearing. Shyer birds do it from the gums. Less shy birds do it like this.]
S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Every step that the birds in this vicinity take is a movement in a life-ballet:

keep a certain distance from another bird; make a feint to gauge another bird’s strength/intentions; keep a certain distance from a human; keep something between you and the human (‘moseying’); keep within a certain distance of chick (Dad); keep within a certain distance of Dad (chick); move between chicks and ‘predator’ (parenting male); withdraw interimly; withdraw completely; stand stock still for as long as a half an hour while you watch how everything pans out.

This dynamic becomes most complex when several flockettes meet at the fig tree (later, when the figs are ripe). Does anyone know of a guy named ‘Chagnon’? He filmed a fight in a Yanomamo village, and then analysed every movement of every participant in order to try to diagram the biological relations of those involved.

Well, in the case of the emus, the biological connection is perhaps not primary; but otherwise, I have no doubt that if you filmed a half-hour skirmish, and then examined it minutely, you would be able to account for every step taken by every bird – that’s how we came to observe the plonk-down-on-your-belly-to-indicate-neutrality strategy that Eric recently applied.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

S.E. just walked right out into the clearing, and back, without noticing Audacious standing motionlessly under the plum tree. This bird is either blind in one eye or has different coloured eyes.

It is playing the field very very well. It turned up after Eric Plus choofed off, then made itself inconspicuous while E.P. were here, and is now back under the plum tree. Not many a wild bird would dare that, and there hasn’t been a vocalisation.

This brings us to our next subject: the attrition of Eric’s kingdom. Has Eric chosen to defer to this bird? Or has Audacious just managed to slip in between times?

Now, recall that a week or so ago, a number of birds impinged on Eric Plus’s territory. Then there was an hiatus. Well, S.E. guesses – now that (unripe) figs and (ripe) plums are available – that E.P.’s position will be assailed again. We may see E.P. tolerate birds coming closer. We may see strategic withdrawals. We may see some crack-a-jack stoushes. (Truth to tell, readers, I would swap a whole bunch of photos of lone birds at a distance and paperbark tree trunks and dams for five seconds of telephoto footage of two alpha birds engaged in a serious – a status-determining -- fight! In nearly five years of observations, I’ve seen . . . one.)

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

For those of you who have asked about emus’ tolerance of heat, it’s a hundred degrees in the shade (and only 12:30!); but the chicks (pictured below) are still roaming about in the sun. Their mouths are open; but they aren’t panting, so they aren’t distressed.



S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

There are four birds visible at the fig tree. There are several more audible. (And a pair passed across the far side of the clearing earlier.) That’s not the news, though. The news is that they were birds of three or four different groups!
This means that ‘Fig Season’ and ‘The Big Shmooze’ – which overlap, then become mating-season – have definitely begun.

As is usual, the brashest bird gets stuck into the figs while his/her consort hangs back just a little, and further birds – I think of them as ‘country cousins’ – stand motionless even further back.

That was the situation ten minutes ago. Three birds were in that configuration on one side of the tree, and there was a fourth bird standing motionless fifty yards away, and there were further birds audible to one side.

One group withdrew when they spotted me – bolted, actually – but one bird remained, motionless (which still leaves E.P. and the audible birds).

[A wild bird has just moseyed past the front of the house. I think it’s Audacious.]

[It’s really hot, guys; but we have drawn a breeze and a maybe-storm in on ourselves: the humidity has suddenly risen sky-high. ‘Audacious’ is panting, his little wings working back and forth.]

Next: just before the above (while S.E. was walking down to the clearing from the side away from the figs), we saw E.P. in proximity to these interlopers – only about fifteen yards apart. E.P. then withdrew a hundred yards up the front drive (away from the wild birds).
That’s an accommodation, readers! It falls into the same technical category as crawling on your belly.

[Stranger than fiction: it’s 100 million degrees in the house or in direct sunlight; but fat cool drops of rain are falling.]

[Rain is now streaming from the eaves, and happycooldamp chicks are feeding under the plum tree. Rich rich smells of hot garden beds and mint and ‘stink weed’ (great smell!) and rotting grass are wafting through the house.]

‘Same category as crawling on your belly’? Yup: until Foreign Bird butted in, Eric had not only unhesitatingly charged every bird that had entered the clearing, he had won hands down. Today, though, in the face of four or more birds, E.P. withdrew (and I know that the wild birds have left because E.P. is back).

[Orange and black butterfly in the lounge room. It’s sitting on the window, and the light coming through is illuminating the patterns of its wings.]

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Ahhh!!!

Speckles and Sarah are at the fig tree, and Eric Plus is eating wheat by the car port, and studiously ignoring them. Oh, how the mighty are fallen.

[Native ‘hopping mouse’ just barreled across the lawn, and there’s a bronze-wing pigeon so close to the side door that I can see the colour of its wings.]

We shall have a think about sex and aggression. Your thoughts please. My first observation is a simple one: the females may be reported as dominant in the mating-processes; but aggression over territory is a different thing, reliant, it seems, on personality not sex: Eric is both male and dominant. Speckles is male, and seems to be the dominant partner.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

S.E. tired now.

Four wild birds – S. and S. and another pair – all at the fig tree. Eric has territorial myopia. He and the chicks came into the back yard via the fig tree side, and didn’t ‘see’ the four wild birds.

The chicks are getting smarter/brasher.

Eric Plus’s body language and behaviour patterns have obviously changed in response to the wild birds’ presence.

S.E.

P.S.: that's a total of ten birds today, readers. From now until we finish this project, we shall have a sufficiency of birds to observe. I must still check on the chicks' roosting, and some other stuff.