Planet Rothschildi

[Tame Emu Guy]

E.P. all getting around with muddy feet: been drinking at the dam!

I observed E.P. for about an hour straight today, as they just hung out on the track up the front of the house. Well, guys, Eric was busy – that’s another story – but the chicks pecked and pecked and pecked and pecked. So, what were they eating? At first, I thought left-over grains of wheat, a usual thing; but no. Ants? Nuh, I checked later for presence-of-many-ants.

S.E. is being serious for a change: was it tiny little stones?

Well, it got weird later. I checked two fresh emu-chick blessings. One seemed to be completely grassless. Its consistency was that of sump oil. No lumps. No tiny stones. Just a black goo.

The second was half like a normal blessing, with visible bits of grass – but the other half was the same sump oil.

Any ideas?

And, for the record: S.E. sees in the wild birds' blessings a mysteriously broad range of contents and consistencies, ranging from 'straw bale' to 'sump oil' and in colour from almost bright green to black and red. (Red soil, guys!)

I also watched almost all of a two-hour ballet of emu life involving the locals: E.P. and Mystery Female and Audacious.

F.M. and Audacious once again rendezvoused on the side of the clearing away from the fig tree. It’s a clear pattern. I got a really good look at M.F. as she passed – perhaps the best yet; she’s very shy – and she was doing classical mating-season stuff: neck in; ruff out; walk sideways; and a little minor booming. They left together, and returned well over an hour later.

I wonder where they went?

It’s also interesting to note how sharply they watch me. M.F. was clever enough to spot me watching from inside the house! (I have just finished cleaning all the windows for the inspection.)

Both A and M.F. have a you-can’t-see-me! map of the clearing. I’m not joking. If they are among the fruit trees, and they spot me watching them from the back step, they slip behind a bush from which they can slip to behind a nearby tree that allows them to . . .

. . . ‘disappear’, and turn up a hundred yards away, heading quietly into the scrub.

Overall though, they are clearly becoming tamer. This afternoon, I was in the garden, playing loud music, and when I looked up, Audacious was at the front of the fig tree. Well, that’s a very different emu from the one who turned up here just a couple of weeks ago.

Finally is the ‘what-Eric-was-busy-doing thing.’ While the chicks were peck-peck-peckin’, Eric was looking in the direction in which M.F.-A. had gone. I think there were some vocalisations that I missed. My point is that for perhaps a half an hour I watched Eric ‘watching’ them.

Some readers have really large and ‘variegated’ (got shrubs and trees etc.) environments for their flockettes. You might like to try the following (particularly if you can get a pair of binos, so you can be close from afar):

try to determine the movements of birds by only watching birds that are watching them!

In other words, emu body language. It’s also worth doing something similar with your eyes closed – at least if you have a flockette of birds. Sit with your eyes closed, and audit at length. How much can you figure out?

I betcha that the moment that you undertake to do so consciously, you start noticing things you hadn’t noticed before!


S.E. is gonna make another emoo population-density map. (Oh, S.E. . . . another one!) There is so much data that I just haven’t considered. For example, how very rarely I have ever seen emus cross the highway near my place -- yet I know that at times they transit the strip of scrub between my front fence and the highway.

That indicates something. S.E. just needs to figure out what.

Second example: okay, if birds are not generally coming and going via the back of my place, where are the portals?

Well, d’uh, S.E., there’s an open gateway (not just a downed fence) on the fence between here and The 500, and there’s an open gateway in the fence on the far side of The 500, and there’s a track running straight between the two.


Big Picture: we haven’t seen another bird for days and days. There were the chicks and dad down at the corridor. A foreign bird snuck across the far side of the clearing about a week ago. Didn’t see a bird at The 500 the other day, or one Meadow Two on the same day.

If you think S.E. is a weensy bit nuts about Where Are All The Emus? check out, say, the autumn posts from last winter’s thread, when we saw ten or twelve birds in the clearing every day for weeks on end.


The photo below is of a 'wild' emu chick that has come spontatneously into the carport. Gee, guys!! The chicks are becoming so tame!!



S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

[S.E. truly struggling at this point.]

Omega chick has a lump under her/his beak. It bodes poorly. S.E. is just gonna continue with cheery stuff.

The Grasshoppers Project is begun in a very small way – they’re very small grasshoppers.

Yesterday morning, a female, presumably M.F., was calling quite energetically during the hour before dawn. Perhaps a dozen or fifteen booms in strings of medium length, not too loud. So, that’s mid-summer guys, ten weeks before May, which I understand is the beginning of mating-season.

Audacious has several times snuck up and foraged under the lilly pilly tree. S.E. has checked: there are blossoms on it. We aren’t quite sure what he is after.

Next (and S.E. is tired of saying, ‘When he is a bit better’) we have found a new and interesting source of data: my old posts! 'Ostriches, Emus, and Rheas' began in 2007. Emu Hugger is in the fourth post. While searching, I found old timers: Dingo, Aqua Eyes, Foulman, and me.

I am fairly sure, readers, that some months ago I ‘cruised through’ an old post of mine that mentions Eric bringing a clutch of emus to the house. Now, that’s very interesting because . . . I don’t remember that! If I can relocate that datum, it will put a final piece of a puzzle in place. I shall return to this subject.

Finally, here is one from the archives. It's a wild bird!! The author of the accompanying note (which S.E. found in his searches for emu-related material on the Net) noted that he saw the bird several times, and managed finally to photograph.



S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Civil Strife on The Riviera

Booming close to the house. Eric comes barrelling past the house, grunting. Chicks – on the other side – cheeping flat out.

Felicity comes slowly past, booming aggressively.

Supreme Emu trying to get Sad Old Camera functioning. Goes out to lilly pilly tree. Eric nowhere in sight. Chicks standing cheep-cheep-cheeping.

Check the photo. Eric with chicks? Nope. Felicity standing threatening the chicks, who are no longer aspiring dinosaurs with pairs of triple talons, just balls of petrified feathers without their daddy (but they did stand their ground!). Felicity hisses at them, and they bolt. (Still no Eric.)



Then Eric hoves into sight, and for about three minutes, the house-clearing is full of panicked emus, all with their own agenda. Eric is chasing Felicity. The chicks are running about quite mindlessly. Supreme Emu is grabbing wheat etc. He’s gonna follow Felicity, to feed her.

S.E. moves to the east. Felix is fleeing at a distance. Felicity is fleeing ahead of Eric. One chick bounces off the fence. The second chick corners itself; panics; and vaults the fence. (Touches the barbs. God! I wish I could find a solution to this!!)

S.E. moves east past the dam, calling to Felicity. Felicity gets a pat and a double ration of wheat and a big handful of sultanas – which she wolfs down ‘cause she knows Eric is quite capable of pursuing her that far.

Felicity booms to Felix – it’s quite obvious that she’s calling him (and how did S.E. know from which direction Felix would appear? Yup, from F.’s body language). S.E. doubles back to get more wheat, in the hope that Felix will get some of the second lot. Meets Eric coming looking for Felicity – and here’s the weird thing:
the chicks aren’t with him, and S.E. couldn't hear them.

Hmmm . . . ?

S.E. gets more wheat, and heads back to Felicity. Eric unseen. Felicity and Felix opt out, and head east, down the long aisle of gums that runs down towards Coffey’s fence near Top Corner.

S.E. sits down to watch and wait. Will F. and F. come back? Where is Eric?

Then, to S.E.’s real surprise, he realises that Eric Plus have been on the Riviera! He saw them, coming up, extra dripping-wet, from the dam, and the swirls in the water of the dam showed that the chicks had had a good long swim, seven minutes and thirteen seconds after bouncing of a fence in terror, with Monster Hateful Female on your case! Go figure . . .


In closing, guys, find below a photo, taken while E.P. were still walking back to the house, of a set of chick's tracks. Best we've seen yet. Don't be bored by this stuff. Remember that before last winter, not-actual-observation data on wild emus was beyond our scope. Now we are getting good information from various sources.




S.E.

 

[dak]

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Notes on Territory​

We are doing admirably, fellow travellers. The only data we have seen on the Net about this stuff is the ‘starvation-season migration’ claim. Not a word about anything else.

‘Kay, minimalist is always better. So, Greedy, Felicity, and Eric provide us most of this data – two females (one who has bred; one who has not), and an old male (demonstrated successful breeder); and S.E. offers here for discussion some positions that we have a fair idea are correct:

a female emu retains an attachment to the area in which she was raised.
We don’t know where G. and F. hatched.

Next: a female emu may roam long distances from that home territory. G. and F. have at times been absent for long periods, longer as they’ve grown older.

Next: mating-season seems to be one time when the female does return to her home turf.

Next: a female may ‘operate,’ over extended periods, in a mode we shall call ‘overlapping minor territories.’ For example, Felicity has been visiting the house-clearing on and off since she first left the area after her ‘winter stay.’ On one occasion, she came with me to The 500, to the west. But for some months, she has come from or headed back off to the east, down one of only a handful of adjacent (long) aisles that lead towards Coffey’s.

That is not unreasonable. Recall that S.E. is thinking about ‘portals.’ Well, we well know that there are ‘communities’ of wild emus, and ‘portals,’ over that way. (Top corner, guys. South east from here. Towards the river.)

So: if a bird visits, say, fortnightly, then it isn’t ranging hundreds of miles.

Conclusion: somewhere is home turf (raised there not hatched there), and two modes exist: (a) starvation-season migration: we understand that birds can travel hundreds of miles;

[Readers, S.E. tried to get a photo of a page of an old W.A. Wildlife book in a second-hand store. It showed emus migrating along an ‘anti-emu fence’ in the 30’s. Dozens of birds, strung out along the fence, all headed God knows where they didn’t really want to go.]

and (b): otherwise, a bird ‘operates’ on various ‘overlapping minor territories’ for various reasons at various times.

Next: the male: we know little:

Eric has been visiting this pasture for five years, and has brought either two or three clutches here, and stayed a good while here with them. This suggests a similar dynamic of overlapping minor territories.
We assume, then, that this is not Eric’s home turf. He incubates somewhere else. (Boy emu left with his chicks.) We are ignorant as to whether Eric’s alpha status affects how long he stays here.

Supreme Emu

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Nuh! Photos aren’t good enough!

F. and F. are back. No one makes psywar like Dromaius novaehollandiae!!

Felicity got some wheat and sultanas. (Felix is a great consort – he’s hardly had a grain of wheat since he met Felicity; but he’s hangin’ in there.) Felicity is always annoyed that Supreme Emu wants to pull her ticks just when she arrives. If he waits a few days, it’s no problem.

Dripping wet chicks arrive; then Eric; then the usual ballet begins, from the ‘base’ of the remaining wheat. It’s Darwinian. Eric moves forward. (Chicks gobble wheat for all they’re worth.) Felicity melts into the gums; and stands there with Felix; Eric retreats; Felicity advances from the gums; Felix moves to the edge of the gums.

Etc. etc.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, all!

Here below is the emu equivalent of a big raspberry. Felicity has come right into the backyard (just after yesterday’s shenanigans), and is standing about forty feet from Eric, who is on the other side of the carport, which he won’t generally cross. Felicity know this.




Next:

‘Pennisetum clandestinum. Characteristics. A vigorous coarse textured grass for the subtropics, particularly in highland areas or . . .’

Guys, we call it ‘kikuyu.’ If they drop the bomb, the only two things that survive will be the cockroaches and kikuyu. Do you have it?

Remember I said that the roos would start coming at night to eat the grass at the septic tank? Well:



But S.E. hasn’t yet seen Eric or the chicks eating it – the kikuyu there -- though it is accessible to them. I’ll watch for it.

Did anyone notice that Audacious and Mystery Female didn’t get a mention yesterday? I didn’t hear her booming this morning, though I was listening. It makes sense. They may have been here early yesterday, I didn’t look; but do we assume that they are simply not able to ‘hold ground’ against Felicity? Here is an insight into our theory of ‘overlapping minor territories.’

Suppose we call the house-clearing ‘A.’

Okay, Felicity is an ABC bird (first letter indicates home turf).

Eric is a DEA bird.

Okay . . . suppose Felix is an FGC bird. His home turf is F, which might be, say, over the Frankland River.

So, Felix and Felicity meet at C.

They form a consortship. In their joint travels, Felicity brings Felix to A.

(Which is thereby added to Felix’s map, and at some time F and G get added to Felicity’s map.)

So, as with Boy Emu, is it possible that Felix will incubate here this winter (Go, Felicity!!); and head off to F the minute the clutch is ready to hit the trail?

And yesterday, when Felicity announced her approach, Audacious (HIC) and Mystery Female (JKH) withdrew to another of their territories.


Random Note: some Internet sources claim that captive commercial birds breed at 18 months. In the wild, 2 years. Greedy didn’t breed until she was four, and Felicity is yet to breed. There are considerations to bear in mind here – principally the density of birds – nevertheless, it’s a big difference!

S.E.

 

[chickenzoo]

Love all the pics...... Lol

 

[kbgh]

Roo Poo huh?

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Good time to say, 'There are far more roos.' Gotta think about that.

S.E.