Planet Rothschildi

[kbgh]

Great pics.

The shot of the leg impression with the scales is fantastic.

Beautuful terrain.

As usual, your descrriptions along with the pictures make is a nice mental picture for me.

Is the water naturally that low or is it becasue you are now coming in to your wet season?

You said you tasted the water, are some of the water holes bad?

Kerry

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, K.B.

Is the water naturally that low? I’m not going there! Problems with salinity via a vis overclearing vis a vis how much of what is the fault of the blue gums (depending on whether you work for a blue gum company or not) – these are complexities that cause the rapid collapse of people’s equanimity. But yes, there is no doubt that the Original Swamp was far far larger, and that humans have everything to do with its demise as such.

Dry season? Back to front, K.B. – we are coming into our dry season now.

Drink that water? I am learning. There are a number of obvious ‘eco-systems’ in the water in the dams. That one yesterday was distinctly different – the blue colour. Some have reeds. Many look suspiciously sterile. Some are frequented by wild ducks while others are not.

Chemicals are repeatedly sprayed on these plantations. (were sprayed – the GFC stopped that in its tracks). There are piles of old drums in the shed here that contain suspected carcinogens. The two gentlemen who farmed on either side of my place both died of cancer in their 50’s.

The water tastes okay; and that dam is the very first one where I’ve found tracks – no, I’ve found one other track, in a puddle by the National Park. But yeh, K.B., the water in some of the dams doesn’t look good. (I’ve seen Felicity nonchalantly drink pretty icky water from a puddle by the track.)

Readers, please pardon the seriousness of the material above. I suppose that we want to understand whatever we can; and what is a detail in passing for me may be a key datum for someone else.

I recently read a book about the Pitjantjatjara aboriginals of central Australia. There’s a detail there that surprised me in the sense of Hmmm . . . how come we didn’t twig to that? The anecdote describes how they ‘harvest’ water from the early-morning grass. (They use a ‘coolamun,’ a sort of elongated all-purpose dish.) The respondent states that water gathered thus contributes substantially to daily needs.

Guys, surely we can assume that some proportion of an emu’s daily water requirements are supplied from early-morning grazing in some seasons. The daily water intake of the emu remains a puzzle to me. I’ve never seen a bird take more than eight or ten beakfuls at a time, and I see them drink less than I would have thought necessary (and getting data on this will be a real, an ornithological-level, challenge, requiring cameras).

S.E.

 

[kbgh]

I guess that I thought your spring/summer would be your wet/then hot summer drier season like it is here in eastern Pa. Guess I got that one wrong.

As usual, great reporting. I look forward to your updates each day.

Kerry

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Conversations in Late-Night Bars (One):

Emus Are Solitary Creatures
​

Random Guy: ‘So you raise emus, eh? How interesting – didn’t I read in Time that emus are solitary creatures?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Yes, indeedy! Solitary! “Without companions; characterised by the absence of companions.” Yup. That’s emus!

Random Guy: ‘So . . . how do they mate?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Oh, they form breeding-pairs. For months – years sometimes, actually.’

Random Guy: ‘Oh, but they’re . . . solitary?

Supreme Emu: ‘Yes yes. Quite solitary. “Done without assistance or accompaniment.” That’s emus. Yup.’

Random Guy: ‘But what about the chicks? Aren’t they vulnerable on their own like that? Just wandering around after they hatch – don’t they get eaten?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Oh no. The male emu is a dedicated parent. He spends twenty-four hours a day with his little flock for up to a year!’

Random Guy: ‘But solitarily, so to speak?

Supreme Emu: ‘Absolutely! Quite solitarily! And may I say what a pleasure it is to finally talk to someone who comprehends this simple issue of the Solitariness of Emus.’

Random Guy: ‘Are there any other circumstances in which these creatures are . . . ummm . . . solitarily gregarious, so to speak?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Oh yes! You see, when drought threatens their food supply, they migrate en masse.’

Random Guy: ‘En masse, you say? En masse . . . together? But wouldn’t that be . . . ’

Supreme Emu: ‘No no! Not at all. It’s a special avian sort of en-masse-ness, a solitary form of en-masse-ness characterised by being apart. Together.’

Random Guy: ‘Being apart together?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Correct! Apart-togetherness! “Being the only one; secluded, lonely” Yup. That’s emus. Solitary.’

Random Guy: ‘So, emus are solitary, except when they are living in breeding-pairs, or are rearing their young, or travelling together to find food, is that right?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Yes. Quite right – and there’s a valuable philosophical point to be made about travelling together during drought. Without this unique but typical form of together-apartness – that is, if all those hungry emus just choofed off hundreds of miles in different directions (which is what we technically call ‘apart apartness) -- then . . . well . . . that’d be the end of emus, wouldn’t it!! This point requires the subtlety of understanding that travelling together, which facilitates the continuation of the species, and is thus central and vital, is at the same time peripheral and unimportant. Wonderful, really, when you come to think of it. “Avoiding the society of others” Yup. Emus.’

Random Guy: ‘O k a y . . . so . . . solitary!!’

Supreme Emu: ‘Yup. Solitary. Emus are solitary creatures, except when they are breeding or rearing young or saving themselves from extinction, or in general.’

Random Guy: ‘Sorry, did you say “or in general”?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Did I? Oh, Yes yes I did – ‘or in general.’

Random Guy: ‘Meaning . . . ’

Supreme Emu: ‘Meaning just that. You don’t often see an emu alone. At least ninety percent of all emus that you see anywhere at any time ever are in the company of one or more other emus – solitary, you know.’

Random Guy: ‘And your medication?’

Supreme Emu: ‘Well, if I mix impromen with beer, the room just spins around. If I mix Haldol and flusperilin with asprins and scotch, and knock it back real fast, invisible Martians come and suck my brains out through a drinking-straw – but if I mix sediten, selecten, and sevinol with depression-era moonshine and melted boot-polish strained through a half a loaf of bread, and drink it out of an abbatoir worker’s boot, anything could happen. I could do anything. I could even believe that emus are solitary creatures.’



P.s.: the zoological definition of ‘solitary’ is:

‘(of a bird, mammal, or insect) living alone or in pairs, especially in contrast to related social forms: a solitary wasp.’ We should find someone in a bar to talk to about the definition of ‘related social forms.’

 

[kbgh]

Rolling on the floor

I understand what you are getting at but the way you wrote it still brought a smile.

It is true people hear what you say but don't know what you mean or should I say understand what you mean.

Kerry

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

The tameness of my birds facilitates observations on a higher plane. There is Observer’s Affect, of course. However, with Eric Plus, it doesn’t seem to be a significant problem.

I want to serially observe Eric Plus: how far do they travel in a day? Where? What do they eat? What else can we observe?
This morning’s observation was impromptu. (Observations will be poor for some time. Gotta see more specialists.) I set off to watch the swamp paddock, but bumped into Eric Plus about two hundred yards from the house. I had seen them arrive from the south this morning – a new direction.

Watch happens next is standard: when a tame bird sees you, whether in the house-clearing or elsewhere, it approaches you to see if you have anything Yummy for Emus. (I’m sure your birds do the same.) Then, hopefully, it will henceforth ignore you, and head off about its daily activities.

Eric Plus headed down an aisle of gums, emerging on a (lovely) glade that we have visited in the past. At that point, they outsmarted me: I try to stay as far away as possible, and I don’t know whether the birds deliberately try to ‘shake me off’ (Felicity just disappears – poof! Gone!) or whether I’m just dumb.

I then blundered down to the corridor, which is close. There, luckily, I spotted them; but they were already moseying ‘around a corner,’ and there I lost them.

Still, that was before 8:00 a.m., so those chicks have already covered more than a mile this morning, across four pastures.
Here are more water-side tracks. Are there suddenly more? Or am I just now finding them? Let’s observe for a decade or two further, then we might know. The second shot – the one with S.E.’s thumb providing perspective – is the very first emu-chick track I’ve found, though I have been looking hard.




Big Picture: the bigger chicks are entering the black-head phase. Are their dads now bringing them out of the nursery? I have not yet seen any chicks, except Alpha and Omega, outside the nursery.

Supreme Emu

 

[kbgh]

Thought you forgot us today.

Great pics of the foot prints.

Hope all is OK with the tests.

Kerry

 

[Raptor65]

Looking at those footprints in the mud, thought you would get a kick out of these (No pun intended).



The one on the left was laid down by a Carnosaur (Possibly Acrocanthosaurus) pursuing a large Sauropod in Texas (One section of the trackway shows the Carnosaur may have taken a bite out of the Sauropod before they both moved away from the soft mud as well), the left one was left by an Emu-sized Dinosaur often called Grallator (A Dinosaur only known from footprints).
Both footprints would have been left along the waters edge just like the ones in your pictures.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Thank you, raptor!

I really really really recommend the documentary that Casuarius posted a link to. It has detail on a display of fossilised footprints. Understanding both ratites and their ancestors seems like such a logical part of trying to understand emus in particular. Learning that archeopteryx had feathers was a revelation. [archaeo~, arkea~, akepote~, arkeyoptricks ~~]

Supreme Emu

 

[Raptor65]

LOTS of Theropod Dinosaurs had feathers to the point many scientists suggest they all did to some degree (Even T. rex), very Emu-like feathers I might add, while other Dinosaurs such as Velociraptor had full plumulaceous feathers like a modern bird. A recent find which has caused quite a stir is Yutyrannus, a BIG Theropod (9 meters!) with a full body covering of feathers.



To get an idea of how wide spread feathering was among Dinosaurs, Yutyrannus was a Tyrannosaurid and none of that lineage survived to modern day, but they were also Coelurosaurs and among Coelurosaurs were 23 different groups and the vast majority of those have solid evidence for feathers (Even Coelurosaurs which were not known to have had feathers have had new specimens with preserved feathers come to light) ranging from the simple hair-like filaments found around an Emu's face to full plumulaceous feathers like those found on the wing of a modern bird capable of flight, Emus and all modern birds are Maniraptorans which also includes Dinosaurs like Velociraptor.