Planet Rothschildi

[Tame Emu Guy]

Finger-nippin’ cold here this morning, boys and girls – at least for an Australian lad.

Felicity and Noddy and Speckles and Sarah are all here.

Perhaps we can have a Visitor’s Seat? If you were here this very second, you’d have a cushion on the block of pine at the corner of the carport, and a cup of good coffee and the binos. All four birds were in the open on your side a minute ago – including Sarah, which is unusual. The closest bird would be about twenty feet.

Noddy seems oddly uninterested in his wheat.

Are the birds getting darker in colour?

S.E.

 

[yinepu]

Morning, Yinepu!

hmmm . . . there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on.

S.E. tries to attend to the difference between how cool it is to have the tame-wild birds hanging out here, and – on the other hand – providing the best possible info to readers.

Three times we’ve seen F. and N. doing this ‘nest-building??’ stuff. Each time was away from their far-corner-of-the-house-clearing roosting-spot. Each time it was, not so much close to the house, but rather in the open.

Guys, is Noddy a young bird? Does a young female often take a young male as consort?

Boy Emu incubated less than a hundred yards from the veranda here – but, ahh!! he tucked himself fifty yards into a solid block of gums. You saw the photo: he was all but invisible!

Felicity is a private person. She doesn’t like S.E. to know exactly where she roosts; and if you were observing with me from the block of wood by the house, guys, you’d have noticed that this ‘s.w. corner’ where F. and N. are roosting is behind the GP shed (that is, from where S.E. generally watches the pair). That is, it’s as private a spot here in the clearing as they can get.

Here’s a thought for us: could a young breeding-pair (whether captive or wild) simply fail, through inexperience, in its first attempt to breed?

Surely there’s a small genetic voice telling these birds that (regardless of how much they love their pet human) they need to build their nest in an optimal position.

S.E.

Morning S.E.!

Yeah.. young pairs often fail in their first attempts.. but it's how they learn.. (and mature)


As far as preferring a younger mate.. well. there can be two possible reasons that I can see.. first being fertility.. maybe she figures that with him being young there is a better chance of high fertility...

OR... perhaps the older males preferred a more mature female and turned down her advances.. which left her with her young stud muffin due to lack of interest from the older guys who may have doubted HER fertility!

 

[yinepu]

Finger-nippin’ cold here this morning, boys and girls – at least for an Australian lad.

Felicity and Noddy and Speckles and Sarah are all here.

Perhaps we can have a Visitor’s Seat? If you were here this very second, you’d have a cushion on the block of pine at the corner of the carport, and a cup of good coffee and the binos. All four birds were in the open on your side a minute ago – including Sarah, which is unusual. The closest bird would be about twenty feet.

Noddy seems oddly uninterested in his wheat.

Are the birds getting darker in colour?

S.E.

I have noticed mine get darker as they mature... Paco is still the "baby" of the bunch (even though he's the same age as the others) his pelt is still more brown.. as the others have lost their neck feathers their bodies have gotten in darker feathers and they have also filled out more (meatier thighs and rumps).

i know Paco's issue is because he had been wounded.. so that set him back a bit (healing tissue as opposed to growth)

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, Yinepu,

great info,

thanks,

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Seventy Wild Bird in a Flock!!

The following report came from a trusted source. I have some queries about it, but it’s great data:

we tried unsuccessfully some months to get sightings on a fabulous property up the road – about three miles beyond Pindicup, which was the far s.w. corner of our area of observation. This property not only backs onto the National Park, but does so in an area that is far far more diverse (and scenic) than the National Park across the road here.

Well, readers!! We have a sighting of a flock of seventy wild emus. They are (my mate reckons) hungry because The Government – in its out-the-window-of-the-Guvvy-car-environmentalism – doesn’t allow the burnings-off that regenerate the plants that emus need to live on in that area.

These emus apparently punched their way through my mate’s fence, and she found them grazing happily on her rich winter pastures.
S.E.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

OH MY she should take action. Can she there since her land will be wiped, and the poor birds!!! They will be frightened, hungry how awful!

 

[yinepu]

Morning, Yinepu,

great info,

thanks,

S.E.

I did find out something interesting this past week

As Dorian is getting older he is becoming more territorial with ROSE.. yup.. he has been chasing her .. cornering her and trying to fight. Has even sent her over the fence into the horse pasture with the mini equines. Just before he started chasing her she had started booming and drumming.. plus fluffing up and strutting.. which apparently he has taken offence to. I still only hear grunts from him.. so I am not sure if the DNA was wrong and Dorian is actually a female .. or if he's just being a territorial male. .. funny thing is he has not bothered Paco (who also tested as male through DNA) at all...

Since this has been going on Paco has decided he wants to be in with the baby emus (the ones who are currently living with goslings, ducklings and a rabbit). So he managed to clear 2 six foot tall fences to get to where he could spend time with the babies. So I opened the gate and let him in.. now this is with 0 time to get to know them other than for a few hours (from when he escaped his pen and made his way to their fence).. I fully expected him to be aggressive with the babies.. instead he has moved into "big brother - semi- daddy" role.. sitting with all the babies and only giving an occasional mild peck to the rabbit when she tries to hog all the food.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, Yinepu.

Gee, keep observing, Y. See if you can guess sex from behaviour!

And we have a couple of reports of male emus adopting any chicks they can. (Interesting evolutionary strategy.)

S.E

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, readers!

No change:

Felicity and Noddy are here most days and nights.

I saw them yesterday afternoon down near The 400. There’s something really nice about watching a ‘house-clearing’ pair grazing away from the house-clearing; and it’s is also actually a great chance to observe: the behaviour is little affected by the observer’s presence, and you do actually get to observe.

I have heard Noddy call a couple of times in the hour after dusk.

Felicity is behaving a bit skittishly in the mornings; and, amazingly, is more interested for a few minutes in morning lilly pillies than sultanas from my hand.

We’ll keep an eye on the pair.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

There’s a north-facing corrugated-iron wall that blocks the south-west wind, and S.E. spent at least three hours today lying there ‘auditing’ in the sunshine.

# I’ve solved the identification problem: the birds are getting darker; they are getting brasher (Sarah!!); and the light can make ‘ordinary’ orange eyes look orange-er. So, the ‘Speckles’ that I saw really was Speckles. It was just the light, and the fact that the bird with Speckles didn’t look or behave like Sarah. (Today was the best look I’ve ever got at her – close.)

# Over the three hours of ‘auditing,’ S.E. heard a number of conversations between F. and N. They didn’t move out of a forty-yard square the whole time. That is, they moved from the lilly pilly to a luscious patch of grazing and back again, about a half a dozen times. Two of the suites of vocalisations made sense to S.E. The first was when Noddy started gurking loudly under the lilly pilly, then headed to a new venue, the superlush grass in the old sheep yards. Felicity ‘complained’ along behind. The shift to the tree was the only change in behaviour in an hour and a half, and the only change in vocalisations during that time. There were about forty calls in this suite.

The second came a little later. S.E. heard Felicity boom in a manner that he’d have bet was territorial – other emus present. Sure enough, when I sat up a little later, Speckles and Sarah were grazing by the fig tree. There were only two or three calls in this suite.

# A little later, Speckles confronted Felicity. S.E. was fortunate to watch through binos from close range. It was the first time I’ve seen a male and a female advance on each other in 100%-confrontation mode. Wonderful to watch! Speckles chimed in perfectly, and together, F. and N. ‘bounced’ Speckles.

Anyone want to guess where Sarah was during the drama?:

‘Oh! It’s too horrible to watch!! Kook kook kook kook!! I’ll just do my Bimbo-Girl prance over here on the edge of the gums.’

S.E.