Planet Rothschildi

[kbgh]

Very cool. Guess they are getting pretty "tame" huh.

Kerry

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

The Starvation-Scrub Project

(Instalment One of Part Two. We’ve had a technical disaster. S.E. must return and re-photograph a bunch of stuff. Blast!!)

Some weeks ago, fellow travellers, we sweated across an arc of starvation scrub to the north east, that is, beyond the corridor, right ‘up the back corner of my place’: would we see emus? Are they drinking at the dams? What are the pastures like?

Well, I undertook today the second part of the project, a walk across the next arc of bush ‘up the back of my place.’ (Indeed, we added a sliver to the area under observation: we crossed a fence to the north, to look for tracks on a dam. We technically entered the territory of a neighbouring community of birds: the fence is uncrossable.)

And I feel as though I have visited a parallel universe: same geographical location (plus), more knowledge, different season. Not a sighting of a bird. Not a sound. Not a single fresh blessing – but great data in the form of tracks at the dams.

Our thesis is that the ‘back’ of my place is an emu desert. If there is no pasture in an area, and access is constrained, there are few or no emus there.

Our interest in this is to the point of learning how to gauge population density. Long-term readers are entitled to giggle at this point because S.E.’s estimations of the population on ‘my place’ have fluctuated wildly.



‘Kay, off we go:

we drifted down to the Meadow One dam, just behind the house. Emus are drinking there.

Check the photo below. There’s actually a wealth of information in it, though you are not looking for anything specific.

Birds slip and slide as they drink. This means that one dam that I recall checking, which I decided was not frequented by wild emus, probably was. How do we know that now? Well, the edge of the dam, all the way around, is rather steep. Therefore, the birds’ tracks are not the nice neat emu-postcard tracks that S.E. was looking for.

Do emus kneel sideways to drink? Perhaps.

Sometimes they kneel with their talons in the water, so the track washes out. S.E. is learning to assemble the pieces of the puzzle, and in some locations, the puzzle pieces at dams are almost the only information on wild birds we can get:




The next photo shows where a chick has kneeled to drink at the Meadow One dam (alongside an adult? Eric Plus? Probably. It would be a great great photo!) The mark of the left-hand hock is quite clearly visible just over S.E.’s thumb:



Here below is Meadow One. My feelings about how much pasture is now ‘off line’ was closer to the truth than I thought. I did misjudge how a little rain brings up a little pick, and I did misjudge the Yumminess of some ‘weeds.’

Notwithstanding that, Meadow One is blasted in the biblical sense. I doubt that you could keep a sparrow alive on it at this time. There is all-but-nothing green on it, though there may be some seeds.

(Note: my farmer-neighbour has explained that although this season has been unusually wet, the heat has ‘outflanked’ that moisture. For example, I noticed today that the dams are taking a real flogging. You can see that some have dropped inches really fast: the ‘shoreline’ is still damp.)





However, before we move on: grasshoppers!! They are in abundance in places. I read that emus eat them. Gotta try them on my birds. If emus really do like grasshoppers, then they are an abundant source of high-protein food in mid-summer.

This photo of Meadow One, below, provides an insight into observations:

if you have a look at the row of gums to the left of the visible area of the Meadow, you’ll realise that you can actually see quite a lot of the pasture through the trees, certainly enough to spot birds on that section.

Lots and lots of observations, readers, have this flavour to them: you pull up short of a pasture; you spend some minutes watching every ‘sliver’ of pasture that you can see, and bingo! a bird moseys into sight. Then you can tackle the problem of getting closer.





On the way down to Meadow Two, we ducked off to one side, to check another dam. I guessed that birds don’t often drink there, and I think I’m right. The dam is – we have discussed this elsewhere – sort of squished into an inhospitable corner of my place. Birds don’t go to that corner. Birds don’t go through it on the way elsewhere.

Hence, hardly any birds drink at this dam.

Here below – Supreme Emu is not being cheeky: the photo is quite sufficient for the task – is the faintest faintest faintest track . . . but it’s definitely the track of an adult bird.

Forget about the track that’s at the bottom and a little to the right. (The left talon is not visible. The right is, just. The central talon is as clear as day.)

It’s there, loyal readers! An adult emu has knelt smack in the middle of the visible length of shoreline. The right heel is clearly visible, and if you look really really closely, you can see the almost-washed-out print of the feet in the water.

If you were in doubt, you’d pop over; we’d walk down there; you’d get down on your hands and knees; and you’d see the imprint of the scale on the skin of the right hock still visible in the mud.




[The gorgeous little native hoppy mouse is back, hop-hop-hopping across the lawn into the lavender patch.]

Next, we slipped around the corner to The 500. The last two times that S.E. came through, he was a sook, and didn’t go ‘off road’ because he didn’t have garbage bags taped to his legs. Today we traversed a chunk of it, down to the dam at ‘the back.’

The 500 is truly now a wasteland. Any bit of green pick that came up with the recent rains is now utterly gone. It’s hard to believe that the aisles of dirt and crunching leaves and sticks were the lush green aisles where we were observing chicks back in spring.

Note that today’s observation here reveals that S.E. was totally wrong when he said that The 500 would be the only place around here with as many emus on it as around the house-clearing. Yet again yet again, S.E. has misjudged the ‘equation’ of population density.

Here is a tree that I really like. I gotta get a better angle on it. Can’t get it all in.





Okay, the photo below is the dam on the northern border of The 500. According to our thesis (which is lookin’ good, but Dummy Emu lost the photos . . . ), we would find emu tracks here. We did.

That’s because, albeit The 500 is pretty much ‘off line,’ there are many other minor pastures in the vicinity (which is on the ‘house-clearing side’ of my place). Gee, though, guys . . . we had better go out and check on that!!

And we guessed that we wouldn’t find any tracks or other signs north of here. And we didn’t.

That’s because we would by then have crossed a sort of ‘line’ that puts us in the ‘back of my place.’ Beyond the line there is (a) yes, good water, but (b) no pasture – none, zip, nada – and (c) the area is, overall, ‘constrained’ because long stretches of the fences are uncrossable. That means that birds can’t easily travel through the area (same as the little pocket that we mentioned back near Meadow Two, but the area ‘up the back of my place’ is large.)

Here’s the dam:



Finally, here’s a picture of a little patch of -- is it mint?

It’s dead, but the aroma is fabulous. I would give a great deal, BYC-ers, to be able to send to you all, now in the cold of mid-winter, a big big breath of the air by this dam. It's a knock-you-down-hot-and-strong dose of gum oil, mint, and Australian bush.

Actually, there’s a whole field of the stuff by a dam at another spot, and it’s a heavenly place to lie and read on a spring afternoon.


S.E

 

[chickenzoo]

The little hoppy mouse might be an occasional snack for the Emu..... I know my Henry has eaten a.squirrel before...ewww.
Also...the Emu moving to different areas away.from the farm house helps them to better the odds of finding unrelated Emu to breed with.......

 

[chickenzoo]

The little hoppy mouse might be an occasional snack for the Emu..... I know my Henry has eaten a.squirrel before...ewww.
Also...the Emu moving to different areas away.from the farm house helps them to better the odds of finding unrelated Emu to breed with.......

 

[kbgh]

Since most birds will eat bugs, I'm willing to bet that the emu feed on grasshoppers. It would stand to reason that this high protein source would help fill the gap during the dry hot, vegetationless summer months.

How deep are the dams? What is their source of water? Springs, wells, rain? I still have to wonder just how "fresh" the water is in some of the dams. If they are shallow and rely on run-off then one would assume that there would be natural salts in them. If not over abundant in salt then they may prove to be a source of salt (or sodium) for the emu. All animals need some salt, so what would make an emu different.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, K.B.:

the dams are shallow, and many have silted up because they are superfluous to the bluegum project. Their catchments channel rainwater into them. The water is okay in almost all – not bottled-water clear and sweet. It’s icky looking. Some have algae. But the water is okay. Many locals express fears about the chemicals that drain from the gums into the dams.

[The water that I drink, shower in, and put on the vegies is water you could sell in bottles anywhere! 25,000 gallons of rainwater in a steel tank. You could drop an SUV in my water tank!]

Hmmm . . . salt? That’s an interesting point, K.B.!! I have haphazardly collected some opinions on this – that is, ‘good’ water -- brackish but still good, salty but still good, too salty, too brackish . . . why brackish? (chemicals?)

Mostly though – and I taste every dam when I’m emologising – it’s normal dam water: hot, muddy-algae-tasting, not salty, okay.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Gee, E.H., you’ve touched on two things that I really hope to eventually understand.

One: what living things do emus eat? (A squirrel? Really? Ick! -- especially for the squirrel!)

Two: the interconnectedness of 'minor' and 'major' territories and breeding, which includes, of course, the birds’ refreshing of the gene pool by moving from one community to another.

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

[Brief.]

Haven't seen any but the 'resident' birds for days. Haven't seen Speckles and Sarah, or Felicity or Greedy.

The chicks have tail feathers!!

Mystery Female and Audacious seem to graze so little! Eric Plus seems to be spending far more time than usual sitting in the shade. That’s reasonable. We’ve had bake-your-brains hot days.
But we’re focussed on the yearly cycle. Have they ‘bulked up’ enough to sort of ‘coast’ on to winter? If they have, the notion of The Big Jump is a gross misjudgement. The data indicate so many contradictory things!!

‘Accommodation’: Eric Plus and Mystery and Audacious have clearly achieved some sort of ‘détente’ – and the heat may well have something to do with it! Eric Plus seem to generally ‘operate’ on the house-clearing side of the fig tree, and Audacious stays on the far side. Mystery stays further back, just out of sight in the gums behind the fig. I hear her calling at intervals during the day.

I did see a skirmish this morning, though. Eric Plus chased Audacious, but it seemed almost ceremonial.

Conversely, just a few minutes ago, I noticed a bird standing among the fruit trees by the fence, and I knew immediately by the bird’s body language that is was Audacious! And again he was standing quietly about, rather than actively grazing! (There are grapes to be scrounged, for example.)

Gotta test the Emus Eat Grasshoppers thing.

S.E.

 

[chickenzoo]

I'm sure they eat hoppers and lizards etc....but not all Emu like the same things. I've heard some will eat snakes....the one time I threw a snake.on the ground after it ate a chicken....my Emu looked at it....went ewww and ran off.....
I also notice.it might take a few test tastes before an Emu decides its good enough to eat. They may grasp it in the beak for a.few...drop it....pick it up..again and again before chucking it down.....
In Emu love....I have found that not all Emu fall head over heals for the first breeding age one of opposite sex. Henry lost his mate at a friends before coming here. He is somewhat a loner but loves people. Pumba is a 2 year old female grunting her heart out and displaying.....Henry pays her no mind....Emu can be fickel

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Hey, E.H. I have often seen the hold-drop-hold-drop-finally-swallow thing. Yup.

S.E.