Planet Rothschildi

[Ashburnham]

Looks like millet seed or something similar in the blessings.

From my (semi learned) botanical knowledge the seeds appear to come from the numerous (now stripped bare) native orchid stems
that were growing everywhere around this area.

M

 

[Ashburnham]

The Parks Victoria patented Emu trap.
It only works if the Emus have read the instruction manual!

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Serious?!!

What? The emu crawls in underneath, then sends an sms so The Guys in The Guvvy Car can come get him?

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Unique Observations!!

Today, readers, was one of the most interesting days of observation ever. It lasted, with breaks (stupid real-estate inspection . . . ), from dawn to dusk – fourteen hours, and entailed behaviour that you guys are just never gonna see:


wild birds, all with life-and-death agendas, involved in a grand, slow-motion ballet of power, hour after hour, over hundreds and hundreds of square yards.


Felicity and Felix were in the house-clearing just after dawn. Five minutes ago, itching to come in and type this report, S.E. left them ‘in possession’ still, and Eric and the chicks had withdrawn.

During the day, Eric charged Felicity twice that I saw. He and the chicks spent long periods away from the clearing. None of these five wild emus made any nutritional headway today.

I’ll say that again: none of these wild birds made nutritional headway today.

(They did all get wheat from S.E., and F. and F. got large rations – though E.P. tended to end up finishing off that wheat. But they didn't graze. There's hardly any food, apart from figs, left to fight for.)

Beyond that, Felicity and Felix skirted, hassled, harassed, worried, interdicted, shadowed, monstered, teased, dissed, and pressured Eric. I swear, when he finally left the clearing, with the chicks in tow, he looked tired.

Readers, this can't be just a tussle for food. It seems to be – early days yet – some mating-season power play.

Felix has really begun to impress me. He has great posture: head high, chest out, feathers slightly flared.

During the last ten minutes of the day, S.E. saw something unique:

E.P. were in the gums, on the opposite side to the usual. Felicity was outside, drifting quietly along, kook-kook-kooking to Felix (and still clearly on Eric's case). Felix, meanwhile, was ‘holding station’ against E.P., at a distance of well under a hundred feet.

That’s close, guys!! Felix was advancing on the king of the house-clearing: ‘You want a piece of me? Here I am. Bin here all day. Be here tomorrow.’

Now check the photo, and I earnestly beg your indulgence with the Sad Camera. (It’s actually an okay photo.) S.E. spent twenty minutes under a bush to get this.

Take time over the body language. Eric (on left, with chicks) is facing away.

Now look at Felix. (Felicity is just off to the right, and has just left the frame. She was co-pressuring Eric the whole time; and, I swear, egging Felix on.)

Felix really doesn’t look like a bird that is afraid of Eric, does he! (Eric always and only attacks Felicity, who is clearly calling the shots, and is usually closer.)


F. and F. are roosting close by, no longer operating ‘over east.’ S.E. reckons there will be fireworks for days to come. Seriously, guys, to see Felix and Eric fight it out would be fabulous.

With respect, in a tame-bird environment, you may have birds fighting for power, okay; but in this case, the birds have, so to speak, progressed through years of 'trials.'

Felicity may have chosen a winner.

Go, Felicity!!

S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

One: Observer Affect:

overall, the observations that we make here are a remarkably ‘clean’ insight into emu life. What must be kept in mind is that the house-clearing is a ‘hot’ environment because of the abundance of its food, both the fruit trees and pasture, and what S.E. hands out. S.E. notes that he has seen far less ‘power play’ activity when observing birds on other pastures.

Otherwise, the birds are often distracted from doing their ‘natural’ stuff by their hope for a bit of Yummies – I sit down to observe . . . the birds mosey over to me. However, I don’t think it changes much. For example, my observations of E.P. roosting didn’t seem skewed by my presence. The birds sat about fifty yards up an aisle; S.E. sat at the end and watched. At most, they may have headed to the house-clearing a minute or two earlier, looking for their brekkie, because they knew I was up and about.

Two: temperatures:

S.E. was surprised by some temperatures in the Report. He has perhaps overestimated sometimes . . . and perhaps not. Oodnadatta got a mention at 129F. What surprises S.E. is that such a ‘low’ temperature was the record.
Accuracy is a very important thing to me. I have on several occasions read historical texts that reported higher temperatures. I have on several occasions spoken to locals who assured me that temperatures, generally monitored by individuals in those days, do rise above the ‘official’ estimates. A guy I trust well told me that when he was carting seismic rigs in the Tanami Desert, it hit 134F in the ‘met. box’ while he was there.

It remains to point out that official readings are in-the-shade readings.


Three:

S.E. needs to be more diligent as he stares at the satellite photos. The ‘equation’ requires identifying all the water sources – all – and S.E. missed a couple. (There’s one tucked away only about five hundred yards down the river bed from the last one we visited.)
Whatever, though: we are doing high-quality work, readers; and the Basic Equation is both correct and still a work in progress:

We can gain an insight into population density in different districts by becoming conversant with the relations between food and water and fences and and and . . . – and that is what we are patiently doing. Still, it was a blue to overlook several waterholes.



S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Round Two – ding!

 

[kbgh]

Sounds to me like F&F want to be the alpha birds of the clearing and the Eric is in the way. Perhaps Eric is backing off a bit to protect the chicks or should I say adolescent birds (they have gotten quite large).

As for feeding, at one time you said the area of the sheep pens was still quite green. Has that dried up now?

Maybe all the birds are playing you in order to get more wheat rations. (I would make book on this).

Ashburnham, do they really think that the emu are dumb enoough to even enter that gizmo?

K.B.

 

[yinepu]

Sounds to me like F&F want to be the alpha birds of the clearing and the Eric is in the way. Perhaps Eric is backing off a bit to protect the chicks or should I say adolescent birds (they have gotten quite large).

As for feeding, at one time you said the area of the sheep pens was still quite green. Has that dried up now?

Maybe all the birds are playing you in order to get more wheat rations. (I would make book on this).

Ashburnham, do they really think that the emu are dumb enoough to even enter that gizmo?

K.B.

Yup.. they know where the easy food is!
S.E.. they have you trained!

 

[kbgh]

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, Citizens!!

Take a deep breath of Planet Rothschildi air if you need to. It’s almost too beautiful a day to be true. Hot-but-not-too-hot, clear, light breeze, fluffy white cloudlets, and a Niagara Falls of sunshine pouring down over the house-clearing.


Yes, K.B. I thought about it last night. Eric may be getting old -- he is getting old -- but I overlooked a ‘coming together’ of factors: Felicity is way overdue to mate. She has secured a crack-a-jack consort. And a third factor:

S.E. doesn’t quite understand. Please advise:

firstly, the birds form pairs (starting December?).

Finally, they actually begin mating (May?).

‘Kay . . . between those two phases, isn’t there a ‘staking-out-of-territory’ phase? I read stuff like: ‘Emus form pairs, and then stake out a territory of X size, then begin mating.’ Is this right?

Well, it’s January. Are we now at the beginning of the staking-out-territory phase?

If so, Felicity finds herself, finally, in the box seat.

Conversely, Eric has less reason to do battle to hold the clearing ‘cause – apart from forthcoming figs – there’s precious little left to eat, to defend.

[Now an answer to K.B.’s question: ‘it’ goes back and forth according to a bit of rain, K.B. – but we haven’t had a bit of rain for a while, and it has been hot. S.E. is ready to go out and make a fool of himself with some more guesses about whether pastures are ‘on line’ or ‘off line.’

The green at the bottom end of the sheep yards has long since succumbed. Who remembers Greedy in Regal Poses in the lush lush lush-ness of the old sheep-loading ramp? Here it is this morning:



We are well into The Big Jump, readers; and S.E. is eager to undertake some ‘ordinary’ observations at places like The 500 and Oudman’s -- and back of Oudman’s. Anyone want to come on a dawn trip to the back of Oudman’s?? New Camera in action perhaps even tomorrow!]



An aspect of the above is:

let us watch with intense interest the dynamic between Eric and Felix. Why?:

it goes like this, citizens: Couple ‘A and B’ make incursions into the clearing. They may or may not be actually-wild couples.

Mostly, the ones we have observed at length have been couples like Greedy and Boy Emu, and Speckles and Sarah, and now Felicity and Felix.

They have never been quite the same in all respects. For example, the fact that Speckles got dumped by Greedy after learning to come to the farmhouse, then getting himself another consort and then bringing her . . . well! That’s unique!

My point here is that, thus far, it’s always been the case that one of the interloping pair is dominant. The consort ‘ghosts’ about in the background.

And . . . the dominant bird in the clearing at that time (it’s been Eric and Greedy and Felicity, and Foreign Bird for one fantastic moment) only ever attacks the dominant bird.

Well, what I spoke of as unique last night – seeing a ‘secondary’ bird ‘monster’ a dominant bird, a double-alpha bird – was . . . gee, guys, that was really something!

We were lying down behind the old sheep-yards, and we got a very good look at what went on.

(And different times of day really affect observations. Morning and dusk air, especially looking into a shaded area like the gums, gives remarkable clarity. Conversely, ‘open to open’ – like down at the corridor -- on really hot days is poor. The heat shimmer alone makes observations over distance quite impossible. It’s a reason for liking winter.

Finally for this note, remember that S.E. mentioned that he is getting good at observing into the gums? Well, that skill was key yesterday afternoon. All this stuff is happening in ‘slivers.’)

What happened, as I said last night, was that Felix operated with Felicity in a manner I’ve never seen before (but we recently conjectured upon!!). He advanced directly upon E.P.; and as they withdrew, definitely no longer holding the upper hand, Felix patiently advanced on them.

And here’s an anecdote: at one point, while S.E. was well and truly ‘in the binos,’ Felicity came up and stood beside me. At that point, the ‘drift’ momentarily reversed; and E.P. began advancing on Felicity.
For about ten fabulous seconds, readers, Supreme Emu was one the business side of an Eric Plus advance. (I wish wish wish I could get you all ‘in the binos’ with me just one time!!)

Wow!! Eric was central, with a chick on each side. Eric has primordial killer’s eyes, guys, and the chicks are their fathers’ children. Forget ‘cute.’ In that mode, they are Miniature Evil: heads down, necks outstretched, eyes blazing.

So, we are presently watching closely to see how Felix and Eric interact.

Next? Are they playing me to get more wheat? Yes – but only Greedy and Felicity get treats as well as rations.
This is worth mention, as it is protocol here:

Eric (Plus) gets his ration. Wild birds get a bit sometimes so they’ll come close enough to photograph. A bird gets extra rations if it’s been absent for a while. I’ll post about this below.

(When I first took the farmhouse, and only ever had in the pantry what I brought from town in my knapsack, I fed them muesli from one kilo packets. Then I managed to get big sacks of wheat for fifteen bucks a pop.)

Kay, last hours of cleaning.

S.E.