Planet Rothschildi

[Tame Emu Guy]

Poor Mystery Female! Noddy is habituating well. (Oooooh – S.E. used a ornithologikee word!) And Audacious now almost totally ignores me – ‘Oh, yeh . . . him.’

But Mystery Female!? She’s foraging, out of sight, under the lilly pilly. She senses me, and she’s off!! Tearing across the clearing, to get flared at and chased by Felicity. Wa ha ha.

S.E.

 

[kbgh]

Audacious know that you just belong there. Same as the pens, buildings and waer tank. Difference is you move but he knows you are harmless

. MF still hasn't figured out if you are friend, foe or neutral. When she courts you then you will know you have been accepted

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, K.B. Yah, you’re sure right. I’ve long thought that Felicity just sees me as a bag of wheat with arms and legs.

Meanwhile, though . . .

I found myself watching F. and N., and ‘M.F. and A.,’ at close close range this morning; but it was several minutes before the assertiveness of ‘Mystery Female’ registered as odd. Nuh! Another wild pair!

I like the photos I got of Felicity chasing them – 'blur art'!! Can you figure out who is who?





S.E.

 

[kbgh]

My guess would be Felicity in center in top pic and closest to you in the forefront of the second one. Great shots. new camera? K

 

[Ellamumu]

Great Pics!

 

[Avie]

Tearing across the clearing, to get flared at and chased by Felicity. Wa ha ha.

What's the "flaring" thing like? Are there sounds that go with it?

PS-- I agree, great pics!

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Morning, Avie [S.E. been off-air],

Find a picture of a frill-necked lizard, a critter that has cornered the market on the puff-yourself-up-to-look-formidable thing.

An emu can make every single feather on its body stand up – including those in the little feather leg-warmers that they have. So, ‘flaring’ – and we’ll come back to ‘ruff puff’ – is when an emu raises all the feathers on its chest. Here is Greedy with about one-third flare going on:



The trick, Avie, is to imagine that you are on the sharp end of this behaviour. If Felicity Normal is advancing on you, that’s one thing. If Felicity Total Flare Seriously Sideways is advancing on you – that’s a bulkier profile, and bulk rules, baby!

During Greedy’s first mating-season as an adult (and before S.E. had really begun to understand . . . ), she walked sideways for so long I thought she might never walk straight again.

A maxi-flare is a cool thing to see. Even at fifty or eighty yards, you see a flash of white: the underlying white colour of the chest feathers. It’s weird the first time you see it: grey, white, grey.

Next, vocalisations: a range of threatening vocalisations goes with the flare-and-walk-sideways boogie. I gotta get more data on this, but it’s generally a ‘mid-range’ ‘kook kook kook.’ It can be a hiss.

So:

one: ‘flare and rush’: the birds flares, and makes a little rush at the weaker bird.

two: ‘total flare’: during an actual fight (hisses) the two birds transform into giant white pear-shaped featheroids that leap and slash at lightning speed.

three: ‘flare and sideways boogie’: as described above. You see it in in both territorial and mating-season behaviour, and I still have trouble telling which is which.

I’ll have a think about the difference between flaring and ruff-puff, and post tomorrow. Here below is Greedy ruff-puffing (at a bird about a half a mile away).

[Next frame]

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

I gotta say that a very great deal about the birds’ behaviour remains, at the end of The Project, still far far from understood.
Certainly, though, if you sit and watch and watch through the binos, you see many patterns: combinations of flaring, and ruff-puff, and grunt and hiss, and boom and silent serious charges, and sideways boogie, and violations of ‘personal space’ and birds on their own, and birds in combination (for example, chicks accompanying their dad into the fray!!), etc., etc.

And I just love this last photo. Emoos is cutie featheries? ‘Awww . . . isn’t she cute!!’ Now look at the eye of the bird – it’s Greedy, the only double-alpha female – and ask yourself if you’d like to be trapped in a small space with this life-form. I’ll let her snatch a prune from between my lips.




S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Where is Greedy Emu?

At this point, S.E. is gonna express concern about Greedy: guys, she’s been absent for a long time, nearly eight months. She had left before Eric turned up in the middle of last spring – that is, she was here in September 2012; but we haven’t seen her since. It may be that she has decided to breed elsewhere (recall that Felicity was top dog when Greedy left).

Went to town: more birds than usual apparent by the road. Saw three lone birds in different spots. Trying to see if they are ‘yearlings’ – 22-month-olds.

Vignette: three wild birds (‘tame00’) passed through the house-clearing: grazed at the lilly pilly; then grazed in the clearing for an hour, in a setting of abundant fresh grass, with great grey storm-clouds rolling in behind.

S.E.

 

[Ellamumu]

I gotta say that a very great deal about the birds’ behaviour remains, at the end of The Project, still far far from understood.
Certainly, though, if you sit and watch and watch through the binos, you see many patterns: combinations of flaring, and ruff-puff, and grunt and hiss, and boom and silent serious charges, and sideways boogie, and violations of ‘personal space’ and birds on their own, and birds in combination (for example, chicks accompanying their dad into the fray!!), etc., etc.

And I just love this last photo. Emoos is cutie featheries? ‘Awww . . . isn’t she cute!!’ Now look at the eye of the bird – it’s Greedy, the only double-alpha female – and ask yourself if you’d like to be trapped in a small space with this life-form. I’ll let her snatch a prune from between my lips.




S.E.

Gorgeous bird, she looks so much larger than my mu!