Okay!!
You may remember that Felicity declined to let me watch her roost. Last winter, I tried several times. In deep deep dusk, after grazing until the last moment, she would walk quietly into a row of gums just behind the fig tree. However, if I tried to watch her, she’d just stand there until I left here alone. (I take great pains to respect the birds here. It might sound silly, but the ‘thread’ is and always has been slender. The house-clearing must register in their minds as a safe place. Full stop. That was why I was such a fusspot about the idea of tackling Greedy when she was suffering from the tick. That was the first and only time I have ever violated their trust. Fat lot of good it did me!)
Now, I note here that I have felt as though observing the chicks here in the house-clearing was a little too easy, as though it were a cop-out or something – but that’s just silly; and I shall start to observe them at length.
I started this afternoon, and something amazing has already happened. After watching them graze for about a half an hour (details later), the three of them began drifting into the gums. Then, one chick turned at right angles, and started forging through the litter. It was clearly leading. I decided to watch, and managed to pull far enough away so that I could just see Eric moving from aisle to aisle. However, just seven aisles into the gums – no more than ten minutes after the sun had left the house-clearing – they plonked down to roost!!
So, as far as I can tell from the Internet, the last formal observation made on emu-roosting was the year I was born. Right this second, as it’s falling dark this quiet Sunday evening, Eric Plus is sitting just a hundred yards from the keyboard. I will check – right now, actually . . .
yup!! They’re there!
Now, I am almost certain that they are roosting there for the first time; but it doesn’t greatly matter. Tomorrow morning, after they emerge for brekkie, I can examine the spot. Will we find no blessings? One or two? Or six or eight? Whatever, if I can repeat this quality of observation four or five times, we’ll have a rock-solid bit of data. (The ground should tell me if they have roosted there before.)
The ‘connection’ here is wonderful. The two negative aspects of these observations are (a) that I feed these birds, and (b) that they do pay some attention to my proximity. Otherwise, the data are great. The amount of wheat they get is not enough to ‘pin them’ to the house-clearing. Eric may be ‘tame’; but the chicks are wild.
At this point, here’s an idea I’ve had for a while:
we should be wary of the terms ‘wild’ and ‘tame.’ They are not nearly accurate enough. I spent hundreds of days taming my birds, and I succeeded – but within context. They won’t stand still to be patted. Conversely, I use the term ‘wild’ to describe birds like Speckles, which come to the house-clearing to graze and scrounge wheat; but he’s not ‘wild.’
What we could do, then, when we need to be particular, is use a notation like: ‘tame(15)’ or ‘tame(2).’ The first might describe a bird like Eric, who won’t eat from your hand; but who will approach you to within about six feet if you are sitting stock still. The second might be – and I noticed this over four years ago – a wild bird that will not raise its head from grazing when a car passes a hundred yards away, which is the case for plenty of birds around here. Those same birds would burst into flight – they do burst into flight – when I hove into sight. We might, in a general sense, see them as ‘wild.’ However, they aren’t, in the same way that the kangaroos here will often pay little or no attention to me if I pass them at fifty or eighty feet. That lack of fear is also a ‘tameness.’ So, Felicity is perhaps ‘tame(50),’ and Greedy is perhaps ‘tame(45),’ and Eric is ‘tame(25),’ and the chicks are perhaps ‘tame(10)’; and gee, some of you guys must have birds that are ‘tame(90)’ or more.
Supreme Emu
