Pyxis' Emu Chat Thread

[MagpieDucks]

Interesting...why were they at the fair? Just there for people to see?

Yep! We have a Kiddie Barn at our fair.

 

[N F C]

Here's Desi doing a haystack impression.

I expanded their run today and made it twice as big. All the birds are enjoying it. At one point I sat down on the ground to snap some pictures and Ciara came over and sat right down with me, then proceeded to try to eat my fingers every time I tried to take a picture.

I keep looking at this photo of Desi and trying to figure out what those long back feathers feel like...are they soft or kind of wiry? Inquiring minds want to know

 

[Pyxis]

I keep looking at this photo of Desi and trying to figure out what those long back feathers feel like...are they soft or kind of wiry? Inquiring minds want to know

Kinda wiry They're not as soft as they look, lol.

 

[briefvisit]

Here in West Australia:

the last two of Eric's orphans are now just two weeks from their second birthday, and thus becoming young adults. They are both male -- they have begun vocalising.

This is what an emu chick plus three inches of winter rain looks like:

Here are the two chicks. They sit on the northern edge of the house-clearing, where the sun first strikes. Clever chicks!

Felicity Emu left about two months ago. I think she laid early -- she came back without her consort, Groestl Emu. I bet reades here that Felicity will return in about six weeks, to enjoy the little yellow flowers that grow here in spring (Cape Weed)
Uno Chick has been away since last autumn. I really think -- she's still a young female -- that she tried to find a consort.
Number One? Number One has been gone a few months now. But she often stays away longer than the others.

But after a decade, the trees on the block here are to be harvested. Great change afoot!

 

[briefvisit]

How awesome! Emu's kind of scare me with their enormous claws, but I'm excited to see how your hatch goes.

99.999% of the stories about how emus attack people are unverified. If you cornered an adult, panicked it while trying to catch it, that would be dangerous.

Otherwise, if the emu doesn't know you, it will run away. If the emu does know you, it has no interest whatsoever in striking at you.

But anecdote: once, at dusk, Felicity Emu came running to me, to get some wheat I had put down. I was kneeling, and as she screeched to a halt, she accidently swiped me across the thigh with a talon. The bruise was yellow and purple for a fortnight.

There's a photo somewhere here of Greedy Emu and I playing Snatch That Prune: I'd put a prune between my lips, and she'd snatch it super deftly.

[Ostriches are notoriously ornery. Cassowaries can apparently be outright dangerous.]

 

[Pyxis]

Snapped some new pictures today

Here's Desi laying down on the edge of the woods. That's Caesar napping behind him.

Ciara sitting down; they look so silly when they do this:

Both of them together. Can you tell who is who?

 

[biophiliac]

I can not tell. Is it Ciara still sitting?

 

[briefvisit]

Desi on left. Ciara on right.

All chicks have a slightly different 'hair do.' If you are observing a clutch of nine tame-wild chicks, you gotta work hard to differentiate them.

 

[briefvisit]

 

[MagpieDucks]

When I was petting the emus at the fair, I was trying to figure this out, do emus have wings?