While I was walking about today, watching breeding-pairs doin’ they emoo thang, I finally decided what I think about . . .
Where Do The Emus Go?
It’s a reality, guys, that chaos theory really helps to explain. That is, it’s a reality that’s a combination of the orderly and the chaotic.
The orderly bit is that some birds quite obviously have territories (major and minor; during mating-season and at other times). Indeed, we are fairly sure that an emu is ‘imprinted’ on some pasture, its ‘home turf.’
On the other hand, there is chaotic stuff, and well . . . who knows? That’s the nature of the chaotic!
Starvation seasons are ‘chaotic.’ We have no idea how far the birds go, or how long they stay away from their home turfs. (I’d bet that they do eventually return home.)
And we can guess at some stuff in the middle, some ‘semi-chaotic’ stuff. We know that the birds move to access water and pastures; but they do seem to move, at least at times, beyond what is necessary to access pastures and water – Felicity was once away for seven months.
We know that the parenting males don’t cover great distances: it would be too hard on the chicks.
We have some faint indications that birds travel some distance to seek mates or for other purposes. We think, for example, that Felicity crossed into the National Park. We know that both Greedy and Felicity have ‘operated’ from pastures some distance from their home turf. Greedy herself has been absent for long periods*, and that surely wasn’t just to graze.
We know that, even apart from starvation seasons, emus range over an area some square miles in area (and that they hold a ‘map’ of that area in their minds).
In conclusion:
emus cover great distances at certain times, and they stay in quite small areas at other times. And between those poles, we don’t really know. A massive programme involving truly wild birds wearing GPS transmitters would be needed to gain more data.
S.E.
* We are concerned for Greedy. She has now been absent for nine months.
Where Do The Emus Go?
It’s a reality, guys, that chaos theory really helps to explain. That is, it’s a reality that’s a combination of the orderly and the chaotic.
The orderly bit is that some birds quite obviously have territories (major and minor; during mating-season and at other times). Indeed, we are fairly sure that an emu is ‘imprinted’ on some pasture, its ‘home turf.’
On the other hand, there is chaotic stuff, and well . . . who knows? That’s the nature of the chaotic!
Starvation seasons are ‘chaotic.’ We have no idea how far the birds go, or how long they stay away from their home turfs. (I’d bet that they do eventually return home.)
And we can guess at some stuff in the middle, some ‘semi-chaotic’ stuff. We know that the birds move to access water and pastures; but they do seem to move, at least at times, beyond what is necessary to access pastures and water – Felicity was once away for seven months.
We know that the parenting males don’t cover great distances: it would be too hard on the chicks.
We have some faint indications that birds travel some distance to seek mates or for other purposes. We think, for example, that Felicity crossed into the National Park. We know that both Greedy and Felicity have ‘operated’ from pastures some distance from their home turf. Greedy herself has been absent for long periods*, and that surely wasn’t just to graze.
We know that, even apart from starvation seasons, emus range over an area some square miles in area (and that they hold a ‘map’ of that area in their minds).
In conclusion:
emus cover great distances at certain times, and they stay in quite small areas at other times. And between those poles, we don’t really know. A massive programme involving truly wild birds wearing GPS transmitters would be needed to gain more data.
S.E.
* We are concerned for Greedy. She has now been absent for nine months.
