Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

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We don't know, Antique! We have reports of emus living to thirty and forty years in captivity.

But the two problems with gathering data on wild emus are:

One: once a emu has its adult plumage -- at about 18 months -- you can't tell their age; and:

Two: projects like mine -- observing wild emus over years -- are extremely rare. I knew Eric the legendary 'original' Emu for ten years (and met five of his clutches).

One of his daughters, Felicity Emu, passed through some time back. I've known her since she was a chick -- that's fourteen years.

See! After sixteen years of observations, we only have two good data on this.

SE

 

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One: here at last is a photo of Consort. He seems to keep his feathers sort of ruffed up in a line down either side of this neck.

https://imgur.com/cq7sp2X

 

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Two, a note I’ve wanted to put up for a while:



the interactions between the individual birds and ‘factions’ are not constant. It’s as though sometimes everyone just gets tired of running about, and they decide to be a little mob.

(Australians don’t say ‘flock of birds’ unless it’s flying birds. For emus and many other things, we use the generic word ‘mob’ – a mob of emus, a mob of sheep.)



Let’s do the academic thing, and take a big step back:



One: areas with ample available food do have a little more drama. I have watched wild emus for a hour or two at distances of hundreds of yards, and they sometimes don’t make a sound. If you are serious about understanding this, look up what the observers of apes call ‘provisioning.’

Of note here is whether they are talking to themselves, or their consorts, or their chicks, or inter-territorially.



Two: indeed, however, under many circumstances, individual emus and ‘factions’ expend ridiculous amounts of energy reconnoitering and advancing and retreating and vocalizing and attacking and chasing one another about.

(And assiduously preening as a pretence that nothing is happening. This is unendingly hilarious to me: “I am unperturbed by your presence. I am not poised to rush over and peck you on the head. It’s the merest of coincidences that I am standing right in front of you, preening.”)



Three: as noted above, sometimes everyone just gives up for a while, and you see emus that were deadly enemies ten minutes ago grazing quietly about the house-clearing.

 

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Who remembers the Dad with four one-year-old chicks who turned up in the house-clearing some time ago?

Well, today we got a nice observation:



I heard GB making ‘territory defense’ noises, and went to observe. The Dad and his four gorgeous chicks were visible outside the kitchen window.

Now, they were in exactly the same spot as last time, and clearly ‘nibbling at the edge’ of the house-clearing rather than mounting an incursion.

It’s also a good bet that they came from the same direction as last time – the dam to the east of the house. I checked after their last visit, and found emu feathers in the dam. Not conclusive.



We don’t know, but this is how observation works: emus were either swimming or drinking at that dam.



GB Emu was standing and watching the interlopers, and foomphing irregularly, clearly uncertain about whether she could handle the intruders.

Here she is:

https://imgur.com/1EVIDSO

I managed to remain unseen by Dad and Co. – a lucky break. Here they are:

https://imgur.com/C5wYQV6

They are thirteen months old, right in the middle of their black-head stage. Nothing much happens in the brief clip, but it’s a great observation because they didn’t know they were being observed – except by GB!



Who advances on them, and they flee:

https://imgur.com/f6Cii4O

Note that they flee down the same aisle in the gums that they fled down last time.



Here is GB ‘seeing them off’:

https://imgur.com/2kPuVH5

So, now we put the data together:



it’s almost certainly the same Dad and clutch as last time. If my eye sight were better, and we had binos, we’d be looking for distinguishing features, which might make us more certain. So this group has been enjoying the emerging flowers on nearby pastures.

Do we know how far they travel in a day? Or how far overall they’ve travelled since last sighting? No.



The chicks are in their second year, so that’s a datum: this Dad chose to forego breeding, and stay with his clutch.



Dad was clearly outmatched. We don’t know if he knows that Consort Emu was also present. When pressed, he and his chicks simply skedaddled. It’s of note that GB took ten minutes to make her move. This puzzles me endlessly readers: sometimes emus can tell each other’s relative strengths in a millisecond, sometimes they can’t.

SE

 

[AntiqueB]

emus were either swimming or drinking at that dam.

Emus can swim?!? Do they like to?

 

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'Emus can swim?!? Do they like to?'

Emus love to swim. The chicks especially do a sort of 'pig wallow' thing. They roll around upside down in the shallows.

There are some fine Youtube clips from the Australian bush, showing emus spontaneously enjoying the water. There is a fantastic video of a Dad crossing a creek.* He is tall enough to wade, but the chicks -- in single file behind Dad -- go full amphibious mode to keep up with him.

*The clip was posted by someone fishing. Clips like this are a gift for us, as they tend to be just splendidly random data.

SE

This is an old photo! About twelve years -- the back yard fence is still there. Eric and his clutch, Alpha and Omega, have been down for a nice morning swim in the dam, then come back to the house-clearing to scroungs plums.

https://imgur.com/5YcXivr

 

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We are now 95% sure that the tame-wild emu that turned up a few days ago is Limpy Chick. It might have been the two ‘sookey females’ that went bush last autumn.



But . . .

https://imgur.com/a/KfegAV7

She showed an oddity in her walk when she turned up – not a limp, but a sporadic oddity in how she moved her right leg – and you can see scars on her right leg.





Here she is scoffing sultanas from my hand:

https://imgur.com/Mj3Ys9n

All together yesterday, we observed nine emus. The four chicks were following their Dad. Dad was being harassed by GB. GB was flanked by Consort.



Consort and GB were ignored by Limpy Chick, who is powerful enough to do just that.



And the ninth was a wild bird we recognised. It is perhaps following Limpy Chick – let’s try to get a photo.



SE

 

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There was a pair of emus jumping up and down under the apricot tree. I checked. The apricots are big enough to eat – still tiny, but big enough to eat.



Could Limpy Chick have an offsider? A consort? Not sure – but there is an extra emu floating about. When I went out to check the apricot tree, one of the two birds turned out to be Limpy Chick. The other had slipped into the bush. But they were definitely taxing apricots as a pair.



SE

 

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It’s now mid-spring. There are ‘groundcover’ flowers, and thousands of yellow Cape Weed (a pest) flowers. The apricot tree is being taxed. Scotch Thistle (a pest) are flowering.



There are plentiful emu footprints down at the dam, though we didn’t see any chicks’ tracks. There’s poop on the tiny pasture by the dam, and there’s poop on the next pasture over – about a quarter mile.



Now, the photo is indeed of a paddock; but the trees in the foreground are swamp gums. They are part of a long wetland that in pre-European times would have been a gathering place for emus. It still has fabulous numbers of waterbirds in mid-winter, when it’s actually a tiny creek:

https://imgur.com/fFPCrqa