Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

[briefvisit]

Not that I've noticed.

 

[briefvisit]

https://imgur.com/gQ7MOEH

This caught my attention.

This emu poop has clearly been rained on. So, you might not notice that there are just loads of burrs in the house-clearing and elsewhere. You might just see dry grass. But the emus clearly love the burrs, and their poops at this time of year show it. You may see a poop like this months and months after burr season.

https://imgur.com/NrooyN4

I once counted 122 apricot seeds in one of Eric the Emu’s poops: the strongest birds get the best food. And out the back of Oudman’s, where the blue-gums meet the National Park, you will see the poops of emus that might not make it to winter: their poops are mostly dirt with tiny scraps of herbiage mixed in. This poop contains burrs and two plums seeds. It’s either Limpy Chick’s or Offsider’s. It’s the poop of an emu doing well.

https://imgur.com/y23OL6T

This poop shows neither burrs nor plum seeds. It was under the plum tree – so, LC or Offsider (or the cheeky little runt emu).



With a little effort, we might collect a dozen or more different ‘indicative poops.’ So, we know that this poop didn’t result from grazing on burrs.



We might find red-earth poops, black-earth poops, burr-ey poops, plum-seed poops, half-starved-emu poops, etc.



SE

 

[AntiqueB]

They seem as telling as owl pellets!

 

[briefvisit]

Antique, can you tell us a little about owl pellets?

 

[AntiqueB]

Don't they contain the bones and fur of any animals the owls eat? By dissecting the pellet, you can tell what the owl ate.

 

[briefvisit]

In a book called A Million Wild Acres, there's an extensive account of a project whereby animals' poops were collected and subjected to microscopic analysis. The results of this work superseded the results of an earlier project whereby trap-and-release had been used to try to determine the species, and densities thereof, of mammals in the Pillaga Scrub (the 'million wild acres').

Apparently a mammal can be identified by a single hair -- there was a data bank of such hairs. And this poop-investigation technique provided remarkably better data than the trap-and-release project.

So yeh. We suppose that 'owl pellet' would provide high-quality data.

SE

 

[briefvisit]

'Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases such as tapeworms.'

 

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https://imgur.com/jL5Mli7

 

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One: the 'five chicks' are in fact Dad plus four.

But it gets better: I begin to think that it is Toosh Toosh. Why? Well, LC and Offsider and I advanced on the clutch -- to photograph them -- down behind the fig tree. They not only didn't run away, but approached me for a moment.

Then LC drove them off.

Then they came back.

 

[briefvisit]

I've gone big on the wheat: a double ration is keeping LC and Offsider busy.

The chicks and the Dad have come back into the house-clearing, and are eating wheat just by the garden.

This does not mean it's Toosh Toosh, but it is most most unusual for a wild clutch to be so tame.