Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

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https://imgur.com/Byr4gDi

Grey Currawongs

 

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'Isn't it more autumn there? How long is emu incubation?'

The calendar says it's summer, but the morning air says autumn.

Seven-and-a-half weeks, from mid-winter to the first days of spring.

 

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Limpy Chick’s vocalisation alerted us. At first light – luckily for us, right smack in front of the garden – she vocalized at some length in a particular manner, then knelt down and assumed (I luckily had a clear silhouette) a most distinctive position, with her chest right down on the earth, and her tail right up in the air.



For a minute or two, Limpy Chick’s vocalisations continued. Offsider seemed to be either taking his time, or didn’t quite know the drill. Then Offsider knelt behind LC, and sort of shuffled forward.



The male seems to need to position himself fairly carefully, which Offsider did. The actual copulation takes literally five or six seconds.



Now comes the interesting part: why is this pair copulating now? They should be securing a territory/scoping out a nest site/copulating/laying/beginning the incubation nearly five months from now.



Let’s watch carefully in coming days. Perhaps the schedule of Emu World has slipped out of gear?!

 

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I have failed to keep a sufficient record of the times of observed copulations. I’ve witnessed at least three or four. One I recall was at ‘the wrong time.’



Let’s take a wild swing at explaining this:



after copulation, the female emu can store the semen in her body. Fertile eggs may result from one copulation for . . . ten days?



So, the copulation takes place in the midst of other events, like choosing a nest.



Do emu breeding-pairs have ‘practice copulations’? Heck, we sure don’t know the answer to that question!!



And might a breeding-pair just throw caution and the calendar to the wind, and copulate-and-lay-and-incubate at ‘the wrong time’?



Well, suppose Offsider were sitting on eggs in ten days. His chicks would hatch in the last month of autumn, and spend the first four months of their lives in a ‘grass-only’ environment.



You see, readers, the first ‘spring’ flowers appear in the last month of winter. Indeed, it’s one of the farmhouse miracles: walking about in the wind and rain, to find flowers that have popped up (which tells you that spring is very very near).



By the first week of spring, the flower situation is excellent – and we have great data on this because of Alpha and Omega, whom we observed at close range for several months as they navigated ‘Giant Food World’:

https://imgur.com/deKrYg3

 

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Chicks that hatch in the first week of spring live in, as noted, a sort of ‘Giant Food World.’ They do it hard, struggling about in waist-high freezing grass from the crack of dawn. But the food! They snatch-n-gobble all day long, and grow like magic beans. (Alpha and Omega were observed through binoculars from about twenty feet. The unit was Eric and Alpha and Omega and Supreme Emu, all wandering together around the springtime house-clearing.)



How would chicks do through the ‘grass-only’ months? We’ve seen groups of wild emus down on their knees in yard-high mid-winter grass. They eat it until their poops are just big green spurts. There is not much nutrient in it.



SE

 

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‘Houston, we have separation.’

At dusk yesterday, a lone wild emu entered the house-clearing, and just started wandering about as though it owned the place – which upset Limpy Chick and Offsider no end.



We are 95% sure that it is one of the Cheeky Chicks. On its own. Although we were unsure at first if it was Dad – it has a fairly clear ruff.



But we guess that it is the biggest of the Cheeky Chicks, which did have some ruff.



And it is just so tame, which Dad was not.



Oooh! It’s here again this morning.

 

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Now we place our usual game of figuring out what we do and don’t know.

Are Dad and the rest of the Cheeky Chicks still a unit? We don’t know.



Where are Dad and the rest of the Cheeky Chicks? We don’t know.



Will we see them again? We guess yes, because the figs are almost ripe. (The tree is full of birds: crows, currawongs, parrots.)



Will the other three Cheeky Chicks split up? Or remain a unit? Good question!

 

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https://imgur.com/USdvNeE

 

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And here, for no reason at all, is a picture of Felicity Emu doing her favourite thing in the world, eating yellow flowers:

https://imgur.com/33wSGkI

 

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We are wrong – that is, I am wrong.

This morning, I tried the ‘Cheeky Chick’ with a handful of sultanas, in good light out the side of the house.



It’s not Dad or one of the Cheeky Chicks. It’s too tame, and it’s an adult bird – albeit undersized. Has good adult blue colour on its neck (and a loveable sorta ‘mohawk’ feathers hair-do).



And it is the case that some adults have dark feathers on their neck, which look indeed like the pin feathers of a ‘black head.’



About a year ago, we observed here for some time two emus that were adult, but undersized. My new guess is that it’s one of the two.



Let’s continue to observe!



SE