Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

[briefvisit]

'Leaves the "whodunit" factor as a mystery.'

Corrrect, Finchbreeder. Yet again, How The Project Works

I personally would like very much to know the nature of the attrition.

For example, twice in seventeen years, we've found lost emu chicks. Two on one occasion. And one on another. All three were saved: the one went under Boy Emu, who accepted it without demur. The two went to a wildlife rehabilitation centre up the road.

There have been other losses, and we'll discuss those some day.

And Toosh Toosh losing four of ten chicks in just a few days, and then disappearing, was a real blow -- all the more so because we have absolutely no idea what happened.

SE

 

[briefvisit]

The Attrition of Emu Chicks

There’s one thing we omitted: although our data is frustratingly fragmented, it really does seem that once chicks are about four months old – black heads with full tail plumage – their rate of attrition drops right off.



Perhaps the reason is that they’re wonderfully fast by that point. We joke about the newly-hatched ‘waddle bottoms,’ which struggle to get over the litter – the sticks and branches on the ground – as they get about with their Dad. They really are slow.



So, what predates on our chicks? We don’t know.



Do we have solid data on attrition overall? No.



But most of the losses we’ve seen have been chicks less than a month old.



SE