Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

[briefvisit]

All chicks seem okay

 

[briefvisit]

https://imgur.com/L1qzeaS

How does one chick have mud in its hair-do? (Feather-do). Because it's been throwing itself upside down in the mud at the dam. Limpy Chick and Co. turned up liberally daubed with mud.

Emu chicks love to swim. Their Dads teach them.

 

[briefvisit]

https://imgur.com/VBG92Sm

https://imgur.com/3KIcN1A

https://imgur.com/RWaJL8j

 

[briefvisit]

Old Guy off to town.

At dawn, about fifteen wild emus here: Limpy Chick and Co., the breeding-pair, B.B. and U.E., and a Dad with chicks. We also have our first autumn fog.

 

[briefvisit]

https://imgur.com/TAKZh89

Three sections. The first two are Limpy Chick and Co. in the middle of the house-clearing. The third is the north-west corner of the house-clearing with the Dad and his five? chicks.

 

[briefvisit]

https://imgur.com/b2SFcfb

This is the interesting clip. It’s not impossible that this Dad has been here before. But it is unusual for a random wild Dad to bring his clutch brazenly into the house-clearing, in the presence of other foragers, and calmly stand his ground.

 

[briefvisit]

And this last clip?

https://imgur.com/gZQwWTe

Tee hee – I got no idea. It’s a couple of minutes later. The fog limits vision. This is Limpy Chick and his band of bad dudes gone to engage the random Dad.

 

[briefvisit]

B.B. and U.E. made gurking and foomphing noises, but stayed well outa the way.

SE

 

[Finchbreeder]

This is where those studying birds through a Uni grant and putting trackers on have the advantage. The trackers tell them which bird is which, even if they can't see it for a period of time. e.g. the dad that has shown up, might, in such a circumstance have been identified as someone you knows chick from 3/4yrs ago.

 

[briefvisit]

Goodness, Finchbreeder, maybe even eight or ten years ago!

And my first choice would be movement data. We had years ago an observation area. We made wild guesses, on the flimsiest of data, about how far breeding-pairs, for example, travelled.

But I wouldn't be surprised if our conclusions were wrong to the tune of hundreds of percent. A single monitoring device, tracked for, say, five years, would give the first solid insights into just how far rothschildis or woodwardis travel (and what the patterns were).