jmgoyder

wings and things

Mar 24

The birds who love to be photographed

by jmgoyder

Okay so the camera has been found, its battery charged and Son just helped me put both together with a muttered, “You have evolved from a caveman into a caveman.” I didn’t think that was very kind and, when he took the battery out of the camera and told me to try again all by myself, (looking at me as if he were a headmaster in a Harry Potter movie) I did it all correctly and he gave me a gold star kiss on my nervously perspiring forehead. “There is hope,” he said, leaving the scene.

And speaking of scenes, where are all the wild birds I saw yesterday? Gone. Well, not gone actually, as I know they’ll be back but why can’t they be here now when my camera is ready?

Then, I suddenly realized what I could do. I could photograph the birds I purchased from doudou, who is not only a great blog friend, but who made the emus especially for me!

http://doudoubirds.com/

They arrived yesterday in a big box and Son, Husband and I gradually unwrapped them all (it felt like Christmas!)

So this is a picture of Emerys 1, 2 and 3 (uncannily like the real ones when they were smaller), and the next one is of a pink and grey galah (the real ones are nowhere to be seen today!) and a bluejay, which reminds me of my five years in Canada as a child. We don’t have bluejays in Australia, so it is lovely to see the galah and bluejay getting on so well!

It is refreshing to be able to photograph such cooperative birds and even Son thinks these pics are “okay”!

Thanks, doudou!

Family Wings

23 Comments »
Mar 20

Turkey tantrums

by jmgoyder

Okay, just in case you haven’t been following this blog for long, we now have exactly three turkeys (two of whom are called ‘Bubble’), and three emus (all of whom are called ‘Emery’). We had more of both breeds but have suffered some unforseen casualties, all of which are documented in previous posts.  The only turkey who disrupts things now is our most recent addition to ‘the gang’, and we call her ‘Baby Turkey’ because two seconds ago she was tiny!

She is a real bully and scares the hell out of the poor emus when I’m taking them for a walk. I can’t believe Baby Turkey has transformed from a timid little chick into this Terminator character.

Wings

28 Comments »
Mar 14

Time travel

by jmgoyder

This morning I was about to run into the bedroom and wake Husband up to ask him a question about the flame trees, then remembered he wasn’t here. That hasn’t happened to me before and he has been at the nursing lodge for nearly two months. Missing his presence here is a bit of a mixed bag because my nostalgia tends to yoyo back and forth in time to when Husband was well, to when became ill, to when he was well, to when his condition worsened – and so on….

Anyway, I rang him instead and after our usual catching up chatter, and telling him I’d be in later to see him, our conversation went like this:

Me: I’m writing a little blog on the flame trees. How old do you think they are?

Husband: Well over 100 years.

Me: So did you plant them or were they here when your family bought the farm?

There was a rather long pause

Husband: Jules?

Me: Yes?

Husband: I’m not that old.

Well, that gave us both a laugh.

Husband: You’re not very bright in the mornings are you.

Me: Shut up!

Well, here are the flame trees! They are bright red in the winter months and bright green in the summer months. The reason I took this picture was because, during one of my searches for the emus, I thought one of the flame tree branches was an emu. That was probably in the morning too!

Family Wings

29 Comments »
Mar 11

Is the grass always greener?

by jmgoyder

I’ve just counted it up – the emus were gone for seven days – a whole week! Well, we now know they weren’t exactly gone and they were just in the next door paddock but wow! You have to realize that these paddocks are huge and the emus are still relatively small at one year of age. Also they blend in and, from a distance, look like tree stumps or branches. Or perhaps I need glasses!

Jenny, the farmer who owns the paddock, and I, had a big laugh on the phone about why they would prefer her paddock to ours, and Terry’s wife, Kaye, quoted the old saying, ‘the grass is always greener’, but what I find most interesting is that, instead of running for the hills, the emus stuck around.

It’s such a strange feeling to have actually let them go, in my heart and head, and now they’re back. For days, I comforted myself by imagining that they were frolicking in the forests, drinking from the streams, making friends with wild emus, and I actually accepted they were probably better off. Now I realize they didn’t want to go. The paddock they were in was on the corner of two roads and very easy to get out of (much easier than getting back into our paddock – go figure!)

With only three Emerys left (and the death of the fourth haunts me), the happy ending is a little tainted, however it is a beautiful thing to have them back. Once back in their yard, they went straight to the water trough and then to the bowl of wheat, then looked at me, and my container of cabbage, with glee!

This one is much more interested in my ring than the cabbage (they love anything shiny).

My beautiful Emerys! I will take them for a SHORT walk later today.

Maybe!

Wings

10 Comments »
Mar 5

Wanderlust

by jmgoyder

Well, another lesson learned. When the emu farmer delivered the Emerys several months ago, he did say that because they were already 6 months old, they would be difficult to tame. And yes, it took awhile for me to be able to handfeed and pat them but, now that they are gone, I’ve remembered another thing he said which was that free-ranging them could be tricky because of their tendency to go walkabout.

Yesterday, when I found them in the next door paddock they were actually having a great time eating grass and bugs and grit. Cabbage couldn’t compete and even though (I thought) they were relieved to see me, and they cheeped fondly, all of my attempts to herd them back through the various spaces in the fences became futile.

In retrospect I don’t think they could hold the contradiction of their fondness for me and their fondness for freedom in their heads so, in wandering away rather than back, it’s obvious that they chose freedom. After all, they are nomadic creatures and they love to wander. By the time dusk fell yesterday, despite sighting them in other adjacent paddocks (which proves they could get through various fences), I had to give up. This morning they are nowhere to be seen so I imagine, like Wantok, they are now kilometres away up in the hills with other creatures of their kind. They are big enough now to defend themselves against foxes and they are instinctively nomadic and self-sufficient.

The remorse of having accidentally injured one of them in getting him over the fence will probably remain in my rolling heart for some time; that was the darkest of yesterday’s moments.

If our 5 acres of garden and 100 acres of farmland wasn’t enough for them, then I guess they made the right decision and it’s my loss, their gain. I will miss them but I won’t worry about them because they have probably already forgotten me anyway. Yes indeed, another lesson learned.

Wings

18 Comments »
Feb 18

Stake-out

by jmgoyder

I now have a really good system happening when I let the emus out of their ‘safe-house’ yard. I park the car, or the ute, outside the gate to the house block and leave the engine running. Then I watch and wait in case the Emerys come sprinting down the driveway. The following picture is looking up the driveway into the farm.

So far, so good, but you never know with these marathon runners! The picture below is of the driveway that leads away from the farm and down to the road. It’s just a small country road but you never know when a truck is going to come through and that’s where the Emerys absconded to the other day. They know they are not allowed down there but, like all teenagers, they like to test the limits. Sometime I have to race them down this driveway in the car, beat them to the road, do a skiddy u-turn and herd them back up. It’s a bit hair-raising for them and for me.

It’s not that they want to get away. After all, they adore me – well, they adore cabbage – and are always perfectly happy to come back to their yard. The whole rigmarole takes a couple of hours!

Someone asked me if I would go back to lecturing at the local university soon but I think the skills I am developing in terms of the emus are equipping me far better for the police force!

Wings

19 Comments »
Feb 11

Emu etceteras

by jmgoyder

Now that the Emerys are growing up, I have decided to stop babying them. For example, even though only one of them prefers lettuce to cabbage, I am feeding them all lettuce on alternate days. The three emus who prefer cabbage have learned the hard way that sometimes it’s only going to be lettuce so, while they wait for the cabbage, the lettuce-loving emu eats all of the lettuce and the fussy ones go without.

I have also stopped chopping lettuce scraps into bite-sized pieces for them, although I still do this with cabbage because I don’t want them to choke. The daily cabbage chopping has given me a blister between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, and elicits hysterical laughter from friends who happen to drop by when I am doing this ‘cut lunch’ thing, but, well, you know….

Only one of the emus saves her back by bending into a crouch to eat. She was also the first to figure out how to tear a lettuce apart by herself. Of course I am just assuming she is a ‘she’!

Even though they are in a big yard, I don’t like keeping the Emerys so confined but, as you know from previous posts, letting them out of their yard poses risks. For example, about 50 kms north of here, a pet emu was stolen recently. This has made me realize that human predators are much worse than foxes; the incident described in the news item below is distressing.

I’m not so worried about our emus because I have a new method when I let them out for a sprint. I park the car at the end of the driveway near the road just in case they go that way (I don’t want to have to herd them back from our neighbour’s rose garden again!) If only Baby Turkey would stop scaring the hell out of them, they would happily zigzag around the house block but, once Baby Turkey does her ‘fly up and peck the emu in the face’ thing, they all panic.

The other thing that concerns me is the risk of concussion from falling pears. You see, in the emu yard there are two pear trees with great big pears dropping off all the time. Some of these pears are the size of an emu’s head, so what if….?

Also, why don’t they eat the pears? Then I wouldn’t have to keep chopping up the cabbage!

Etcetera!

Wings

2 Comments »
Jan 31

The ‘quadruplets’

by jmgoyder

Our four emus are identical in every way. So I guess I was wise in giving them all the same name – Emery – which they all respond to. They are becoming more and more ‘at home’ here and, over the last week, I have been letting them free-range for longer and longer and, so far, they have not wandered too far. Also, it is easier now to get them back into their yard for the night. I have a little camp chair in there so, once they’re in, I usually sit and watch them eat their cabbage and lettuce (the afternoon treat) before leaving them to it.

As you can see below, they are very tame and, even though they like shiny things (I will have to stop wearing my watch out there because it always gets pecked!) they are never aggressive. I adore them.

Oh-oh! They’ve disappeared, so we are now going to a commercial break………..

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Okay, it is now several hours since I began this post. Son and I had arrived home from Perth and immediately let the Emerys out and, for an hour or so, they contented themselves with eating grass outside my office and around the house and then – GONE!

Son (in incredible good humour – not) scouted around the house block on his motorbike without any luck and eventually found them on the road, going east. Long story short: they are back in their yard and I will never, ever leave them unsupervised again!

In an attempt to de-crease Son’s dramatic frown, I reminded him of his toddler days when he, too, would wander off to explore the boundaries and beyond. Unfortunately, my anecdotes didn’t trigger his usual lovely smile although he did try. I’m just glad I didn’t have quadruplets!

Wings

19 Comments »
Jan 29

Can we still be friends?

by jmgoyder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvdGPD443nE

 

The song above fits perfectly with the scenario below.

This is the malicious Baby Turkey approaching Emery, one of the sweet, innocent emus. Baby Turkey’s wingdrop move is straight out of the WWE handbook.

And this is the sweet,  innocent Emery, singing ‘Can we still be friends’ to the malicious Baby Turkey – a very clever and effective tactic!

Wings

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Jan 23

Baby Turkey

by jmgoyder

The little beige turkey, ‘Baby Turkey’, who was the only survivor of the four we bought several weeks ago (fox got two and one got ill), has lost all his timidity and is now the boldest of all the turkeys. He is not as sweet as the Bubbles; actually, he’s not sweet at all and has a terrible temper. But he’s extremely clever and, even though he can fly, he actually likes to climb trees and ladders by hopping up from branch to branch, or rung to rung.

But Baby Turkey’s latest hobby is to perch on top of one of the chook houses and watch the emus in their yard. He doesn’t watch them with interest or awe or admiration – he watches them with extreme malevolence. I don’t know why he hates them so much but he does and the other day when I was taking the emus for a walk, he continually attacked them by flying up to their eye level and trying to claw them. This resulted in all of the Emerys zigzagging here there and everywhere in a panic, and made rounding them up a nightmare.

In the above photo you can see Baby Turkey in the background, aiming one of his evil eyes in the Emerys’ direction while they innocently munch their cabbage. And when I reprimand him by saying, sternly, “Stop that, Baby Turkey” I can see shivers creeping up the rather long spines of the emus, just at the mention of his name.

So we now have three birds who have anger issues: Godfrey the gander, Tina Turner the rooster and, now, Baby Turkey. I will have to put a sign at the front gate – Beware of the Birds.

Wings

16 Comments »
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