The trouble with Emus

The Safari's last post ended with a pic of one of the baby Emus that were brought in to be cared for until they are big and strong enough to be released back in to the wild. See here for all the info on how their brand new enclosure was constructed in a day.

A couple of days after their arrival we were buswalking looking for suitable sites for the bioblitz and any more tree hollows.

Not long after this pic was taken Steph (on the right) was the only one out of the vehicle walking in front along a narrow well grown track to another hollow when she rounded a bend and almost bumped in to a male Emu who had at least one chick in his care. Male Emus don't take kindly to being disturbed particularly when they have young, they take serious umbrage and tend to attack first and ask questions after. This one pulled himself up to full height and started burbling a deep throated rumble; had the vehicle not rounded the corner seconds later Steph could have been in serious danger.

So that was the end of solitary bushwalking, after that we had to be 'doubled-up'.

Not long after that Gilbert the dog was legged by Mr Emu through the bush at breakneck speed and that was the end of bush walking in the 'Back 110' altogether, just too risky.

So we contented ourselves with a walk up to the granite outcrop in the opposite direction to look at the wildflowers that are up there.

Most of it is well forested and in the event of an Emu encounter there would be plenty of trees to hide behind. Trouble was we did see an Emu but in the only section of the track where there were no large trees...oooohhh errrr...AND there were two of them. Thankfully a pair is much less risky than a male with chicks and they legged off in to the bush when they spotted us...sadly the ran off that fast the pics we took were beyond blurred.

A trip in to town saw us doubling back to inspect a road-kill Emu to discover if there were any surviving chicks lurking in the bush. On this occasion there weren't but considering the how little traffic is on the roads only a handful of vehicles in both directions in an hour (day?) there was a lot of road kill, mostly roos. We saw a Brush Tailed Wallaby at the very last minute on the side of the roads that could easily have jumped in front of us on our trip to Lake Muir.

Later in our trip, almost at the very end we got these pics of an Emu that allowed fairly close approach.

Back to UK news now Frank has been given the all clear by the vet but his bone hasn't quite fully healed so he'll be continuing his light exercise for a few more weeks before he's allowed to go Billy-bonkers.

While waiting for him to be released by the vet after his x-ray we were out with our mate Phil and Frank's mate little Benni in some horrendous weather when almost back at Phil''s we heard a Marsh Tit (UK #182), only hitting the list at the beginning of October...how'd that happen???

Where to next? More Antipodean adventures tomorrow and we'll be having a look at the sea too.

In the meantime let us know who's chasing after you in your outback.

PS - just had another lifer! An armchair tick...Glaucous Winged Gull here...nice but does it count?