Tuesday, March 1, 2011

World Bird, Watery Wednesday & Nature Notes ~ Mainly Emus


Like my MY WORLD post, this also is from our trip to the
Flinders Ranges in South Australia. We had a very wet spring,
in consequence we saw many families of Emu, Dromaius
novaehollandiae. Here is one crossing the road directly in
our path. I had no time to think and had to crop out part of the
car. Luckily, as passenger, I always have my camera in my lap
and am ready to shoot. The dirty windscreen from insects and
dusty roads somehow did not enhance the clarity of picture
either. This father was raising 9 chicks which is a very healthy
clutch.


Coming around a bend we met a pair lying comfortably side
by side at this puddle, surveying the little waterscape.
We were so surprised at the sudden sight that I missed that
sweet togetherness shot and only managed to get them as one
was already heading bush and the other rising.


They moved off as if in a dance with their feathers bouncing.


Some people unfortunately take little heed of slithery wildlife
or even deliberately murder them although they are quite safe
in their cars so we came upon this brown snake in an equally
brow puddle. Snakes are part of the general ecological balance
and this sort of needless and mindless killing makes me sad
and angry.



It was quite a large snake for a brown, about 4' long.

All photos enlarge for better viewing.

World Bird Wednesday, Watery Wednesday and Nature Notes may
all be accessed through clicking the relevant Logos.


41 comments:

  1. Hiya Arija,
    Such an exotic eco-life you lead!
    You have to be careful as you drive through such wild landscape. Never a dull moment, it seems. Pity you missed their cosy family scene.
    Having had several years of rattlers slithering under our garden loungers ( with us on them), I am ambivalent about snakes. It's a toss up.
    Especially as we were living nextdoor to a kid that had to have his leg amputated after a rattlesnake bite.

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  2. Wildlife so different from over here Arija. Fascinating.

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  3. The emus are wonderful - how lovely to see them on your travels. I don't like random killing of wild life either.

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  4. How fortunate you are to meet these emus. I see one big one and the rest is smaller. I take it that the big one is an adult and the others chicks?
    The other pictures are also interesting thank for showing! them

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  5. Marvelous captures as always and I love the emus! I think there are lots of different feeling about snakes in particular. I'm wary of them, but then we don't find many in the city and I do hate to see anything killed "just because". Terrific post for the day! Hope your week is going well!

    Sylvia

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  6. We have Emu in S Ont. I haven't seen one in ages. Boom & Gary of the Vermilon River, Canada.

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  7. That must be quite a sight, to see Emus like that. I've only ever seen them in zoos.

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  8. The wildlife there is so different from anything here in Canada! Thank you for sharing these photos!

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  9. Hi Arija. I answered your comment about Emu's on my site. But forgot to add I don't know if they're raised anymore.Take a look. Boom & Gary.

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  10. I love the photo of the male with all the chicks. You did well to get the camera up quickly enough to get all of them in. Unfortunately I too often 'dither' and loose it all :-(

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  11. If I see one of those on my patch I will let EVERYBODY know lol.

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  12. Great pictures of wildlife! Fascinating! Have a nice week ahead, dear Arija!

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  13. Beautiful photos Arija ~ it always worries me when I see Emu's on the road but interestingly there are a lot more Kangaroos killed by motorists than emus.
    Have a lovely week.
    "Adelaide and Beyond"

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  14. I've never seen them in wild and really would love too! As for a snake, well, no - thank you:)

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  15. How cool to came across them just like that! I had to go to Africa to watch their 'cousins' in the wild... :-) The snake was a great find too.

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  16. Delightful!! Ive only seen these in captivity so its awesome to see they do live in the wilds somewhere!!
    Im like you, why do people go out of their way to kill snakes? ITS insane-

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  17. Thanks for posting shots of Emu, Arija! I only know them from the zoo. Would love to see one in the wild. I am sorry for the snake - such wanton killing! People don't realize that they help keep the balance in nature.

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  18. Yikes, don't like the snake. One came to my nephew's garage in Brisbane.

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  19. Hi all you gorgeous people who come and not only visit but leave me lovely comments as well

    Some of you are sot so enamoured of snakes, an understandable attitude since most of ours are deadly.

    Only once have I been afraid of a snake and that was mainly fear for my then toddler granddaughter when there was a copperhead in the laundry toilet.
    As I shooed the moppet out of the way, I picked up the snake by the end of its tail and, while wriggling it so it could not double up on itself, searched for a bag to put it into.

    Then I took it to the wildlife reserve just down the hill from us who had not realised that copperheads were endemic to Mt.Lofty!

    My children and grandchildren have been educated to be wary of snakes, especially in the summer when they are extremely active. The only place they are barred from here is the house and when weeding the garden, I approach the task with care.

    Prevention is so much better than cure, so respecting each other is always a good motto to live by.

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  20. Arija, Brilliant post! My but your life sounds fraught with danger. A copperhead in the toilet?
    It hardly seems possible your story could top your Emus photographs but there you go! Amazing read!

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  21. Arija: Truly a treat to see these Emu in their natural habitat!Sad to see the lack of respect for nature in the image of snake.I agree that there is no place for random killing of wildlife!!
    waving to you from the desert. xo

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  22. how cool is that!? Emus in the wild, fun stuffs! I really love the photos you got of 'em. Those babies are adorable. I like that snake too, I'm a fan of those guys. He's a pretty good size- good find!

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  23. A snakes, emu, dirt roads! I would where we are!!!

    Cheers - Stewart M - Australia as well!

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  24. Cool shots of the birds and wildlife. I like seeing the wildlife from all around the world, thanks for sharing.

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  25. I was enjoying it all.......it was wonderful....until that darned slimy snake impeded on my visit!

    My watery link: LAKESIDE FOG

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  26. Love the shots of the Emus and chicks! As for the Brown Snake, that's a pretty cool shot too. Many people seem to have an antipathy toward all snakes, deadly or not. Most snakes are pretty interesting but require a healthy respect.

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  27. Que lindas fotos! Um lugar muito bonito!

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  28. I feel exactly the same way about snakes, but you put it so much more nicely than I have ever managed to do. I had a co-worker 20 years ago who once did the exact thing you mention and to this day I think less of him for it.

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  29. I feel sorry for the snake, poor thing. The emu shots are great, they are such funny birds.

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  30. What majestic birds..I guess I found the origin on emu oil.. I agree killing for killing sake is bad.. Of course we humans kill on another too. Thank you for your well wishes my friend... hugs..Michelle

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  31. I love seeing the exotic wildlife from your part of the world. It is a shame people too often don't understand the ecological balance.

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  32. cool shots of the emus. Nice as you don´t see them so often. :)

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  33. I so envy you being able to encounter Emus in the wild.Your photos are wonderful. They are....real and honest.
    Snakes are needlessly killed in my area.This also upsets me.I like to shoot them with my camera...and let them be.

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  34. Thank you for a glimpse of your wonder-filled country. I especially liked the emu family!


    WATERY SATISFACTION

    Puddles of water and drops of dew—
    What does it take to satisfy you?
    A rushing river, a roiling sea—
    That’s what it takes to satisfy me!


    © 2011 by Magical Mystical Teacher

    Caballero at the Fountain

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  35. The emu are adorable. The snake - well, a good capture!

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  36. I thought I'd pop back and tell you I also find it confusing about the two trees, but I didn't even realize another tree was called tulip tree before I started blogging and I didn't think of the one I called tulip tree as a magnolia before I started blogging. To further confuse matters when I went online to read about the two different trees I found out that what I'm calling a Japanese magnolia is native to china but was cultivated in Japan and that's how it reached the U.S.

    They are both from the same order and the same family although they don't look anything alike. I used these two links to compare specifics:

    The tulip tree you refer to here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liriodendron

    The tulip tree I refer to here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia_liliiflora

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  37. Thank you, your comment did help with the confusion. Part of what I've had trouble with is growing up, I always thought of magnolia grandiflora as THE magnolia tree which is totally different from either of the trees we are discussing. They are huge in eastern NC and I used to see them all the time on vacations at the coast. In the central part of NC where I live, we also have them but it's a little cold in the winter here for the types of specimens they have on our coast. That's probably why here the common name Tulip tree got used so much for the pink flowered ones to differentiate from the large magnolias with white blossoms. You were right about common names being confusing.

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  38. How exciting! Great you had your camera with you to shoot these great captures:)

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  39. It's so much fun to see the wildlife in other parts of the world. We dodge white tail deer on the roads, and we only see emu at the zoo.

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  40. Sveika, Ārija! Ļoti intresantas fotogrāfijas. Man patīk Jūsu blogs.

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