Next week I hope to conclude this series with Part 3 on Waterbirds and Raptors. Have a wonderful week ! We are being subjected to further torrential rain as we move through our third month where flooding devastation and damage is up and down the coast, in an unprecedented year of rain as La Nina does is worst. Firetails are a species of Finch, with a red tail. The beautiful bright red tail can be seen from a distance. Lastly, this Diamond Firetail was a joy to my wife as she always gets excited seeing them, but very difficult from a great distance to photograph. We visited a an Emu farm in the Warrumbungles but was closed to visitors on the day, which was wet and not great for birding either. Introduced feral animals are a major concern, and the large populations on the coastal plains have long since been wiped out. Their large eggs are prized food for other animals as well as for humans. Their meat is quite nice to eat, and continues to be served in some restaurants and meat pies and the such like, as these birds are now grown commercially on farms. Their deep drumming call can be heard for kilometres. They can run up to and maintain a speed of 50 km/hr (31 mph) for a long period, which gives them an advantage for escape from predators. Many were killed for meat by early European settlers, as by the indigenous population, as they weighed around 50 to 55 kg (110 to 125 lb) with females even heavier. It is the second largest living bird, and can grow to 1.75 m tall (5.7′). They tend to eat mainly vegetation, including a wide variety of leaves, grasses, seeds, native flowers and even some water plants. Emus have two sets of eyelids, one for blinking and one opaque one for keeping dust out, which can be a problem out on the plains during wind storms, for which it is well adapted. The females are usually larger than male, otherwise they look similar. Emus are omnivorous and will eat almost anything, tending to eat seasonally what is available. While travelling the long stretches of dead straight highway out west, we often saw small and large groups of Emu, often with several young, grazing by the road and in grassed paddocks.
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