Emu chicks hatch at Scottish Borders fowl sanctuary

A fowl sanctuary has overcome the problem of the Scottish climate to breed what are believed to be the nation’s solely child emus.

Staff at Bird Gardens Scotland, a conservation charity within the Borders, are celebrating after their human intervention led to the primary chick hatching on Saturday.

It’s the fruits of a venture that is taken greater than seven years to finish.

The flightless birds are uncommon exterior of their native Australia, the place they’re the most important indigenous fowl.

Intriguingly, with emus it is the male that incubates the eggs, relatively than the feminine.

Bird Gardens Scotland’s male had suffered quite a few set-backs in recent years as a result of ‘Beast from the East’ in 2018, late frosts and storms.

Owen Joiner, founder and joint director of the sanctuary primarily based in Oxton, Berwickshire, mentioned that Scotland’s unpredictable climate appeared to destroy efforts.

He mentioned: “Our male’s had a whole lot of disappointments. The ‘Beast from the East’ delivered horrendous situations and he didn’t handle to guard the eggs by.

“And we have had different storms, torrential showers and late frosts all prompted havoc along with his nests.”

Mr Joiner says they “determined to collaborate with him, taking half of the eggs away and incubated them in our child barn”.

Whether the efforts would work wasn’t sure.

The fowl breeder added: “You can’t see inside emu eggs, the way in which you possibly can with hen eggs, with candling, so we simply needed to wait.

“Then a few days before hatching we began to hear them, and as they were cheeping and whistling we returned the eggs to his nest.

“His behaviour just changed immediately. He was just spot-on and hatched them.”

Staff at the sanctuary are “delighted” with the results and are now watching with interest at how the emus work together to rear and teach the infants.

The trio are believed to be the only baby emus in Scotland, and add to the 600-plus birds and species at the sanctuary, including some that feature on priority lists as extremely rare or threatened species.

They also have kookaburras, flamingos, cranes, all sorts of parrots and even some mammals, including red-necked wallabies. They work with other sanctuaries and zoos all around the world.

But why did Owen, who hails from Caithness, and fellow director Mark Haillay, from Gloucestershire, bring emus to the Scottish Borders?

“Australian wildlife is weird and wacky, and very interesting,” says Owen.

“People like myself from the 70s and 80s will remember the emu from children’s programmes so there is a bit of nostalgia there for us.

“But the whole purpose of the Bird Garden is to bring people in contact with rare and threatened birds in particular.

“Emus are quite indicative of Australia’s challenges with conflicts in agriculture, with barbed wire fencing going up and the horrendous bush fires, which displaces them, so there are a lot of challenges for Australian wildlife.

“While they’re quite quirky we can also highlight their plight by having them here in a safe place in Scotland.”