At the start of a new year, I always look back at the past 12 months do a tally of what bird stories have dominated the headlines across the world.
Without doubt, 2022 was the year of the emu.
Two stories stand out, but then again emus also made the news in 2021 when a mob of the birds were banned from an outback pub.
Star bird on my latest list goes to an emu that struts its stuff not in Australia but in the United States.
The pet emu named Emmanuel Todd Lopez has become an internet sensation for all the wrong reasons. His antics on TikTok have inspired an emu-buying frenzy, leading to Emmanuel’s owner, Tammy Shull, warning people not to buy the giant birds on a whim.
“Emus can break bones,” she said from her farm in Florida, pointing out that Emmanuel is just under two metres tall and can be pretty unruly.
The emu craze, though, has continued unabated, with emu lovers prepared to pay the equivalent of 300 Australian dollars for a “standard” grey or brown emu, or as much as $1200 for a rarer white variety.
Another emu story came from closer to home, Portland in south-west Victoria. There a flock of hand-reared emus came to the rescue of a raspberry farmer when his crop came under attack from a plague of locusts.
The emus had been raised as pets but they soon got to work polishing off the swarming locusts, eating their own bodyweight of the insects each day.
The hungry emus, which also feed on other insect pests, have given farmer Craig Woods and his wife Melissa a new take on their agricultural “clean and green” philosophy.
The emus have made it unnecessary to use chemical insecticides and, studying the impacts on insect control more generally, the Woods have also noticed that the superb fairy-wrens on the farm are adept at removing harmful grubs from the bark of stone fruit trees and the raspberry canes.
The emus have another function. Because they regard the cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens on the farm as part of their family, they protect them from foxes. The emus have been seen to chase down and kill foxes preying on lambs and chickens.
My favourite story remains the one from the previous year when two emus – siblings Kevin and Carol – were banned from entering an outback pub in south-west Queensland.
Raised by an animal rescuer, and free to roam the hamlet of Yaraka, the birds learned to climb the steps leading to the bar. They unleashed chaos, snatching toast and French fries away from customers and one even raided stock from behind the bar.
Christmas has never been the same in Yaraka. This year the emus were still hanging about outside the pub, a watering hole they call their own.