Ostrich
the largest, strongest, and fleetest of living birds. It belongs to a flightless family, including the rhea, cassowary, emu, and apteryx. It was once abundant on the dry but not desert plains of southwestern Asia and Africa. The wild bird is now confined to small regions of southern and eastern Africa. The male ostrich reaches a height of eight feet and an extreme weight of 300 pounds. The ostrich has a sharp eye, and is quite able to distinguish friend from foe at a distance of six miles. It is a swift, powerful runner, easily outdistancing a horse. One authority claims that the ostrich is capable of making twenty-seven miles an hour. The legs move so rapidly that the eye confuses them like the whirling spokes of a carriage wheel. The wings are of assistance in running, but the ostrich cannot fly. The foot consists of two enormous toes. A single blow of the foot is sufficient to break a man's shoulder or to disembowel a horse.
Ostriches were formerly numerous in Syria, Palestine, and northern Africa. Until of late, flocks of 200 or 300 birds were to be seen in south Africa, grazing among giraffes, zebras, antelopes, and gnus, but now they are seldom seen outside of domestication.
Accounts of the habits of the ostrich differ. From Lichtenstein's Travels in South Africa we learn that during the breeding season wild ostriches live in companies of from three to five, consisting of one cock and several hens. The females deposit their eggs in a common nest, which is a mere hole scooped out of the sand. During the day the female birds take turns in guarding the nest, but seem to leave the eggs for the most part to the warmth of the sun. At night the male bird covers the eggs, with the hens grouped about him. The eggs of the ostrich are twenty inches in circumference. It requires six weeks to hatch the eggs. The newly hatched ostrich chicks are as large as a full grown barnyard hen.
One traveler tells of a pair of ostriches surprised with a dozen young the size of guinea fowls. The female started off with drooping wing, feigning lameness, and actually pitched forward to the ground; while the male went off in another direction with the little ones. The statement has been made on somewhat doubtful authority that the ostrich breaks addled eggs about the nest in order to attract large numbers of flies as food for the young. The ordinary food of the ostrich is grass, leaves, grain, and seeds. In captivity it does well on a diet of clover or alfalfa.
The Arabs now raise ostriches in the oases of the Sahara, where they feed as tamely as sheep. Ostrich farming began in Cape Colony about 1867. In 1904 the assessor reported 357,970 ostriches producing $7,000,000 worth of feathers a year. In domestication, a dry pasture of ten to twenty acres per bird is found necessary. The farmers raise ostriches for the sake of the feathers. Those of the wing and tail are in great demand for trimming hats. Feather "plucking" begins when the bird is eight months old. After that there are three pluckings a year. As a matter of fact the large feathers are cut off. Each bird is expected to yield about one and one-half pounds of feathers, worth from fifteen to fifty dollars. The milliner expects to charge from three to fifty dollars for a fine ostrich plume. The body feathers of the male are black and glossy; the wing feathers are white with occasional streaks of black; the tail feathers white, sometimes toning into ivory. The body feathers of the female are dark gray, the wing and tail feathers white, with gray or ecru markings.
The exportation of ostriches from South Africa has been prohibited, practically, by an export tax of pound 100, that is to say, $487 each. Eggs may not be sent out of the country at all. It is intended to reserve for that region as far as possible a monopoly of ostrich raising; otherwise ostriches may be purchased by local farmers at about $122 each. Birds of pedigree may bring as high as $500 or even $1,000.
Ostriches have been domesticated to the number of 500 at Pasadena and Los Angeles, California. There is an ostrich farm at Jacksonville, Florida; one at Hot Springs, Arkansas; one in Oregon. There are about 3,000 birds in the Salt River Valley near Phoenix, Arizona. A full grown ostrich is worth about $250. Visitors do well to keep out of reach of bill and foot, for the male ostrich has a vicious pleasure in using both. An oft mentioned habit of swallowing stones, bits of iron, and the like, is not at all different from that of barnyard fowls, only that the pieces are larger.
The bones of an extinct ostrich, the dinornis, have been found in New Zealand. Its height must have been at least twelve feet, twice that of a man. The rhea of South America is a related bird. It inhabits the grassy plains of Argentina and Paraguay.