The World and Its People, Book VII: Views in Africa

by Anna B. Badlam

The Creator has given the ostrich a wonderful instinct for providing its young with food. It was formerly supposed that the bird left her young to be hatched by the heat of the sand and sun; but it has been proved that she hatches them with the greatest care, and even reserves some of the eggs for food for the young birds when they first leave the shell. Thus, though a nest may hold from fifteen to twenty eggs, the mother bird sits upon not more than ten or a dozen; the rest are pushed to one side, in anticipation of the time when her hungry brood of little ones will look to her for food. This is a wonderful provision, when we consider how little the arid plains can offer for the support of the young birds.

Nature provides for their protection in still another way; for it gives them a covering suitable for the localities they frequent. This is neither one of down nor feathers; it is of the nature of a prickly stubble, and serves as a fine shield against the gravel and the coarse, stunted vegetation of the plains. Its color, too, renders it difficult to discern the chicks, even when crouching close at hand, so nearly do they resemble the color of the sand and gravel.

In Senegal the heat is so very intense that the ostrich sits upon her eggs only at night. Where the heat is less intense the eggs must be guarded night and day. The father bird usually sits on the nest at night, leaving the care of it to the mother bird during the day.

Every morning and evening the nest is left uncovered for a quarter of an hour, to allow the eggs to cool. The sight of the nests at this time has probably given rise to the erroneous idea that the ostrich leaves her eggs to hatch in the sun.

She has more sense than to believe in the sun's hatching her eggs; she is indeed quite aware of the fact that, if allowed to blaze down on them, even during the short time she is off the nest, it would injure them; and therefore on a hot morning she does not leave them without first placing on the top of each a good pinch of sand. When she has thus set her nest in order, she walks off, to fortify herself with a good meal for the duties of the day.

Now comes the white-necked crow's opportunity, for which, ever since the earliest dawn, he has been patiently watching; for an ostrich egg is to him the daintiest of all delicacies; but, nature not having bestowed on him a bill strong enough to break its hard shell, he is able only by means of an ingenious device to regale on the interior. So he watches till the parent's back is turned and she is a long distance from the nest; then he flies up into the air and drops a stone from a great height with so accurate an aim as to break an egg. He makes so good use of his quarter of an hour, that he, no less than the hen ostrich, has had an ample meal by the time the latter returns to the nest.

Though this crow is an inveterate egg stealer, he has a most respectable appearance, with his neat suit of black and his little white tie. The Boers have a legend to the effect that these birds are "the ravens" which fed Elijah. They say that a little of the fat from the meat remained on the birds' necks, in commemoration of which their descendants have this one white spot on their otherwise black plumage.

Tortoise shells of immense size are often found on the plains of Cape Colony, broken in much the same manner as the ostrich eggs. This crow evidently is as fond of the inmate of the tortoise shell as he is of the contents of an ostrich egg.

The white crow is not the only enemy of an ostrich nest. The worst foes are the jackals. These plunder the nests, often rolling the eggs off with their paws to some considerable distance.

The Hottentots are very fond of ostrich eggs. If they discover a nest they will often remove one or two of the eggs from time to time. In her endeavors to raise a brood the mother bird has been known, like the domestic fowl, to lay from forty to fifty eggs in a season.