The OSTRICH or ESTRIDGE was doubtless an unfamiliar bird in England in the reign of Elizabeth, though its feathers were in repute. When Hotspur asked after “the nimble-footed, madcap Prince of Wales” and his comrades, he was told by Sir Richard Vernon that they were
All furnished, all in arms;
All plumed, like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed,
Glittering in golden coats, like images.[90]
Among the marvels told of this bird, it had the credit of digesting iron for the sake of its health. This reputation is alluded to in Jack Cade’s defiance in Iden’s garden, when he vowed to the honest owner that
I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part.[91]
The Cormorant and Pelican
Three large water-birds, the Cormorant, Pelican and Loon are disparagingly noticed by Shakespeare. The cormorant, so well-known along all our rocky shores, was described by Chaucer as “full of glotonye,” and by the dramatist as the symbol of a rapacious voracity. Thus, vanity is described as an “insatiate cormorant”; we are told of “cormorant devouring Time,” of the “cormorant belly” and of
Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed