The Fishing Eagle of Africa (Haliætus vocifer), first noticed by Le Vaillant, may be seen hovering about the coasts and river-mouths of that vast continent. He is never found in the interior of the country, as the African streams are but thinly stocked with fish, which form his principal food. ‘Elastic and buoyant, this agile dweller in the air mounts to soaring heights scanning with sharp and piercing eye the motions of his prey below. Energetic in his movements, impetuous in his appetites, he pounces with the velocity of a meteor on the object of his wishes, and with a wild and savage joy tears it to pieces. His whole sense of existence is the procuring of food, and for this he is ever on the alert, ever ready to combat, to ravage, and destroy.’[34] He generally devours his prey on the nearest rock, and loves to return to the same spot where the bones of gazelles and lizards may be seen lying about, a proof that his appetite is not solely confined to the finny tribes. When these birds are sitting, they call and answer each other with a variously-toned shriek which they utter under curious movements of the head and neck.
While all other raptorial birds croak or shriek, the musical Sparrow Hawk of Africa (Melierca musicus, Gray) pours forth his morning and evening notes to entertain his mate while she is performing the business of incubation. Every song lasts a minute, and then the hunter may approach, but during the pause he is obliged to remain perfectly quiet, as then the bird hears the least noise and immediately flies away.
The prowess of the Secretary Eagle (Serpentarius cristatus) attacking the most venomous serpents has already been mentioned. The long legs of this useful bird, which owes its name of secretary to the crest on the back of its head, reminding one of the pen stuck behind the ear, according to the custom of writing-clerks, might give one reason to reckon it, at first sight, among the cranes or storks, but its curved beak and internal organisation prove it to belong to the falcon tribe. Its feet being incapable of grasping, it keeps constantly on the ground in sandy and open places, and runs with such speed as to be able to overtake the most agile reptiles. The destruction it causes in their ranks must be as great as its own enviable powers of digestion, for Le Vaillant mentions that having killed one of these birds he found in its crop eleven rather large lizards, three serpents of an arm’s length, and eleven small tortoises, besides a number of locusts, beetles, and other insects, swallowed most likely by way of dessert.
OSTRICH CATCHING.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE OSTRICH AND THE CASSOWARY.
Size of the Ostrich—Its astonishing Swiftness—Ostrich Hunting—Stratagem of the Ostrich for protecting its Young—Points of Resemblance with the Camel—Its Voracity—Ostrich Feathers—Domestication of the Ostrich in Algeria—Poetical Legend of the Arabs—The American Rheas—The Cassowary—The Australian Emu.
In the African plains and wildernesses, where the lion seeks his prey, where the pachyderms make the earth tremble under their weighty strides, where the giraffe plucks the high branches of the acacia, and the herds of the antelope bound along: there also dwells the Ostrich, the king of birds, if size alone gives right to so proud a title; for neither the condor nor the albatross can be compared in this respect to the ostrich, who raises his head seven or eight feet above the ground, and attains a weight of from two to three hundred pounds. His small and weak wings are incapable of carrying him through the air, but their flapping materially assists the action of his legs, and serves to increase his swiftness when, flying over the plain, he ‘scorns the horse and its rider.’ His feet appear hardly to touch the ground, and the length between each stride is not unfrequently from twelve to fourteen feet, so that for a time he might even outstrip a locomotive rushing along at full speed.
In Senegal, Adanson saw a couple of ostriches so tame that two negro boys could sit upon the largest of them. ‘Scarce had he felt the weight,’ says the venerable naturalist, ‘when he began to run with all his might, and thus they rode upon him several times round the village. I was so much amused with the sight, that I wished to see it repeated; and in order to ascertain how far the strength of the birds would reach, I ordered two full-grown negroes to mount upon the smallest of them and two others upon the strongest. At first they ran in a short gallop with very small strides, but after a short time they extended their wings like sails, and scampered away with such an amazing velocity that they scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Whoever has seen a partridge run knows that no man is able to keep up with him, and were he able to make greater strides his rapidity would undoubtedly be still greater. The ostrich, who runs like a partridge, possesses this advantage, and I am convinced that these two birds would have distanced the best English horses. To be sure they would not have been able to run for so long a time, but in running a race to a moderate distance they would certainly have gained the prize.’