OSTRICHES TEN DAYS OLD.
The down-feathers of young ostriches are quite different from those of other birds, the tips of each being produced into a horny ribbon.
The males are very fierce while guarding their eggs or fighting for mates, and kick with extraordinary violence with their powerful legs. As an example of their fierceness when aroused, Mr. Cronwright Schreiner, who knows much of these birds, relates a story, told him by a railway-guard, of an old male who charged a goods-train coming at full speed down a steep gradient. The bird, as soon as he caught sight of the train, at once got on the line, "and advanced fearlessly to fight the monster. As the screeching engine approached, he rushed at it from straight in front, hissing angrily, and kicked. He was cut to pieces the next moment."
Photo by Mr. Glenday] [Cape Town.
AN OSTRICH FAMILY.
The cock bird is an unusually fine specimen, measuring exactly 8 feet from head to foot.
The Bedouin tribes hunt the ostrich on dromedaries, so also do the natives of Somaliland, and when near enough shoot it with poisoned arrows. In the Sahara, Canon Tristram tells us it is ridden down on horseback, a method of capture which the Sahara sportsman regards as the greatest feat of hunting.
"The Bushmen," says Mr. Harting, "like the Somalis, kill the ostrich with poisoned arrows, or catch it very cleverly in pit-falls or with the lasso, and the Sukurieh and Hadendawah tribes likewise use the lasso, with which the bird, when once fairly caught, is strangled.... A favourite plan is to wait for the birds in a place of concealment, as near as possible to the pools to which they come for water, and then, with a gun loaded with swan-shot, to fire at their necks as they stoop to drink, when perhaps half a dozen are laid low at once.... Another plan to which the Bushman often resorts is simpler still. Having found an ostrich's nest, he removes all the eggs, and, ensconcing himself in the nest, quietly awaits the return of the bird, which he shoots with a poisoned arrow before it has time to recover from its surprise at finding him there instead of the eggs.... In Senaar the Abû-Rôf bring it down by throwing a curved flat stick from 2½ to 3 feet long, not unlike the Australian boomerang, and made of tough acacia-wood or hard zizyphus."
