CHAPTER XIV 



OSTRICH 



THE ostrich in Sudan stands on the prohibited list 

 none may be shot ; but as the British Museum required 

 specimens of the Sudan species, a special faculty had been 

 granted to our expedition (through the Foreign Office 

 and the Sirdar) to obtain these examples. 1 



Never having so much as seen an ostrich in the Sudan 

 during my first expedition thereto, I cherished no great 

 hope of being able to fulfil either this mission or two 

 others with which we were entrusted, namely, to bring 

 home specimens of the reticulated giraffe and of the 

 Secretary-bird. The latter, though known to occur in 

 the Sudan, is so scarce that only once during three years 

 did we see it ; the reticulated giraffe I felt (and feel) 

 certain exists nowhere on the Nile. 



The ostrich, however, we did secure thanks ex- 

 clusively to the wonderful aptitude for "collecting" 



1 Nowhere in the Sudan do ostriches exist in the abundance that char- 

 acterises British East Africa ; still the bird is widely distributed in those 

 regions which are congenial to its peculiar tastes. These comprise the arid 

 dry-grass prairies of the remote interior which the ostrich shares with giraffe 

 and desert-gazelle. Thus towards Nyeda eighty or ninety miles eastward 

 of the Nile at Melut half a dozen parties of ostrich may be encountered in 

 a single day's march ; and the same applies to the dry plateau of central 

 Bahr-el-Ghazal. Naturally in marshy or forest-regions (such as constitute 

 so much of the riverain of Nile) the ostrich is less in evidence. 



The Sudan ostrich has been differentiated as a distinct species Struthio 

 molybdophanes and that diagnosis may be correct. Yet in British East 

 Africa, I have a vague recollection (being at the time unaware of any 

 distinction) that we shot ostriches of both of the presumed types at any 

 rate, some of the ostriches there have blue necks, others pink. 



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