THE NIDIOLOGIST 



91 



AN OSTRICH ROUND UP. 



Chicks up to twelve months old die from 

 various maladies, but seldom after they are full- 

 grown are they the victims of any sickness, 

 death usually resulting from a broken leg, 

 killed fighting, or from scarcity of food and 

 water in times of severe drought. 



The nest of an Ostrich is a very crude affair, 

 consisting simply of a round hollow carved out 

 in the sandy ground. Sometimes the female 

 bird may be seen scratching in the ground pre- 

 paratory to laying her first egg; but this is not 

 often the case, the hollow generally being 

 made by the continuous sitting of the birds on 

 the one spot. One pair of birds will lay from 

 ten to twenty eggs; but, as is often the case, 

 three or four birds will lay in the one nest, 

 thus making the number of eggs up to seventy 

 or eighty. These, of course, have to be weeded 

 out, as a bird cannot comfortably cover more 

 than sixteen eggs, the remainder being thrown 

 on one side and left to decay. 



Forty-four days is the recognized time to 

 allow for hatching. When a brood is hatched 

 out the family are taken out of the nest and 

 brought to the homestead to be tamed, where 

 they come in contact with the farm hands, and 

 are housed at night out of the reach of wild 

 animals. During the summer months they will 

 do well, but in winter, when food becomes 

 scarcer, must be fed morning and evening on 

 barley or rape. 



It is during the breeding season that the 

 male becomes so savage, and his note of de- 

 fiance, " booming," as the Dutch call it — is 

 heard night and day. The bird inflates his 

 neck in a cobra-like fashion and gives utter- 

 ance to three deep roars. The first two are 

 short, but the third very prolonged. Lion 

 hunters all agree in asserting that the roar of 

 the king of beasts and the most foolish of birds 

 resemble each other almost exactly. 



Nighthawks' and Whip=poor= 

 wills' Eggs. 



T T THEN I was a boy (I could startle you 

 V V ^y mentioning the number of years 

 ' * which have since elapsed, but for- 

 bear) I made the acquaintance of a great Or- 

 nithologist. It was a proud day for me when 

 he learned that I was a beginner in the field of 

 study in which he had been successful and in- 

 vited me to look at his collections. 



Small, shabby, and timid, it was with no little 

 trepidation that I entered his neat cottage, which 

 seemed like a king's palace to me, but my be- 

 nevolent host hastened to do what he could to 

 put me at my ease. He told me several divert- 

 ing stories of his many hunting and collecting 

 trips, and finally produced his collection of 

 eggs. 



"You know, my boy," he said, with the 

 kindly condescension of the successful Sunday 

 school teacher, " that it is very wrong to destroy 

 the life of any of God's creatures without suffi- 

 cient cause. To rob the nest of a beautiful, 

 harmless bird would be an unpardonable cruelty, 

 but there is a wide difference between wanton 

 nest-robbing and making an Oological collec- 

 tion. Eggs without accurate data are valueless, 

 but the true Ornithologist never appropriates 

 eggs or nests without making an accurate record 

 of the time and place and of the circumstances 

 under which they were found. Every collec- 

 tion, however small, when made in this way is 

 of real scientific value, and is an addition to 

 our stock of positive knowledge. 



"Here, for example, is a clutch of the eggs 

 of the Whip-poor-will, a beautiful and useful 

 bird which breaks the dreary silence of the 

 night with its pecuHar cries, and which devours 

 myriads of noxious insects ; their eggs are the 

 most beautiful to be found here, and bear a 



