Part 41

The MACUCA (_Trachypelmus Brasiliensis_) represents a division of the _Crypturidæ_ possessing well-developed tail-feathers. The characteristics of this group are powerful bodies; short thin necks; small heads; strong, arched, and much-rounded wings, in which the fifth quill exceeds the rest in length; a moderately short, slightly-rounded tail, which is entirely concealed beneath the feathers of the upper covers; and strong feet, furnished with short, slightly-rounded toes. The hinder toe is very small, and placed high. Upon the back the plumage is reddish brown, marked with undulatory black lines; the breast and belly are yellowish grey; the leg-feathers have dark markings, and each side of the throat is decorated with a reddish yellow line. The plumage of the Macuca is reddish brown, broadly marked with black upon the back; the belly and breast are of paler hue, and more delicately striped; the throat is whitish, and the sides of the neck mottled with black and white. The eye is greyish brown; the beak dark brown above, light grey at its sides; and the foot lead-colour. This species is eighteen inches and two-thirds long, and thirty-one inches broad; the wing measures seven, and the tail four inches.

The Macuca, we learn from the Prince von Wied, inhabits the large forests of the warmer portion of South America. It runs with facility, and passes the day in searching for fruits and berries upon the ground. As night approaches it rises, with a very peculiar rustling of its wings, on to the branches of the trees. The cry of this species is deep, dull, and resonant, and is heard most frequently in the early morning and evening. The stomachs of some specimens examined by the above naturalist contained red berries, large hard fruit, and the remains of beetles and insects, together with gravel and small stones.

The same authority states that the Macuca lays nine or ten large eggs, of a blueish green colour, which are deposited in a slight depression in the ground, about September, and that the females brood with so much zeal that upon several occasions they allowed themselves to be seized by his dogs rather than desert their little family. The flesh of the Macuca is highly esteemed, and consequently this bird is an object of ardent pursuit to the sportsman, who sometimes allures it by imitating its cry. A great variety of snares are also employed for its capture by night.

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The SPUR-FOWLS (_Galloperdices_) seem to constitute a distinct group, remarkable on account of the formidable character of their spurs, and the richness and variety of their colours, as exemplified in

THE PAINTED SPUR-FOWL.

The PAINTED SPUR-FOWL (_Galloperdix Lunulosa_)--See Coloured Plate XXXI. In this beautiful species the male has the head, face, and neck variegated with black and white, the feathers being black, with white streaks and triangular spots, the head mostly black; the upper plumage and wings rich chestnut, with white spots on the back, sides of the neck, shoulders, and wing-covers; primaries earthy brown, tail dark sepia-brown, glossed with green in old birds; beneath, the throat and neck are variegated black and white, changing on the neck to ochreous buff, with small triangular black marks, which disappear on the abdomen; the flanks, thigh-covers, and under tail-covers dull chestnut. Bill blackish, orbits and irides red-brown, legs horny brown. Length, thirteen inches, wing six, tail five, tarsus one inch and a half.

These birds are found in Southern India, in the jungles of the Eastern Ghauts, and upon the Hill country in the vicinity of those mountains. They have been taken in the neighbourhood of Pondicherry and the Ghauts, near Bellary, Cuddapah, and Hyderabad; in Bengal and the Himalayas they are unknown. They are generally associated in small flocks, keeping to the low shrubs and brushwood, and seeking their food among fallen leaves and low herbage. Jerdon kept several individuals for a long time, but found them too pugnacious and quarrelsome for domestication. Their tail is carried erect, like that of the Jungle Fowl. A fine specimen of this species was brought to the Zoological Gardens, London, where its beauty and vivacity attracted general admiration.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: _Œnas_, from οἰνος, _wine;_ a name given to this bird by Ray.]

[Footnote B: "The City Madam," by Massinger.]

SHORT-WINGED CURSORIAL BIRDS (_Brevipennes_).

This order comprises a number of remarkable birds, conspicuous among which are the OSTRICHES, with wings so strangely disproportionate to the size of their bodies as to have given rise to many strange fables amongst the Eastern nations concerning their origin. In North-eastern Asia the legend runs that these huge birds, inflated with pride at their superior size and strength, looked down upon their feathered companions with contempt, and, desirous of exhibiting their powers of flight, upon one occasion made a vain attempt to reach the sun. Phœbus, angry at such presumption, punished their temerity by singeing off their wings, and thus causing them to fall heavily to earth. In so doing they struck their breasts violently upon the ground, and received a mark that, together with the shortness of their pinions, has been reproduced through all successive generations, as a terrible warning against vainglorious aspirations.

Another and more ancient fable represents the Ostrich as the offspring of the camel and some strange feathered occupant of the desert.

The members of this order are birds of great size, with rather short, blunt beaks, in which the orifices of the nostrils are placed at a short distance behind the tip. In one family, however, the bill is comparatively long and slender. The head is moderately large, the neck very long, and the body exceedingly powerful; the wings are extraordinarily short, while the legs, on the contrary, are long and muscular; the large strong foot is furnished with two, three, or four toes. The feathers and quills of the tail are undeveloped, and the rest of the plumage is so lax as to have somewhat the appearance of hair. The sight and hearing of the BREVIPENNES is excellent, but their senses of taste and feeling very deficient. All are shy and cautious in their habits, but on the approach of danger they exhibit but little sagacity in their wild attempts at flight. Amongst themselves they live at peace, except during the period of incubation, and when in captivity show themselves to be almost incapable of attachment.

Africa produces one, America three, and Oceania no fewer than nine species of these birds, whilst in Europe and Asia they are unrepresented. Everywhere they occupy dry, sandy plains or tracts covered with scanty vegetation, and wander over these dreary wastes, either alone or in flocks, in search of the plants and small creatures upon which they subsist. Although not actually voracious in their appetites, no substance, however indigestible, seems to come amiss to them, and a variety of objects are frequently swallowed that their stomachs utterly reject. The incubation of these birds is very remarkable. Some are monogamous, others polygamous; but in all cases, or at least with few exceptions, the male usually undertakes all the parental duties, and behaves in every respect as a "mother" to the young, whilst the female, after depositing her eggs, exhibits but slight interest in her progeny.

THE OSTRICH.

The OSTRICH (_Struthio camelus_) is at once recognisable by its very powerful body, long and partially bare throat, and small flat head. The moderately long, depressed, and straight bill is rounded at its extremity, and has the open longitudinal nostrils prolonged nearly half-way down the beak. The large brilliant eyes are protected by lashes, and the open uncovered ears lined with a hairy growth. The long legs are bare or only overspread with a few bristles on the thighs, while the tarsi are covered with large scales, and the feet furnished with but two toes: the innermost of which is armed with a large, broad, blunt claw. The wings are furnished with waving plumes, and two bare shafts, not unlike porcupine's quills. In this bird the sternum has no keel, but is simply convex, shield-like, and covered with a callous pad or elastic cushion, having a hard rough surface unclothed with feathers, on which the birds support their bodies when reposing on the ground. The thick curly plumage differs in its coloration according to the sex of the bird. In the male the small rump-feathers are coal-black, the flowing wing and tail feathers of a dazzling whiteness. The colour of the female is a brownish grey, mingled with dirty white. The young resemble the mother after the first moulting. The height of the fully-grown male is eight feet, and his length from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail at least six feet; the weight of the body is about one hundredweight and a half. These large and remarkable birds inhabit the vast deserts and barren steppes of Southern Africa, and were formerly far more numerous than they are now. Lichtenstein, who wrote at the commencement of this century, mentions having seen flocks containing as many as 300 individuals in the country near the Cape, but at the present day they are usually met with in small families, consisting of but one male and from two to four females. In such countries as are not subjected to any violent changes of temperature, they remain from one year to another within a certain limited district, provided it affords them ample means of subsistence, and a large supply of water, which is indispensable. As regards the development of their senses, these birds are very unequally gifted; their power of sight is extensive, whilst their taste and hearing are comparatively deficient. The cry of the Ostrich, which is often uttered at night, is a loud, dolorous, and stridulous sound, and in the stillness of the desert plains may be heard to a great distance. Some have compared it to the roar of the lion, but Dr. Tristram, from whom we borrow the following account of the habits of this bird, describes it as more like the hoarse lowing of an ox in pain. The note of the Ostrich during the day or when feeding he describes as being very different--a sort of hissing chuckle. The beauty of its wings and tail-feathers, which are as highly prized by the Bedouins for the decoration of tombs and of the tents and spear-heads of their sheikhs as they are for head-dresses among Western nations, have caused its chase to be a favourite employment of all desert tribes, and good skins fetch very high prices in the native markets. This bird never approaches settled habitations, and very rarely cultivated lands; it usually selects an open space where it is safe from surprise, and where by its fleetness it "scorneth the horse and his rider."

"The capture of the Ostrich is the greatest feat of hunting to which the Arab sportsman aspires, and in richness of booty it ranks next to the plunder of a caravan. So wary is the bird, and so open are the vast plains over which it roams, that no ambuscades or artifices can be employed, and the vulgar resource of dogged perseverance is the only mode of pursuit. The horses to be employed undergo a long and painful training: abstinence from water and a diet of dry dates being considered the best means for strengthening their wind. The hunters set forth with small skins of water strapped under their horses' bellies, and a scanty allowance of food for four or five days distributed judiciously about their saddles. The Ostrich generally lives in companies of from four to six individuals, which do not appear to be in the habit, under ordinary circumstances, of wandering more than twenty or thirty miles from their head-quarters. When descried, two or three of the hunters follow the herd, at a gentle gallop, endeavouring merely to keep the birds in sight without alarming them or driving them at full speed, when they would soon be lost to view. The rest of the pursuers leisurely proceed in a direction at right angles to the course which the Ostriches have taken, knowing by experience their habit of running in a circle. Posted on the best look-out they can find, they await for hours the anticipated route of the game, calculating upon intersecting their path. If fortunate enough to detect them, the relay sets upon the now fatigued flock, and frequently succeeds in running one or two down; though a horse or two generally falls exhausted in the pursuit."

The Ostrich when once taken offers no resistance beyond kicking out sideways. Its speed has been calculated, by Dr. Livingstone, at twenty-six miles an hour, and yet the South African Ostrich is smaller than the northern species; Dr. Tristram, who, in the Sahara, measured the stride of the latter when bounding at full speed, found it to be from twenty-two to twenty-eight feet. If Dr. Livingstone's calculation be at all correct, the speed of the Ostrich is unequalled by any other cursorial animal. Portions of plants, grass, seeds, and insects form the principal food of these birds, but nothing that they can by any possibility swallow seems to come amiss to them; even should the object be of such a nature as to be utterly indigestible by their stomachs. Brehm mentions that upon more than one occasion his bunch of keys was thus appropriated by an Ostrich, and cites an instance in which a great variety of small articles made of metal, such as coins, keys, nails, and bullets, together with a considerable quantity of gravel and pebbles, were found upon dissection in the stomach of a single individual. Small quadrupeds and birds they also enjoy amazingly, and an authority, quoted by Brehm, affirms that one of these voracious creatures that was kept about a farm-house, entered the yard, and seeing a fine broad of ducklings running about after their mother, coolly swallowed them one after the other with no more ceremony than if they had been so many oysters. Nor is the thirst of these birds less remarkable, for Anderson assures us that when engaged in drinking they seem so engrossed as to have neither eyes nor ears for anything around them; day by day the same spot is visited in order to obtain water, until regular beaten tracks are formed, that have often misled travellers in the African desert, and caused them to imagine they had discovered the footprints of man. The female Ostrich deposits her numerous eggs in a shallow hollow in the sand, only a few inches deep, but about one yard in diameter; round this a slight wall is scraped together, and against it the numerous eggs are placed upon end, in such a manner as to occupy the least possible space. Several females lay in the same spot, so that it is not uncommon to find as many as thirty, or, according to Livingstone, as forty-five eggs in one nest. During the night the male bird broods, whilst in the daytime the eggs are covered with sand and left exposed to the sun's rays for hours at a time. Several eggs usually lie scattered around the nest; these are supposed to be intended as food for such of the young as first emerge from the shell. Solitary eggs are also left lying at random all over the country, and are named by the Bechuans 'losetla.' It is from this habit, most probably, that want of parental instinct is laid to the charge of the Ostrich; moreover, it is certain that when surprised by man with their young, before the latter are able to run, the parent bird usually scuds off alone and leaves its offspring to their fate. To do otherwise would be self-sacrifice, as it is aware of its inability to defend itself or its poults, and on the open desert it cannot, like other cursorial birds, mislead the pursuer or conceal its brood in herbage. The young are hatched in six or seven weeks, and make their appearance covered, not with feathers, but with a bristle-like growth, somewhat resembling the prickles on the back of a hedgehog. From the day they quit the shell, they not only run easily, but are fully competent to pick up their food from the ground, and within a fortnight are "entirely self-dependent." The following anecdote illustrative of the affection occasionally displayed by the Ostrich for its little family is given by Anderson, who was an eye-witness on the occasion, he and his friend, Mr. Galton, having come upon a male and female escorting a brood of young ones of about the size of Barn-door Fowls:--"The moment the parent birds became aware of our intention, they set off at full speed, the female leading the way, the young following in her wake, and the cock, though at some little distance, bringing up the rear of the family party. It was very touching to observe the anxiety the old birds evinced for the safety of their progeny. Finding that we were quickly gaining upon them, the male at once slackened his pace and diverged somewhat from his course; but seeing that we were not to be diverted from our purpose, he again increased his speed, and with wings drooping so as almost to touch the ground, he hovered round us now in wide circles, and then decreasing the circumference till he came almost within pistol-shot, when he abruptly threw himself on the ground, and struggled desperately to regain his legs, as it appeared, like a bird that has been badly wounded. Having previously fired at him I really thought he was disabled, and made quickly towards him, but this was only a _ruse_ on his part, for on my nearer approach he slowly rose, and began to run in an opposite direction to that of the female, who by this time was considerably ahead with her charge."

The eggs of the Ostrich are of an oval shape, and have a thick, glossy, yellowish white shell, marked with pale yellow. According to Hardy the weight of one fully equals that of twenty-four of the eggs laid by the Domestic Fowl. To travellers in the African deserts these huge eggs form a convenient and portable provision; their flavour is excellent, and the shell so thick that they keep perfectly fresh for a fortnight or three weeks. Tristram mentions having found Ostrich egg omelette a most valuable addition to his desert bill of fare. When two months old the young acquire a plumage similar to that of the adult female; this is retained by both sexes for two years, when the male exhibits black feathers and has attained his full size and strength. The young Ostrich is easily domesticated, and is often kept by the Arabs, living freely with the goats and camels, and showing no disposition to escape. In some villages they are a sort of public property and live in the bazaars, levying contributions for themselves from the fruit-stalls.

The Romans highly esteemed the flesh of the Ostrich, and the pseudo-Emperor Firmius is said to have devoured an entire bird at one meal; the brain was regarded as a choice delicacy, and to provide the Emperor Heliogabalus with a sufficient supper of this luxurious diet, six hundred Ostriches, we are told, lost their lives. They were also introduced into the Circus, and upon one occasion no less than one thousand of them, together with a number of other animals, fell victims to the cruel thirst for excitement that debased the populace of Rome. In all parts of Southern and Central Africa, the flesh, feathers, and eggs of the Ostrich are highly esteemed, and form most valuable articles of traffic. A skin is in some parts worth from forty to one hundred dollars, but the Arabs are in the habit of thinning the feathers so that the trader rarely obtains a specimen on which this tax has not been levied. Anderson describes a foot chase of these birds, witnessed by himself, on the banks of Lake Ngami. On this occasion the flock was entirely surrounded, and the terrified birds driven with loud cries and a variety of strange noises into the water. Moffat also gives an amusing account of another mode adopted by the Bushmen for their destruction. A skin is stuffed with straw so as to form a kind of saddle, and covered with feathers; this is placed upon a man's head, his legs are painted white, and with the head and neck of an Ostrich mounted upon a stick in one hand and his gun in the other, he steals amidst an unsuspecting party, and by imitating their gestures so completely deceives them as to his identity, that they make no attempt to avoid the treacherous intruder. Amongst the many ways employed to cook Ostrich eggs, Burchell mentions that the Hottentots prepare them by boring a small hole at one end; into this they insert a thin twig and stir the contents briskly over a fire of hot ashes; when thus prepared they are excellent.

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The NANDUS (_Rhea_), as the American representatives of the Ostrich are called, closely resemble their African brothers in general formation, but have a somewhat shorter wing, and the foot furnished with three toes. The bill is flat, of the same length as the head, broad at its base, and rounded at its tip, and very similar to that of the Ostrich. The toes are moderately long, connected by a skin at their base, and armed with straight sharp claws, which are compressed at their sides, bluntly rounded at their upper surface, and sharply ridged beneath. The wings are furnished with long plumes and terminated by a spur; the tail-feathers are entirely wanting. The region of the eye, cheek-stripes, and a ring covered with bristles that encircles the ear, are unfeathered and covered with a wrinkled skin; the feathers on the head and throat are small, narrow, and pointed; those on the rump are large, broad, and rounded with a soft flowing web; the eyelids are furnished with large stiff bristles. The male and female are almost alike in colour, but differ in size. We are now acquainted with three members of the above group.

THE TRUE NANDU, OR AMERICAN OSTRICH.

The TRUE NANDU, or AMERICAN OSTRICH (_Rhea Americana_), has the plumage on the crown of the head, upper throat, nape, and upper breast, and the bristles on the cheek-stripes of a blackish hue; the centre of the throat is yellow, the rest of the neck and cheeks are light lead-grey, and the back, sides of the breast, and wings brownish grey; the other portions of the under side are dirty white. The eyes are pearl-grey, the bare parts of the face flesh-colour; the beak is greyish brown, and the foot grey. The female is distinguishable by the paler tints of her neck and breast. An old female measured by the Prince von Wied was fifty-two inches and two-thirds in length, and seven feet across the span of the wings.

The American Ostrich ranges south as far as forty-two or forty-three degrees; it is abundant on the plains of La Plata, and, according to Azara, is found in Paraguay. Mr. Darwin saw it within the first range of mountains on the Uspalluta Plain, at an elevation of six or seven thousand feet above the sea; but it does not cross the Cordilleras. At Bahia Blanca the latter observer repeatedly saw three or four come down at low water to the extensive mud-banks, which are then dry, for the sake, as the Gauchos say, of catching small fish. Although this Ostrich is in its habits so shy, wary, and solitary, and although so fleet in its pace, it falls a prey without much difficulty to the Indian or Gaucho, armed with the _bolas_. When several horsemen appear in a circle it becomes confounded, and does not know which way to escape; it prefers running against the wind, yet at the first start it expands its wings like a vessel that makes all sail. On one fine hot day Mr. Darwin saw several of these birds enter a bed of tall rushes, where they squatted concealed until closely approached.