Author: Renée E.

The (Struthio camelus domesticus), the black necked ostrich, Cape Ostrich or Southern ostrich…although only the males have the bold black-and-white coloring that they use to attract females…Females, on the other hand, are a drab light brown…

A simple elegant wedding in a family member’s house at the Cape…a rainy weekend that turned into the most “perfect” wedding day with sunshine and cool breezes…just for me, I would imagine😉…I had the cake and flowers that I had always dreamed of…surrounded by my South Africa family and friends…and then, of course, my knight in amour who invited me to be his “forever’ love…to top the week off…my son flew 36 hours to give me away…

He had never been to South Africa…while he didn’t have a lot of time to venture through the country…we did have a day to take him to Addo…a wonderful spring day with playful babies and zebra love…it was wonderful to be able to share the beauty of the country with him…

It’s a little late being December, but Mother Nature has her own time frame (usually mating season is between July and November) …the male ostrich’s beak and legs turn red/pink to attract the female for mating…after dancing for her favors…for as long as it takes…men and their antics😉

Ostrich eyes are about the size of billiard balls…measuring about 2″ across…they take so much room in the skull that its brain is smaller than either one of its eyeballs…about the size of a walnut…making them not very adept at alluding predators…they tend to run in circles…they need those enormous eyes with its a high number of photoreceptor cells combined with the sheer size of the image from the lens help them see phenomenal details of the predators even from great distances… as far as 2.2 miles (3.5 km)… https://m.facebook.com/ScienceEvidenceIntelligence/photos/a.316858809164834/635684480615597/?type=3&source=57&__tn__=EH-R

Ostriches are the largest bird (an adult rooster can be 6 to 10 ft and weight up to 340 lbs…and while they can’t fly…they’re puny wings couldn’t lift their heavy bodies off the ground, boy, can they run…they can cover 5m (approx. 16.5 ft) in one stride and can sprint over 70 k/hr (about 43.5 mph) using their wings to balance as they run and rudders to change direction …AND they don’t bury their heads in the sand…they wouldn’t be able to breath😂 and definitely would not have survived for million years…The oldest fossil relatives of ostriches belong to the species Calciavis grandei, which were excavated from the Green River Formation in Wyoming and date to some 56 million to 34 million years ago https://www.britannica.com/animal/ostrich…

They do dig holes in the sand to bury their eggs…and they lay their heads flat on the ground for several reasons…when they sleep, when they sense trouble to try and become less visible…they may flop on the ground with their heads outstretched…their coloring blending with the sandy ground and assisting in camouflaging themselves… they sometimes lay their head flat on the ground to swallow sand and pebbles… the hard grit helps them to grind their food in their crop… from a distance, the ostrich does look like it’s burying its head in the sand…. and that may be where the myth began…supposedly with that great Roman thinker, Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/11/02/1777947.htm…

Ostriches typically live in a herd of a dozen or less with an Alpha male and a dominant hen… a successful territorial male is polygamous, but will only form a “pair” bond with a ‘major’ female…he mates with the dominant hen (his favorite) … normally mating for life…but forms a complex structure with the other hens …the females who have become part of the ostrich harem may mate with the Alpha male or with wandering males …

The favorite female will lay around 7-10 eggs …all the hens will place their eggs in the nest dug by the male of the dominant hen to incubate sometimes up to 60 eggs…here its “put your eggs all in one basket” philosophy …she has a plan (the devious she-devil) …she will move the lesser hens’ eggs to the edge and move hers to the middle of the nest… When she sees a predator, she will sacrifice another hen’s egg by rolling it away from the nest beforehand…

Even though the Alpha male may be a regular Cassanova…he is a good father…helping the female by taking turns incubating the eggs for about 6 weeks…due to their camouflage coloring…normally she sits on the eggs during the day, and he sits on them during the night…so seeing the male nesting during the day was surprising (maybe she just needed a break to stretch her long legs)…sitting on 60 of the largest eggs in the world… at 15 cm (6 in.) long and weighing 1.5 kg (3 lb.) is no easy task…

Whoever survives the hyenas, jackals, and vultures and other predators will be born with that spiky, greyish brown down…they grow approx. 30 cm (1 ft.) each month…and in six months they will be as tall as their parents…they start wandering from the nest with their parents a few days after hatching and in four months they will start to grow feathers … reaching sexual maturity around three or four years old…which is when males grow their black-and-white feathers, and the poor colorless (my personal commentary) females continue to have their brown plumage…

Chicks are born with a spiky, greyish-brown down. They grow brown feathers after 4 months. Then around 3-4 years, ostriches reach sexual maturity. Males develop a striking black and white plumage while females continue to have a brown plumage

For millennium… dynamic and colorful bird plumage has been used for decoration…for many cultures…through time…unusual feathers were sometimes worn as a way of displaying one’s high societal rank…the more exotic the feathers…the higher one’s ranking…through the 18th century both men and women of the upper class wore feathers in their hats… “It was at this time, in England, that the figurative phrase “a feather in one’s hat” was introduced and came to mean that an individual had achieved some significant accomplishment” https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/feathers-in-regency-fashion/. 

As though these poor birds didn’t have enough problems with natural predators such as cheetahs, lions, leopards, hunting dogs and spotted hyenas…as early as the 16th century these wild birds were hunted throughout Africa… providing the extremely rare product for important women like Queen Elizabeth I and Marie Antoinette to use in the elaborate headdresses …

Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape of South Africa in 1652 and reported see large flocks… Ostrich feathers were exported from South Africa as early as 1859…as the emigrant farmers became fully aware of the lucrative return on feathers……the farmers soon domesticated the ostriches… trekking into the karoo and the Eastern Cape to steal the wild chicks and eggs… Incubating them……During this feather boom there were more than 77 600 ostriches on farms in the area and in 1914 there were close to a million ostriches…

The farmers who were the pioneers of the ostrich industry, which commenced in the Oudtshoorn district during the middle of the 19th Century in part to the climate being almost identical to the ostrich’s original habitat…and therefore Oudtshoorn became known as the Ostrich Capital of the World… and remains to this day…where you can even take a giddy exhilarating ostrich ride…but we just bought Mr. P a beautiful ostrich leather belt and tried some biltong…

“Today, ostrich farms are among the most profitable agricultural projects. They are often referred to as “the farms of the future” because of the large variety of products and hence their high profit potential. Ostriches are raised commercially for their meat, hide and feathers”… https://www.fao.org/3/v6200t/v6200t02.htm

 One of Mr. P’s and I jaunts to Cape Town…we stopped in Oudtshoorn to check it out…

Even the ostrich, with its long neck and large eyes, cannot see what’s in the future

An African Proverb

Much love, laughter, and magic for your day❣