CHAPTER VII.. More About the Apteryx and Ostrich Tribe Generally.

MORE ABOUT THE APTERYX AND OSTRICH TRIBE GENERALLY.

The Apteryx produces only two eggs in a season. The first young Apteryx hatched out accompanies the female bird, its mother, during the time the male bird is hatching out the second egg. They then all join as one happy family, and journey along through life together.

The most remarkable feature of the habits of this bird, is that the female conceives, breeds, and produces the egg without the aid of the male bird—as remarked before.

The Apteryx is a nocturnal bird. It sleeps all day and takes its pleasures and hunts for food by night.

I have watched my Apteryx often when she went about in the dark seeking her food, boring down into the ground with her long bill for worms, snails, and such small fry. Then I have seen her, after she had filled her stomach with food, take her ease and comfort. Really, my dear readers, I cannot find words to tell you what pleasure I took in seeing that bird roam about at night when all nature seemed to be reposing, while she sang and enjoyed herself. She made a peculiar sound, something like “kawo,” “kawo,” “kawo,” clear and shrill, and as I sat smoking my pipe and watching her, I tell you it was something fine to see how happy this bird of the night was. It reminded me of the nightingale, which, as everybody knows, sings at night. The male Apteryx had more of a whistling sound than the female.

We have often heard and read of the travellers in the East and South, where these ostrich tribes live and flourish in their native element, that the birds lay their eggs in the sand, and leave them there to be hatched out by the heat of the sun. It is not so. The sun is not always shining, nor can there always be the same temperature. To produce young from eggs the temperature must be about the same during the twenty-four hours. All chicken breeders by steam or other artificial heat know this.

The fact is, the female bird lays her egg in the sand where she is at the time of delivery, and immediately the male bird in the vicinity at such time takes possession, and sits on the egg, never deserting it except when compelled to travel in quest of food, and then only for a very short time.