Ostrich chicks
Feb. 5th, 2012 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadomandaAs I wrote in my travel report back in 2002 about this photo:
"Then, something moves on the horizon. At first, to our unexperienced eyes, it looks like a thick brush with lots of sticks jutting up. Our guide, on the other hand, recognizes it as a group of ostrich chicks. Baby ostriches? How can there be so many of them!
The guide explains that each male will herd several females to a nesting hollow, where they will lay up to 30 eggs. Only one female, the major hen, will incubate the eggs along with the male.
The chicks are in a state, since their parents and caretakers are on the other side of the road and they are afraid to cross. They continue to run up and down on the plain, never breaking formation, even long after we have passed."
"Then, something moves on the horizon. At first, to our unexperienced eyes, it looks like a thick brush with lots of sticks jutting up. Our guide, on the other hand, recognizes it as a group of ostrich chicks. Baby ostriches? How can there be so many of them!
The guide explains that each male will herd several females to a nesting hollow, where they will lay up to 30 eggs. Only one female, the major hen, will incubate the eggs along with the male.
The chicks are in a state, since their parents and caretakers are on the other side of the road and they are afraid to cross. They continue to run up and down on the plain, never breaking formation, even long after we have passed."
no subject
Date: 2012-02-06 07:15 pm (UTC)Interesting! How would they know the road is dangerous?
no subject
Date: 2012-02-08 11:16 am (UTC)To be honest, not sure. Maybe because it's this strip of empty dirt and not grassland? Or because it smells bad? (Do ostriches have a sense of smell??)