Sir, - Feeling that it is far from being a featherweight issue, I have a crow to pluck with those who, convinced that the ostrich buries its head in the sand when pursued, persist in parroting epithets such as "ostrich-like" or "ostrich-head" to describe a person who refuses to accept facts or suffers from some form of self-delusion. While I may not have it from the ostrich's beak, so to speak, I recently discovered from an authoritative zoological source that this swift-running African bird never buries its head anywhere.
The reality is that the ostrich often rests from stress by stretching its neck on the sand or curling up in a comfortable posture that only an ostrich knows.
If we insist on comparing ourselves with this feathered vertebrate at all, perhaps we might confine ourselves to the use of the idiom "to have an ostrich-stomach" i.e. to be able to digest everything - like the ostrich, which has the habit of eating hard objects to assist the function of its gizzard. By unhitching the ostrich from all "head-in-the-sand" allusions, which deserve to be decidedly ditched forever, one could perhaps enrich the ostrich's distorted profile. - Yours, etc.,
Laytown, Co Meath.