Ostriches
God’s questions to Job include a strange bird. The ostrich has “goodly wings,” yet she “leaveth her eggs in the earth,” and, the passage says, “forgetteth that the foot may crush them.” The point is not the bird’s failure but the Creator’s wide wisdom, which gives and withholds as he chooses, and still “she scorneth the horse and his rider.” Lamentations 4:3 borrows the picture to describe a people grown cruel, “like the ostriches in the wilderness.” Nave’s also gathers verses about owls and dragons haunting empty, ruined places. Job 39:13-18 is the place to begin.
15 verses
Leviticus
And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,
Deuteronomy
And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,
Job
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich?
Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust,
And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them.
She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labour is in vain without fear;
Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding.
What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.
Isaiah
But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.
And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.
Jeremiah
Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.
Lamentations
Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
Micah
Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.