Note 168 — Chapter IX · VARIOUS BIRDS NOT INCLUDED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS.
Reading edition
Some editions read—
“All plum’d like estridges that wing the wind; Bated like eagles having lately bath’d.”
But we have adopted the above reading in preference for three reasons: 1. Considering the rudimentary nature of the ostrich’s wing, Shakespeare would not have been so incorrect as to describe them as “winging the wind;” 2. The word “bated,” if intended to refer to eagles, and not to ostriches, would have been more correctly “bating;” 3. The expression, “to bate with the wind,” is well understood in the language of falconry, with which Shakespeare was familiar.