_Phœnicopterus ruber._ +Linn.+
Aud. pl. 416.
[122] “Length from beak to toes extended 62 inches, expanse 57¹⁄₂,
tail 5¹⁄₂, beak 5¹⁄₂, neck 23, leg [tarsus] 11, middle toe 3, hind
toe ¹⁄₂.”—(_Rob. MSS._)
The dimensions given below are from a specimen shot on the beach at
Negril, in March 1764; from the Doctor’s description, it seems to have
been scarcely mature. He adds, “I once saw a living one at Kingston.
Its food was white bread steeped in water in a washing basin. In
feeding, it immerged its upper mandible in the bottom of the basin,
resting on the elbow or angle of that mandible, and by quick repeated
motions, like those of a duck in the mud, sucked up the finest parts of
the dissolving bread.”
As I have never met with this beautiful bird in Jamaica, I am the
more obliged for the following memoir from the pen of my kind friend,
Mr. Hill. “I believe the Flamingo is never seen now upon our coasts,
but as a solitary bird, or, at most, associated with three or four
companions, when they make excursions in small groups, preparatory
to pairing and breeding. The congregated flocks of the neighbouring
islands disperse themselves; and stragglers appear upon the sand-bars
at the mouths of our rivers, occasionally, in seasons remarkable for
visits of the Hyperborean and the Canada Goose. We are best acquainted
with them as inhabitants of Cuba. The waters between the thinly peopled
shores of that island, and the clustered green kays of the coast, to
which Columbus gave the names of the Gardens of the King and Queen,
are low and shoaly. In these shallow seas, in adjacent swamps, in
river-lakes, in marshes and lagoons, and salina-ponds, they are to be
always seen moving in flocks, or flying and feeding in ranks of two
and three hundred together. Their lengthened lines and red plumage
have led the colonial Spaniards to call them _English soldiers_,
a name not inappropriate to birds that marshal themselves under a
leader, and regulate their movements by signals, when the remotest
danger threatens; and obey the bugle-blast of their sentinel, when he
summons the cohorts to the wing, and to betake themselves to other
feeding-grounds.
“I visited the district of Boyamo on the south side of Cuba in the
year 1821, and was on the coast from January to April. I was much
among the marshes and swamps about the river Conta, a stream that
receives the tidal waters, which here rise and fall six or seven feet,
at fifty miles along its course. At the mouth of this river there
are long stretches of shoal ground, where the floods of the river
and the sea form lakelets, and successively deposit their stores of
living atoms, with the rising and falling tides. Here the Flamingoes
flock and feed. They arrange themselves in _what seem to be lines_,
in consequence of their finding their food along the _edges_ of these
shallows; and though it is true that whilst their heads are down, and
they are cluttering with their bills in the water, they have one of
their number on the watch, standing erect, with his long neck turning
round to every point, ready to sound the alarm on the apprehension of
danger,—what appears to be a studied distribution of themselves back
to back, as some observers describe their arrangement, is nothing but
their regardless turning about in their places, inwardly and outwardly,
at a time when all are intent on making the most of the stores which
the prolific waters are yielding.
“The vessel I was with on the coast of Cuba was loading timber. Our
raftsmen brought us from Juanita, a town on the Rio Conta to which the
tidal influences of the sea extend, a pair of Flamingoes. I was struck
with their attitudes, with the excellent adaptation of their two-fold
character of waders and swimmers, to their habits, while standing and
feeding in the sort of shoal which we made them in a large tub upon
deck. We were here able to observe their natural gait and action. With
a firm erectness, like a man treading a wine press, they trod and
stirred the mashed biscuits, and junked fish, with which we fed them;
and plied their long lithe necks, scooping with their heads reversed,
and bent inwardly towards their trampling feet. The bill being crooked,
and flattened for accommodation to this reversed mode of feeding, when
the head is thrust down into the mud-shoals and the sand drifts, the
upper bill alone touches the ground. The structure of the tongue, of
which Professor Owen has given so minute and interesting a description,
is admirably adapted for a mode of feeding altogether peculiar. The
spines with which the upper surface is armed, are arranged in an
irregular and alternate series, and act with the notches on the edge of
the upper mandible, on which they press when the bird feeds with the
head reversed. In this reversed position, the weight and size of the
tongue becomes a very efficient instrument for entrapping the food. The
bird muddles, and clatters the bill, and dabbles about, and the tongue
receives and holds as a strainer whatever the water offers of food.
“When I made my notes of the Flamingo, thought I had remarked what
had hitherto been unobserved, respecting the ceaseless trampling of
the feet while feeding; but I find Catesby has described it.... A
correspondent of Buffon’s also, I perceive, communicated the same fact,
with other incidents equally striking....
“There is nothing of the Heron character in the Flamingo. Extraordinary
length of neck and legs is common to both, but a firm erect posture is
its ordinary standing attitude. The neck is never curved inward and
outward, convex and concave, like a Crane’s, but its movements are in
long sweeping curves, which are peculiarly pleasing, when the bird is
preening its plumage.
“The bar at the mouth of the Rio Conta stretches some two miles and
a half out to sea, with a narrow inlet about nine feet deep at high
water. Here the Flamingoes, at the season when they associate in
flocks, are congregated by hundreds. They feed divided into the lines
I have explained already, and subdivided into companies. A scout on
some advantageous point apart, where he may glance alternately at the
lengthened reach of the river, and at the sweeping sinuosities of the
coast, right and left, sounds his orders to the squadron. A sort of
long-drawn trumpet-call is the signal of danger. At the warning to
retreat, the whole troop rise on the wing crying and screaming. They
fly in a stiff cruciform posture, with the neck extended swan-like, and
the legs depending, but stretched behind so as to balance the flight.
When thus suddenly alarmed, they rise to the height of the belt of
mangroves that close in some neighbouring lagoon, and clearing the
fringing woodland, drop within the impervious wilderness, and then feed
no longer congregated, but dispersed about.”
Robinson states that “the flesh is tough: they skin them and boil
them. The broth is very good and rich. The fat of the bird being
orange-coloured, like that of the Great White Curlew, gives it a very
agreeable and rich appearance.” The Doctor also observes, “The body
appears _depressed, not compressed as the Ardeæ_.” (MSS.)