In this interesting family of birds are included seven species,
distributed throughout the tropics. Five species are American, of which
one reaches our southern border in Florida. Chapman says that they are
gregarious at all seasons, are rarely found far from the seacoasts, and
their favorite resorts are shallow bays or vast mud flats which are
flooded at high water. In feeding the bill is pressed downward into the
mud, its peculiar shape making the point turn upward. The ridges along
its sides serve as strainers through which are forced the sand and mud
taken in with the food.
The Flamingo is resident in the United States only in the vicinity of
Cape Sable, Florida, where flocks of sometimes a thousand of these rosy
vermillion creatures are seen. A wonderful sight indeed. Mr. D. P.
Ingraham spent more or less of his time for four seasons in the West
Indies among them. He states that the birds inhabit the shallow lagoons
and bays having soft clayey bottoms. On the border of these the nest is
made by working the clay up into a mound which, in the first season, is
perhaps not more than a foot high and about eight inches in diameter at
the top and fifteen inches at the base. If the birds are unmolested
they will return to the same nesting place from year to year, each
season augmenting the nest by the addition of mud at the top, leaving
a slight depression for the eggs. He speaks of visiting the nesting
grounds where the birds had nested the previous year and their
mound-like nests were still standing. The birds nest in June. The number
of eggs is usually two, sometimes only one and rarely three. When three
are found in a nest it is generally believed that the third has been
laid by another female.
The stature of this remarkable bird is nearly five feet, and it weighs
in the flesh six or eight pounds. On the nest the birds sit with their
long legs doubled under them. The old story of the Flamingo bestriding
its nest in an ungainly attitude while sitting is an absurd fiction.
The eggs are elongate-ovate in shape, with a thick shell, roughened with
a white flakey substance, but bluish when this is scraped off. It
requires thirty-two days for the eggs to hatch.
The very fine specimen we present in BIRDS represents the Flamingo
feeding, the upper surface of the unique bill, which is abruptly bent in
the middle, facing the ground.
[Illustration: From col. C. E. Petford.
BLACK GROUSE.
Copyrighted by
Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.]
[Illustration: From col. Chi. Acad. Sciences.
FLAMINGO.
Copyrighted by
Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.]