ORDER OF LAMELLIROSTRAL GRALLATORES 



Order OJoiiloglossa; ; family Phoenicopteridcc 



|NTIL comparatively recent times the Flamingoes were associated by ornithol- 

 ogists — as they still are by many others — with the Storks and Herons. 

 It is now known that they constitute an order which is the link between the 

 order of Lamellirostral Swimmers and that of the Herons, vStorks, and Ibises. 

 The Persians recognized this relationship to the Geese when they gave to 

 the Flamingo the name of Kaj-i-siirkh, or Red Goose. 



Of the seven species comprising the Flamingo family, five occur in this hemi- 

 sphere, but only one comes within the borders of the United States. The 

 family has several peculiar and interesting characteristics. In the first place, 

 the plumage of all Flamingoes is very beautiful, the prevailing colors var>'ing 

 from rosy pink to bright scarlet. Again (and unlike the Herons, Cranes, and 

 Ibises) the Flamingo's long neck is not due to multiplication of the vertebra, of which there 

 are but eighteen, but to the lengthening of the separate bones. Furthermore, the bird's bill 

 is quite distinct in its structure : the lower mandible is a bo.\like affair, broad and deep, into 

 which the upper mandible, which moves freely, closes like a lid, and the sides are fitted 

 with gill-like processes, which act as sieves, while the whole is bent sharply downward near 

 the tip. This curious organ is thrust into the mud in an inverted position, the point 

 being directed backward. In this manner the bird seeks its food, which consists of frogs, 

 shellfish, mollusks, and aquatic herbage, strained from the mud by the sieve apparatus. 



Any bird or beast of strange appearance and unusual habits is likely to be credited with 

 almost any weird practice. The Flamingo furnishes an illustration of this in the accounts 

 of its nesting habits which long passed current, and some of which are still believed by many. 

 For probably the oldest and one of the most graphic of these accounts we are indebted to 

 William Dampier, the seventeenth-century English freebooter and explorer, who thus 

 described the nesting of the Flamingo (near Curacao) in his famous book, .4 A'civ \'oyage 

 Around tlic World: 



" They build their Nests in shallow Ponds, where there is much Mud, which they scrape 

 together, making little Hillocks, like small Islands, appearing out of the Water, a foot and 

 a half high from the bottom. They make the foundations of these Hillocks broad, bringing 

 them up tapering to the top, where they leave a small hollow pit to lay their Eggs in; and 

 when they either lay their Eggs, or hatch them, they stand all the while, not on the Hillock, 

 but close by it with their Legs on the ground and in the water, resting themselves against 

 the Hillock, and covering the hollow nest upon it with their Rumps: For their Legs are 

 very long; and building thus, as they do, upon the ground, they could neither draw their 

 legs conveniently into their Nests, nor sit down upon them otherwise than by resting their 

 whole bodies there, to the prejudice of their Eggs or their young, were it not for this admi- 

 rable contrivance, which they have by natural instinct. They never lay more than two 

 Eggs, and seldom fewer. The young ones cannot fly till they are almost full grown; but 

 they will run prodigiously fast; yet we have taken many of them." 



Of course, neither Dampier nor anybody else ever saw Flamingoes incubating their 

 eggs in this manner; what he wrote was what had been told him, or what he conjectured 

 would have to be done by a bird with such tremendously long legs; for we know, as a matter 

 of fact, that Flamingoes cover their eggs verv' much as other birds do, that is to say, by sit- 

 ting on them with their legs doubled up and the knees stretched out backward and coming 

 about under the end of the tail. Yet undoubtedly by a great many ornithologies, or by 

 detached articles still in circulation, this absurd invention is still perpetuated. 



