70 THE INFANCY OF ANIMALS 



instinctive ; but some discrimination and experience are 

 doubtless necessary in the choice of food. In certain 

 rare cases the method of feeding to be adopted by the 

 early nestling and in later life differs completely. 



In the case of the flamingo, for example, as has been 

 pointed out by a distinguished American ornithologist, 

 Mr. Frank M. Chapman, the very young birds are fed by 

 the parents on a species of " clam broth," a regurgitated 

 soup of semi-digested molluscs. As the birds gain strength, 

 and leave the nest, they pick up food for themselves in 

 the normal bird fashion, and, be it noted, with a beak of 

 normal fashion. But the adult flamingo has evolved a 

 beak of a unique description. Herein the lower jaw is 

 deep, and has a contour recalling that of the whale-bone 

 whales. The upper jaw forms a lid to this, flattened, and 

 bent across its middle at a right angle. In feeding, Mr. 

 Chapman tells us, the movements of the beak are reversed : 

 the upper jaw being moved with great rapidity upon the 

 lower. This curious mechanism has come into being to 

 enable the bird to take advantage of a source of food supply 

 unavailable to its neighbours ; thereby avoiding com- 

 petition in the feeding area — since a larger population can 

 be supported in any given area when that population has 

 different requirements in the matter of food. 



In the case of the flamingo, from the time the bird is 

 about three weeks old till it dies of old age, this food 

 appears to consist, in the Bahamas at any rate, entirely of 

 a small sheU-fish (fierithium), one of the univalve molluscs ; 

 and these are obtained after a peculiar fashion. The 

 head is plunged underneath, and held in such a way that 

 the crown looks towards the ground, as if the bird were 

 standing on its head. Meanwhile quantities of sand and 

 mud are taken into the mouth and rapidly sifted ; the 



