The Flamingo. 5^ 



Family— PHCENICOPTERIDAi.. 



The Flamingo. 



Phcenicopterus rosetis, Pallas. 



THIS magnificent and stately bird, often called " The Flame Bird," which often 

 stands over six feet in height, has been included in the British list by Mr. 

 Howard Saunders, but it is really one of the very rarest stragglers to our shores, 

 if, indeed, it has strayed to them ever of its own accord. In any part of the 

 British Isles it is considerably out of its habitual latitudes, which are the southern 

 regions of Europe, Northern Africa, and east to Lake Baikal, India, and Ceylon. 

 In all of these regions it is found, sometimes in thousands, where there are 

 suitable localities. It occurs also throughout the African Continent, but it is 

 represented in the New World by several distinct species, of which one breeds far 

 up the Andes. The localities which the Flamingo considers suitable, are almost 

 always extensive marshes of fresh, salt, or brackish water, situated in flat, open 

 country, such as the deltas of large rivers, like the Rhone in France, or the 

 Guadalquivir in Spain. Probably few of our readers have ever seen these birds 

 alive except in a menagerie. One of the sights that must have deeply impressed 

 those among them, who may have travelled through the Suez Canal, — near 

 which the present writers first made the acquaintance of this species, — or wintered 

 in Egypt, even if they should not be specially interested in birds, is the 

 large assemblages of these birds, very frequently in company with Herons, Ibises, 

 Pelicans, and Cormorants, so often to be seen ranged motionless in long files on 

 the sand banks, or by the margins of the brackish lakes of Eastern and Upper 

 Egypt, brightening extensive areas with a rich glow of pink and red, which 

 becomes a blaze of colour as the birds, when disturbed, take wing and expose the 

 under side of their pinions. In the air, with the neck extended to the full, and their 

 long legs carried projecting straight out beyond the tail, the sight of thousands 

 of them flying in a long undulating line of waxing and waning colour, forms as 

 remarkable and impressive a spectacle as any that bird-life can offer. Among the 

 Egyptian Heiroglyphics, this bird stands for the colour red. 



