THE FLAMINGO 



( P hoenicopterus roseus) 



FLAMINGOES, of which there are several species, present us with one of the 

 most striking instances of adaptation to a particular mode of life to be met 



with in the animal kingdom, more especially as the main feature in this 

 adaptation is developed in its full perfection only when the bird is mature and 

 takes to a special diet. In common with other waders, the adult flamingo has an 

 enormously long neck and legs, and is thereby enabled to procure its food from 

 depths inaccessible to most other birds, although it is frequently content to search 

 for food in the shallows. Its distinctive structural peculiarity is, however, the 

 sharp downward flexure of the extremity of the beak, and more especially that of 

 the lower half. Such a beak appears at the first glance quite unsuited for groping 

 up food from the mud of marshes and lagoons which form the favourite haunts of 

 these stately birds ; but while thus engaged, flamingoes turn their heads the wrong 

 way up, when the beak at once becomes a most efficient ladle, admirably adapted 

 for collecting and holding the small spiral univalve molluscs of the genus Ceritkuim 

 which in many districts form their chief food. 



In the young flamingo, whose diet is of a different nature, the beak is more 

 or less normal in form. 



Flamingoes, with certain relationships to the storks, appear to have most 

 affinity with ducks, geese, and swans ; and it is curious to note how like are the 

 head and neck of a flamingo, if the beak were but straightened out, to those of a 

 swan, the resemblance extending in some cases even to the colour of the beak, — red 

 or orange at the base and black at the tip. 



White and scarlet, or crimson — the Easter colours — are the colours of the 

 flamingo, but the relative proportions of these vary according to the species. The 

 European flamingo — the subject of the Plate — whose range extends from central 

 Europe to the Canaries and the Cape Verd Islands, and thence all over Africa, and 

 eastwards to Lake Baikal, India, and Ceylon, has, for instance, the greater part of 

 the plumage white or pinkish white with scarlet wing-coverts and black quills, red 

 legs, and the beak pink at the base and black at the tip. Much more gorgeous is 

 the tropical American P. ruber, ranging as far south as Para and the Galapagos 

 Islands, in which the general colour of the plumage is light vermilion, with 

 brighter wing-coverts, the base of beak being yellow and the legs red. To the 

 south of central Peru, in Uruguay, and perhaps in Brazil this species is replaced 

 by P. chilensis, distinguished by the legs being grey with red joints, while the 

 black of the beak extends upwards above the bend. In all the foregoing species a 



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