Flamingos | Phoenicopteriformes

Flamingo's | Flamencos

Flamingos are exceptionally tall wading birds: legs and neck are out of all proportion to the fairly small body, and webbing between the front toes carries the bird over soft mud and allows it to swim in deeper water. The bill bends sharply downward halfway along and is lined at the edges with closely set horny plates; it is held upside down in the water, with the upper mandible underneath. The pink and red of feathers, legs and bill comes from pigments in the food and fades without them. They live all year in large gatherings on shallow salt lakes, lagoons and mudflats, fly with the neck stretched out and the legs trailing far behind, and need a long run across the water to take off.

Families in this order

Flamingos | Phoenicopteridae1 speciesFeeding is done with the head upside down just below the surface, so that the upper mandible lies underneath, while the fleshy tongue slides back and forth like a piston; that pumping action draws water in through the bill and forces it out again along the edges. Rows of horny plates along those edges hold back crustaceans, algae, seeds and particles of silt, while the feet stamp and churn the bottom so that more is stirred loose into the water. The red and pink tones of the plumage come from pigments in that food and fade when the diet changes. Breeding takes place in dense colonies on a cone of piled-up mud, sometimes half a metre high, whose flat top keeps the single egg above rising water. Both parents feed the young a red, protein-rich secretion from the upper digestive tract. After a week or two the young gather into large groups of their own age, in which each parent knows its own chick by its call; the sound of a colony is a steady, goose-like grunting.