Flamingos | Phoenicopteridae

Flamingo's | Flamencos

The tongue works as a piston, pumping water through the bill several times a second past the rows of horny plates that serve as a sieve; the finer those plates are set, the smaller the food retained, from diatoms to brine shrimps and seed. The nest is a truncated cone of raked-up mud holding a single chalk-white egg, and both parents feed the chick for weeks on a red secretion from the crop, long after it has joined a crèche of hundreds of other young. That chick has a straight bill at first, which only takes on its kink over a matter of months. In flight neck and legs are held out perfectly straight, and the black flight feathers stand out sharply against the pink coverts.