NUTTY ABOUT NATURE

“In The Pink“,  FLAMINGOS…..part 1

There is no more beautiful or graceful bird than the pink-hued flamingo.  We are blessed to have large flocks of them in Florida, but you never get used to seeing these magnificent feathered friendlies wading in your pond.

 

After stirring things up a bit by stomping around the muddy, plankton-filled shallow waters with their big flat feet, their upside down beak shovels and sifts the sand for algae and other edible goodies.  Flamingos get their pink color from beta carotene in the shrimp and other crustaceans they snack on.

 

 

In fact, the name flamingo, which means flame-colored in Spanish, is especially appropriate for those birds with the healthiest diet that is the richest in this vitamin. Flamingos in captivity are normally light to dark pink and rarely exhibit such deep red hued plumage.

 

 

Quite often, one sees these majestic birds standing on one leg. From what I’ve read, no one is really sure why they do this. One theory is that they are conserving body heat, and another that they use fewer muscles to perch one-legged than two. Who knows? We’ll have to break the secret flamingo  language code to interview one. All I do know is that it is a very good thing that I’m not a flamingo because I’d be spending much of my life beak-down in the sand….. I’m not so good at balancing, never mind walking with rear-facing knees.

 

 

While I can’t keep up with their acrobatic skills, I simply love the fact that these backward-kneed birds are great at co-parenting !

 

 

It’s nice to hear that the male and female take turns sitting on the nest and on feeding and caring for their newly hatched offspring.  Usually, the female lays only 1 egg and she pair-bonds with the male for life. (Or until they drive one another crazy !!)

 

 

Fuzzy baby flamingos don’t venture away from the nest until they are about a week and a half old. Why are humans so slow to mature? By the time they are 2 weeks old, flamingo chicks are in kindergarten with all their closest friends…..no teacher, just students…..which means fun, fun, fun!

 

 

As time goes by, these mini groups (called microcreches) join other groups until the now full-size creche looks like a very large regional high school with hundreds or thousands of birds enjoying the comraderie and the safety that being in a crowd affords them.

 

 

Humans have loved flamingos for a very long time.  Drawings and stylized flamingo adornments were found in ancient Rome and Egypt and are, as you know, still very in vogue today.

 

 

 

Coming up next, we will take a look at Flamingos used in home decor.

‘Till next time,  BB