Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE STORK-LIKE BIRDS

THE FLAMINGOS (Suborder Phcenicopteri)

Flamenco Habits

Flamingos are gregarious at all seasons, and especially during the breeding period. Mr. F. M. Chapman recently visited a colony on Andros Island in the Bahamas. The locality where they were found is described as”only a few inches above sea level and is characterized by wide stretches of shallow lagoons bordered by red mangrove trees with occasional bare bars of gray marl. . . .

Subsequent research showed that the locality was regularly frequented by these birds as a breeding resort, but that apparently a different spot was chosen each year. Eight groups or villages of nests were found within a radius of a mile, each evidently having been occupied but one year.

The largest of these, placed on a mud-bar only an inch or two above the level of the surrounding water, was one hundred yards in length and averaged about thirty yards in width. An estimate, based on an actual count of a portion of this colony, gave a total of 2000 nests for an area of, approximately, only 27,000 square feet.”

The nests, which were made of mud scooped up on the spot, were about fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter at the base and some twelve or thirteen at the top, and were from nine to twelve inches in height. Other observers describe the height of the nests as only a few inches, while the extreme of eighteen inches has been reported. The height of the nest appears rather to depend upon the depth of the water it is necessary to avoid.

The eggs, one or two in number, are pure white and some three and one half by two inches.

The manner in which the birds”sit”while incubating has been the subject of much discussion. It was formerly asserted that the long legs were permitted to hang down on either side of the nest, but it seems now to be definitely settled that such is not the case. Thus Mr. Abel Chapman, who found the European species nesting at the mouth of the Guadalquiver in Spain, distinctly states that they have”their long legs doubled under their bodies, the knees projecting as far as beyond the tail, and their graceful necks neatly coiled away among their back feathers, like a sitting Swan, with their heads resting on their breasts.”This position has also been recorded for the American species by Mr. C. J. Maynard, who visited nesting places in the Bahamas, where among hundreds of sitting birds”not one had its legs hanging down."

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