FLAMIN’GO

a bird of the genus Pheenicopterus, constituting a family Pheenicopteride#, coming half-way between storks and geese. Its body is rather smaller than that of the stork, but owing to the great length of the neck and legs it stands from 5 to 6 feet high. The beak is naked, lamellate at the edges, and bent downwards as if broken; the feet are palmated and 468 FLAM IN I AN WAY fowr-toed. The common flamingo (P. rose us) ranges from Central HMurope through Africa, and into Asia as far as Lake Baikal, India, and Ceylon. It is entirely searlet, except the quill feathers, which are jet-black. The tongue is fleshy, and one of the extravagances of the Romans during the later period of the empire was to have dishes composed solely of flamingoes’ tongues. The fiamingoes live and migrate in large flocks, frequenting desert seacoasts and salt-marshes. They are extremely shy and watchful. While feeding they keep together, drawn up artificially in lines, which ata distance resemble those of an army; and, like many other gregarious birds, they employ some to act as sentinels, for the security of the rest. Their food appear to be mollusca, spawn, crustaceans, ., which they fish up by means of their long neck, turning their head in such a manner as to take advantage of the crook in their beak. They breed in companies in inundated marshes, raising the nest to a certain height by heaping up the mud with their feet into a small hillock, which is concave at the top. In this the female lays her eggs, and it was formerly believed that she sat on them with her legs hanging down, like those of a man on horseback. But the nests are not so high as to allow of this, and the birds really sit with their legs doubled up under them. An American species of fiamingo is P. ruber, which ranges from Florida to South America, and there are three species peculiar to the latter. IMG:fig469_1.jpg: