WHY FLAMINGOES HAVE SUCH FUNNY NOSES
No, not that. Don't you see, he's getting his dinner? After that crooked scoop bill—for that's what it really is, a scoop—is filled, the water strains out through ridges along the edge of the bill and what's left is his food.
That picture looks as if it had a tremendous lot of flamingoes in it, doesn't it? It has. It's quite a town, Flamingoburg is. Although flamingoes are so wary about meeting two-legged people without feathers—that is, human beings—they're very sociable among themselves and there may be a thousand, even two thousand, pair in a single flamingo city, such as Doctor Chapman studied in the Bahama Islands some years ago.
Their nests are cupped-out hollows in little towers of dried mud raised a foot or so to keep high tides from swamping them. They scrape up the mud with that shovel-like bill. After the conical-tower nest is made, the mud piled up and patted into shape with her bill and feet, Mother Flamingo lays one or two eggs—and then she goes to setting. You notice there's just one little chick in the nest in the lower left-hand corner of the picture, and just one egg in the nest near by.
With such a low stool to sit on you wonder what the mother bird does with her long legs. In some pictures in children's nature books of not so many years ago you'll find her represented as sitting on the nest with her legs hanging down the sides—but you see that couldn't be; the nest isn't tall enough. What she really does is to fold her legs under her body; just once, of course, at the joint. But they're so long that, even when folded, they reach out beyond her tail. While setting, the lady birds reach around with their long necks shovelling up things to eat and gossiping, more or less, with the neighbors; for the nests, you notice, are very close together. Sometimes two of them will reach across the narrow alley that separates the residence of Mrs. Flamingo Smith from Mrs. Flamingo Jones, take each other playfully by the bill and hold together for a while. Maybe this is their way of saying "Good morning," or "How do you do?"
FLAMINGO SOCIETY NOTES FROM THE ZOO
You'd hardly think it—with those long legs of theirs—but the flamingoes swim beautifully. With their long necks drawn back—the way swans do it, you know—they are very graceful, and a flock of them floating about is one of the loveliest sights in the world. They look like a big, fleecy, pink cloud resting right on the surface of the water. You can now find only a few flamingoes in Florida, where there used to be so many; but go on south into Central and South America and there are thousands of them. They are still fairly numerous in countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In Persia they are called "red geese." And the name isn't so far wrong as you'd think. You notice that, unlike those stilt-walkers, the herons, the flamingoes have webbed feet. Like geese and ducks, also, they have those rows of tooth-like ridges on the edges of their bills. It is these "teeth" that, coming together, act as strainers.