[ Fam. XXXVIII. PHŒNICOPTERIDÆ, or FLAMINGOES.]
The very peculiar and isolated type of Flamingo is found in both the Old and New Worlds, and is, no doubt, of great antiquity. In the Neotropical Region three species of Flamingo are now known to occur, one of which is well known in the Argentine Provinces. Of the other two (Phœnicopterus andinus and P. jamesi[6]), which inhabit the Andes of Chili and Bolivia, one has also been ascertained to occur within the northern frontiers of the Argentine Republic. Both these last-named species belong to the three-toed section of the genus (Phœnicoparra). In P. ignipalliatus the hind toe is present.
[6] Cf. Sclater, P. Z. S. 1886, p. 399.
[332.] PHŒNICOPTERUS IGNIPALLIATUS, Geoffr. et d’Orb.
(ARGENTINE FLAMINGO.)
Phœnicopterus ignipalliatus, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 512 (Mendoza, Paraná, Rosario, Buenos Ayres); Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 127; iid, P. Z. S. 1868, p. 145 (Buenos Ayres); Scl. P. Z. S. 1872, p. 549 (Rio Negro); Durnford, Ibis, 1877, p. 41, et 1878, p. 400 (Patagonia); Gibson, Ibis, 1880, p. 156 (Buenos Ayres); Barrows, Auk, 1884, p. 272 (Pampas).
Description.—Hind toe present. Plumage rosy red; wing-coverts crimson; wing-feathers black; bill pale yellowish red, apical half black; feet dark violet-grey: whole length 39·0 inches, wing 15·0, tarsus 11·0. Female similar, but smaller.
Hab. Southern portions of South America.
The Argentine Flamingo inhabits the whole of the Argentine country, down to the Rio Negro in the south, where I found it very abundant. The residents told me of a breeding-place there—a shallow salt-lake—which, however, had been abandoned by the birds before my visit. The nest there, as in other regions, was a small pillar of mud raised a foot or eighteen inches above the surface of the water, and with a slight hollow on the top; and I was assured by people who had watched them on their nests that the incubating bird invariably sits with the hind part of the body projecting from the nest, and the long legs dangling down in the water, and not tucked up under the bird.
On the Rio Negro I found the birds most abundant in winter, which surprised me, for that there is a movement of Flamingoes to the north in the autumn I am quite sure, having often seen them passing overhead in a northerly direction in the migrating-season. I have also found the young birds, in the grey plumage, at this season in the marshes near to Buenos Ayres city, hundreds of miles from any known breeding-place. Probably the birds in the interior of the country, where the cold is far more intense than on the sea-coast, go north before winter, while those in the district bordering on the Atlantic have become stationary.