“What is there here to take the place of that life? In the morning I stand on one leg, in the afternoon I stand on the other. I put my head in the mud, or at the far end of my back, or under my wing, or round my foot. I make an attempt to twist my neck on a new and original pattern, and I listen to the ill-informed chatter of my European and American cousins, and the strange folk who come here to see us. And I’d give all the food that serves me for three days for three hours’ wading, or swimming, or flying in my own far country, under a sky that is really warm. Doubtless you admire my feathers, but I assure you they are very dim and dingy compared with what I wore in the days of my freedom under the sun of Africa.”
“I never see you swim here,” remarked the Swan. He hadn’t seen Africa, and was not interested in it, and he ignored the remarks about coloured plumes. His own feathers were very dull.
“I can swim as well as you can,” the Flamingo assured him. “But I much prefer to wade. Then I can put my head in any direction that pleases me, under my feet if I like, with the upper mandible on the ground. The attitude is considered quaint, and it sometimes helps one to snap up some unconsidered trifle that went about thinking itself quite safe.”
“Have you many enemies?” asked the Swan. “Can you tell me thrilling stories of escape from danger?”
“We are too shy,” explained the Flamingo. “Except upon rare occasions nothing can come near us, and when we change our summer plumage we choose a part of the country where man is seldom or never seen. We go for choice to the banks of some stream that is known only to the hippopotamus and the marabou, and live there until our new feathers are strong.”
“What about nesting time?” asked the Swan.
“That’s more sacred still,” replied the Flamingo. “The wildest and most desolate stretch of marshy land will serve best for that. We build together, there are hundreds of nests side by side. I remember my first view of the nesting colony quite well, for I saw it when I came from the shell, ripe fruit of the one egg of my nest. Most of the nests hold two eggs, but when the family is doubled the young cannot get the attention and instruction given to a single one. They were great times.”
“Tell me all about them,” said the Swan; “begin at the beginning.” And while the other flamingoes walked indignantly across the grass plot, tying their necks into knots because they felt they were ignored, the Equatorial bird croaked harshly, in fashion peculiar to flamingoes, rubbed one of his webbed feet with his beak and renewed his story. The wigeon drake came up quietly to join the audience, and later a stray pochard joined the little group, but nobody else was interested.
“When my mother set me from the egg by giving it a little tap,” began the Flamingo, “I stood up in the nest and had a good look round me. On all sides, as far as my eye could see, there were nests similar to the one that held me, just mounds of mud and fibre, scraped up along the edge of the lake and dried by the sun. Some held one, and others held two, rounded eggs, quite white and rather rough. Others held baby flamingoes, with no feathers to speak of, nothing more than some stubbly down that was dull white or brown. All had straight bills; the beautiful curve that you see now belongs, like the pink plumage, to maturer growth. The feathers of the mother birds were at their worst just then, very dull and dingy.
“I could not recall much of those early days, even if I tried hard. I remember that my mother would leave me from time to time to go down to the lake to fish for me; all the mother birds would go together, and then we little ones would stand up on the edge of the nest and sometimes tumble over it. Some babies, not more than a few days old, would walk boldly to the edge of the lake and start swimming; it came quite easy to them, far more easy than the flying that had to be mastered later on. When food was found the mother birds would come back and feed us, and tell us stories of the world lying far beyond our ken, the world that men live in. My mother told me how she and my father worked to make the nest, piling the soft mud up with feet and bill, and moulding it into shape. She told me that flamingoes live together, and that only bad characters are driven from the pack and forced to live the solitary life.