FLAMINGO, fla-min'go, a peculiar web footed bird of the group Phcenicopteri, which may be regarded as intermediate between the storks and the ducks, the long legs and necks giving it a resemblance to the former, while the webbed feet connect it with the latter. There are six species of true flamingoes, widely spread over the warmer regions of both hemispheres. Our North American species (Phcenicopterus ruber), once common all along the southern shores of the United States, but now almost exterminated even from Florida and ranging southward to Argentina, is light vermilion with brighter wing coverts. The other forms are rosy white (scarlet on the wing coverts) with black wing-quills. All have small goose-like bodies, but the long legs and neck give them a height of four or five feet. Their most extraordinary part is the bill, which is large, swollen and bent upon itself so that the upper half is turned downward when the bird feeds, with its head twisted and crown down ward. The edges of both upper and lower jaw are furnished with small transverse plates, which serve, as in ducks, for a seive, allowing the escape of the mud, but retaining the small worms, cruetaceans, mollusks, fishes, etc., on which the birds feed. The upper surface of the tongue is beset on the sides and base with flexible, recurved, horny spines. Flamingoes live and migrate in large flocks, warning one another of danger by a loud trumpeting note, which is the signal for the flock to take wing. When flying, they form a triangle.
They breed in companies in mud-flats or inundated marshes, where they spend most of their time wading about, raising up the mud into a small hillock, which is concave at the top so as to form a nest. In this hollow the female
lays her one egg and hatches it by sitting with her legs doubled up under her. The young, usually two in number, do not fly till they have nearly attained their full growth, though they can run very swiftly and swim with ease almost immediately after their exclusion from the shell. This bird was held in high repute among the luxurious Romans; and Apicius, so famous in the annals of gastronomy, is recorded by Pliny to have discovered the exquisite relish of the flamingo's tongue and a superior mode of dressing it. When taken young they soon grow familiar, but they are not generally found to thrive in the domesticated state. The European flamingo (P. roseus) is abundant in marshy regions of Spain and southern France and is found as far south as Cape Colony and as far east as Lake Baikal. In northwestern India it may be seen in flocks numbering tens of thou sands. Another very similar species (P. minor), but of less size and with the chin feathered, is found from Madasgascar around the whole cir cuit of the shores of the Indian Ocean. Three other species are known in South America, P. andinus of the central Andes, the largest of the family; P. jamesi, of southern Peru and Chile, and P. chilensis of the region south of Brazil, which has greenish shanks. In addition to the various ornithologies, the reader may consult an article by H. A. Blake, 'Nineteenth Century> (December 1887) ; Chapman and Buck, 'Wild Spain' (1893); and F. M. Chap man, 'Bird Lore) (1902).