FLAMINGO (Port.. older form famengo, Sp. flamenco, from Port. flammant, flambant, OF. Haman, flambant, Fr. flamant, flamingo, flaming, prey. part. of Port. flamar, OF. flamer, to flame, from Lat. flamma, flame; influenced in popular etymology by Port. Flamengo, Sp. Flamenco. Fr. Flamand, Fleming). One of a group of water birds of remarkable appearance, having a goose like body mounted upon long legs and sur mounted by an extremely long and flexible neck, terminated hy a huge beak. (See Col ored plate of WArallo Brans.) Eight species are recognized, forming the family Plurnieopterithr, all rose-red in color, and distributed throughout the warmer parts of the world. They gather in flocks upon marshes and river-banks. and in migration fly like geese, in long, strings. or a. wedge formation. their legs trailing behind and their necks folded upon their hacks. The great length of the neck is due not to an extraordinary number (eighteen) of bone,;, but to the length of each vertebra. Measured from beak to toes, their matured length may exceed six feet, but as the legs, which are naked far up to the thigh, are only about two feet long, and the body is small, the apparent size is much less.
The food of these quaint birds is derived from the water and mud, and in seeking it they wade about in shallow places, supported upon the soft mud by their great webbed feet, which are kept in motion to disturb the bottom and stir out its lurking contents. The bill is large, deeper than broad, and suddenly curved downward near the middle, so that, as the bird wades and seeks its food, either in the water or in the mud, it makes use of the bill in a reversed position, the upper mandible being lowest. The edges of both mandibles are furnished with small and very fine transverse ]amine, which serve, like those in the bills of the ordinary marsh-duck, to prevent the escape of the small crustaceans, mollusks, worms, small fishes, seeds. etc., which are the flamingo's food, and to separate them from the mud with which they may be mingled. The upper surface
of the tongue is also furnished on both sides and at the base with numerous small flexible horny spines, directed backward. They make their nests gregariously in marshes, scraping up a heap of mud, on the top of which is the nest, containing two chalk-white eggs. Many fables remain in the old books as to these nests, but the truth is that the heaps of mud are only of such a height as will lift the eggs well above the surrounding water, and that the female sits with her legs folded comfortably beside her. Their favorite breeding-places are salt lakes and marshes, such as the broad marasmas of Spain and the great Atacama saline marshes in Smith America.
The flamingo of the Mediterranean region (Plarnicoptcrns antiquorum) ranges far east ward and southward, and the three other species, so called, of southern Africa and southeastern Asia, may prove to be mere varieties of it. A spe cies is peculiar to Chile, and another (distin guished by the absence of a hack toe) to the ele vated desert of Atacama. on the border of Chile and Bolivia. The North American flamingo (Phornicoplerus raber), once common in all the Southern tTnited States. hut now grown very rare north of the West Indies and Central America. is remarkable for the deep vermilion color of its plumage, set off by black wing-quills, which has made it too attractive to sportsmen and plume-hunters. The males show the brightest plumage. the young being nearly white and the females pale pink.
The classification of these birds has been a puzzle to ornithologists, but they are now re garded as a family representing a distinct order (Odontoglossa.), usually ranked as intermediate between the anserine birds and the spoonbills, ibises, etc. Consult; Newton, Diclionn•y of Birds (London and New York, ; tory, Birds of the Bahamas (Boston, 1880) ; A. Chapman, Spain (London, 1893) ; F. M. Chapman, Bird Lore, vol. v. (New York, 1902).