| Some interesting flamingo facts:
The lesser flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) is a large marsh water bird (weight up to 3.5-4.4 kg) with very long feet and neck and with a big bent beak. During take-off, it runs on the surface of the water for 5-6 m. While flying, it draws out its neck and legs thus forming a cross. The voice of the flamingo is a long-drawn out quiet gaggle. The flamingo is a very cautious bird.
Natural habitat:
They live on Islands with large shallow, salty and brackish lakes, sea gulfs and also shallows, which quite often dry up by the end of summer.
Abundance:
The flamingo is a very rare bird everywhere with a reduced population.
Reproduction:
It breeds in colonies. Nests are conical columns made from solidified sludge with truncated tops and a cup-shaped depression, the top nesting hollow. The flamingo lays 1-3 olive-green eggs, covered with white calcareous drips. Flamingos sit on the nests by folding their legs.
Diet:
Flamingos find their food in water, in the shallows, by filtering water through the beak. It eats crustaceous, mollusks and seaweed. If the feed is not sufficient enough, then the flamingos can travel far distances for better feeding reservoirs (for 30-40 and even for 50-60 km).
The pink flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus):
The feathering in adult male and female flamingos is light-pink in color; pinions are purple-red and black wings. The featherless portions of the head (the bridle and circle around the eyes) are red in color. The main portion of the beak is pink in color with black at the end. Young birds are a rather dirty-grey color with a weakly-expressed pink tinge. Young birds acquire the adult attire during the third year of their lives. The total length of the body is 130 cm and the birds attain weights up to 3.4 - 4 kg. Flamingos have four fingers on each foot. The nests are conical turrets, which the birds make using sludge and plaster, collected from the same place. Birds tamp the material with their legs and as a result, a truncated cone with cup-shaped depression, the top nesting hollow is formed. Bedding is not present, when they can't find it. The height of the nested cones ranges from 7 to 60 cm with a base diameter of 40-50cm. The nests are densely arranged with a distance of about 50cm to 80cm from each other. 100 to 10000 pairs live in nested colonies. Sometimes, flamingos lay eggs directly on the sand without even making a hollow in the sand. Egg-laying takes place in the first or second week of May. Flamingos lay 1-3 eggs. The egg is white in color with a very weak olive-green shade, ovally extended and with pointed ends. On average, the size of the eggs is 88.8 x 44.6 mm. The hatching duration is 30—32 days. Both the males and females hatch. They do not sit directly on the nest, as sometimes is written, but by bending the legs as if in a sitting position. To get up from the nest, the flamingo has to use its beak against the sand as a support, and then only can it straighten its legs. The offspring are covered with fur. If the baby flamingos are not disturbed, they sit in the nests for 3 days or sometimes even for a longer duration. At two-week of age, the beak of the baby bird starts to bend, as in an adult bird and the baby bird starts finding food gradually. However, the parents continue to feed the offspring till the baby bird is one month old. Pink flamingos feed on tiny invertebrates - small ratchets, mollusks, the larvae of insects, taken out from the sludge. When the molt time approaches, flamingos usually leave the nesting places and fly to places inaccessible to human beings and four-legged predators, and mew there. They quickly lose the large feathers and during this period, they lose the ability to fly. After regaining the pinion, flamingos fly for the winter. In the middle of October, adult flamingos arrive and their main population arrives in November. Wintering flamingos get into difficult positions. Flamingos are gradually driven away from the habitable shallows by ice and a considerable number of birds die. A similar situation was recorded for example in the Camargue conservatory in South France at the sudden onset of winter. In many countries of Africa and South Asia, pink flamingos are pursued and the nesting places of flamingos become insecure.
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