Chilean Flamingo

P.r. chilensis                                             Chile

Flamingos are gregarious birds; flocks numbering hundreds may be seen in long, curving flight formations and in wading groups along the shore. In feeding, the flamingo tramps the shallows, stirring up organic matter, especially minute mollusks and crustaceans, which it strains from the muddy water by means of its sievelike lamellated bill. The nest is a truncated cone of clayish mud piled up a few inches in a shallow lagoon; both parents share the month of incubation of the one or two chalky-white eggs that are laid in the hollow of the cone. Downy white young leave the nests in two or three days and are fed by regurgitation of partly digested food of the adults.