Pretty Flamingo
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Sun 18 Dec 2011 01:45
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Older readers may remember Manfred Mann's 1966 hit
single of this name which is irritatingly repeating in my head as I write this,
but the subjects of this Blog are real pretty flamingos.
The nearby salt pan holds a small group of
Caribbean or American Flamingos Phoenicopterus ruber. This is a fairly common bird in Central America but very rare
in the Caribbean due to habitat loss and hunting. It was successfully
reintroduced to nextdoor Anegada some years ago where there are huge lagoons and
little disturbance. They have flourished, and it seems that a few have crossed
the ten miles or so of sea to this small lagoon near us. There is a flock of 13
there at the moment, happily sifting the mud. Here they are:
 Unfortunately they are timid and difficult to
approach, so I have had to photograph from a distance but you can see their pink
colour (which actually comes from the small crustaceans upon which they feed)
and ridiculously flexible necks. Straight out of Alice in Wonderland. This
species is the pinkest of the New World flamingos; I know not why. The lagoon is
very shallow - these birds are actually sitting down on their ankles (which look
like their knees until you notice the way they bend), comically shuffling
their feet to stir up the mud so that they can get the shrimps for which they
have to stick their heads under water upside down to strain the shrimps out of
the muddy water in their beaks - hence the need for a very rubbery
neck.
Also in the lagoon are these smart
birds:
 who turn out to be Black Necked Stilts
Himantopus mexicanus. Stilts are distributed worldwide and there is
much debate in scientific circles about whether the New World Black Necked Stilt
is just a subspecies of the old World Black Winged Stilt Himantopus
himantopus (from which it is distinguished by the white spot above the eye
visible in the photo above). But it's pretty
anyway.
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