Galapagos – Animal Expedition – Flamingos
The flamingo family includes 5 species. It is very different from its presumably closest relatives, the waders and the ducks. The flamingos are connected to the waders by their entire external appearance with the long neck (19 cervical vertebrae!) and the extra-long legs. In all flamingos, the 3 front toes are connected with webbed feet, the short 4th toe points backwards. Other anatomical features are reminiscent of storks.
The flamingos live on small crabs, snails, worms and insect larvae. By trampling their feet, flamingos sometimes stir up the nutrient-rich soil mud, which can contain up to 91% organic matter. Flamingos react extremely sensitively to disturbances at the nesting site, and fluctuations in salinity also affect the breeding process, so that in some years certain colonies do not lay eggs at all.
The way they feed is unique: flamingos are completely adapted to foraging in lagoons and highly saline lakes (including mountain lakes in the Andes up to 4000 m altitude). Flamingos stand in shallow water and sift out small creatures with their crooked beak, which is provided with lamellae on the sides and works like a sieve.
For reproduction, the flamingos build a nest consisting of a 30-40 cm high mud mound in the shallow shore water, which has an upper diameter of 25-40 cm (50-60 cm at the base) and carries a shallow hollow at the top, in which the only white egg is placed without further padding. Only rarely do you find two eggs in one nest. Shortly before the eggs are laid, the construction activity increases sharply, before that only little of the nest can be seen. Even after laying eggs, both adults increase the burrow for a while. When drying out, the birds compact the material by stepping on it. The female takes over the main part of the entire construction activity.
Both parents breed for 28-32 days, and the flamingo sitting on the nest with its heel joints protruding far back is a peculiar sight. The young birds have a short, dense dune plumage (slightly grey on the upper side, lighter white below), which is replaced by a dark grey juvenile plumage after 4 weeks. Initially, the legs and beak are still red, after a few days they become blue-gray to black. Also, the beak is straight at first, only after about 2 weeks does it begin to curve.
