The flamingo was within the ugliest a part of the pond. Out within the center, the place it was in all probability a few foot deep, the floor was clean and unbroken, reflecting the beautiful hues of a later summer time early night. However the flamingo was working the sting of the pond, the place the water regarded to barely cowl its ft and the floor was pocked with little piles of mud, giving it a considerably blotchy, and decidedly much less photogenic, look.
The flamingo had been there in the identical pond on Grassy Key for greater than per week. A half-dozen photographers I knew had posted pictures – nice pictures that confirmed that flamingos aren’t simply pink, however a refined melange of rose, apricot, salmon, tangerine, Halloween orange, ecru and tacao. Nice pictures that confirmed the flamingo with its neck curved into an ideal S, or with its leg lifted, or with water droplets dripping off the tip of its invoice, huge puffy clouds and a moonstone-blue sky mirrored within the water.
And I had gone to the hassle to get in my automotive, deigned to cross Cow Key Channel Bridge, after which drove an hour farther north. What did I get? A distant pink chook wading via the aquatic equal of zits.
Which proves as soon as once more that nature doesn’t care about your ego, your sense of entitlement, your aesthetic sensibilities or your inventive insecurities. Or not less than she doesn’t care about mine.
Nonetheless, it was an actual stay American flamingo, simply standing there out within the wild, as if it was some type of on a regular basis chook. I figured I would not less than look ahead to some time.
Normally, once I see flamingos feed, they nearly totally lengthen their neck and plunge their head down just a few inches beneath the water, near their ft. However this chook wasn’t doing that. As a substitute he was slow-stepping via two or three inches of water, his head the other way up, however simply breaking the floor of the water like a ship, or extra particularly, a tugboat pulling his physique alongside. Which bought me curious.
It feels disingenuous to say flamingos are a rarity within the Florida Keys, not less than in latest instances, when just a few have been reported persistently yearly. I’ve in all probability had about two dozen sightings within the U.S., which isn’t one thing I take without any consideration.
A number of early naturalists within the Keys reported flocks of 500 flamingos off Indian Key. W.E.D. Scott, head of ornithology at Princeton College, wrote of seeing a line of flamingos over a mile lengthy whereas crusing off of Cape Sable. However the species was basically eradicated within the U.S. by the plume hunters of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and any birds seen within the many years after had been considered escapees from Florida establishments like Hialeah Race Monitor or Cypress Gardens.
Not too long ago, 125 American flamingos had been counted throughout an aerial survey of Florida Bay, 122 of them in flight in the identical flock. The quantity has been fairly regular in measurement since Hurricane Idalia blew them throughout from the Yucatan in 2023. And a flamingo often known as each Peaches and US02 was noticed within the Yucatan serving to to lift a chick, which means once-broken migratory pathways could also be being repaired.
The American flamingo appears to be slowly repopulating its historic ecological area of interest. At the very least that’s what many individuals hope these extra common sightings imply.
The explanation for the Grassy Key flamingo’s solo standing was recognized solely to him, however flamingos noticed within the U.S. are sometimes alone, presumably as a result of they’re on the sting of their vary.
One in every of my favourite issues about flamingos is how they feed. They’re filter feeders, sort of like whales. However the place whales use a ram filtration feeding mannequin, propelling themselves via clouds of krill and filtering them via their baleen, flamingos depend on their tongues and ft.
Flamingo tongues are so muscular they had been as soon as served as a delicacy. The muscularity permits the tongue to work like a piston, drawing water in after which expelling it.
For a greater understanding of the subtleties of a flamingo’s mouth, I tracked down a paper with the approachable title of “Filter Feeding in Flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber),” which was revealed within the journal The Condor in 1995. The whole lot that got here after the title despatched me scuttling to Google or the dictionary. The paper’s summary contained such simply penetrable linguistic gems akin to, “We current a provisional morphospace of avian filter feeding mechanisms derived by nomological deduction from an preliminary pecking mechanism and develop on this area preliminary historical-narrative hypotheses of the evolution of avian filter mechanisms.”
Regardless of my English-major understanding of the world, I bravely carried on, which was good, as a result of the precise textual content of the paper was way more understandable. Plus, there have been photos.
Primarily, flamingos need to eat issues between 0.1 mm and 4 mm in measurement. Brine shrimp, fly larvae, seeds, small mollusks, the occasional little bit of algae discovered within the muck. To do that they have an inclination to go away a spot of 1 to 4 mm between their higher and decrease mandibles. A collection of spiny tooth-like buildings alongside the perimeters of every mandible referred to as lamellae work as a sort of mesh to maintain outsized objects out. Meals gathers on the tongue, then is swallowed, shepherded by a collection of lamellae on the again a part of the tongue.
If that they had an extended, straight invoice like, say, a heron, it might be onerous to maintain that hole constant, as it might widen the nearer it bought to the tip of the invoice. However flamingo payments bend about 60 levels at their midpoint, permitting the hole to remain constant.
Extra not too long ago (Might of this 12 months), a paper was revealed within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences with the title “Flamingos use their L-shaped beak and morphing ft to induce vortical traps for prey seize,” a much less succinct title on the high of a much more readable paper.
The paper documented how flamingos – particularly closely-related larger flamingos and the American flamingos – use hydrodynamics to catch their (very small) prey in 4 alternative ways.
Flamingos feed with their heads hanging the other way up, generally partially below water, generally completely below water.
Typically you see them seemingly march in place, stamping their ft up and down whereas locomoting wherever. This creates vortices, or little tornadoes that swirl up, concentrating prey inside them, which they will then dip into and filter with their invoice. Typically they’ll do what’s referred to as chattering, opening and shutting their invoice rapidly, which might enhance what they seize by about sevenfold.
Typically they’ll push their head right down to the underside of the water and carry it up, making a vertical vortex, from which they’ll filter prey.
The conduct I used to be witnessing is described within the paper as a recirculation lure, whereby they drag their partially submerged invoice the other way up alongside the floor of the water, like a ship, with eddies that focus the prey forming on the backward-facing tip of the invoice. Which was edifying to be taught.
A number of days after I went as much as Grassy Key, I bumped into photographer Rob O’Neal whereas we had been each taking photos of individuals consuming Key lime pie with out utilizing their arms. Rob requested if I’d gone as much as see the flamingo. I instructed him my expertise. He mentioned he’d gone up twice, however the flamingo had stayed on the far finish of the pond.
So I suppose I’m forward of the sport. Until I make somewhat extra effort.