Such a beautiful description for a gathering of these birds: a flamboyance of flamingos.
They are ugly beautiful birds, really, but like all birds, extremely interesting when you look into their behavior and why they do what they do. Like:- They only lay one egg per year.
- they are able to bend their long skinny legs backwards...that's because the joint you see in the leg
is in fact the ankle!
- Their pink coloring comes from the pigment in the food they eat. What an exotic menu: prawns,
shrimp, crustaceans like crabs, and then the not so appetizing algae and plankton.
We are fortunate to live on the Cape West Coast where for several months of the year we can see a great flamboyance of flamingo! They are fond of the waters of Rietvlei and we've recently seen a lot of them in the Milnertoon lagoon area.
The Durban Bird Park is a great place to view them up close and personal. You're in for a culture shock though because contrary to what you expect from such beautiful birds, they are extremely bad tempered & if you want to learn how to defend your patch of water, go to the flamingo for lessons!
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