[Vibo4Kids]The Dance of the Flamingo

Описание: The Dance of the Flamingo
Author: Anita Mani
Illustrators: Anita Mani, Vijay Kumar Sethi
Like ballet dancers they pirouette on one leg, raising graceful shimmering pink wings… a cloud of pink on a blue lake.
Flamingos are the ‘beauty queens’ of the bird world.
The word ‘flamingo’ comes from the Spanish word ‘flamenco’ which means fire.
It refers to the bright colour of the flamingo’s feathers.
Flamenco is also the name of a famous dance from Spain, a country in Europe.
Some people believe that the flamenco dance was so named as the dancers imitated the movements of the flamingo.
Pirouette: a fast turn using the tip or heel of the feet Shimmering: shining
When you think of flamingos, you always remember their beautiful pink colour.
Amazingly, the birds get this colour from the food they eat!
Flamingos eat organisms such as plankton, shrimps, crabs and tiny water plants.
All of these have special colouring agents which cause a flamingo to turn pink when it eats them.
If you take a flamingo away from its natural habitat and don’t feed it these kinds of food, their colour will turn whiter and whiter as days pass by.
Flamingos are water birds – they live and feed near the sea coast and lakes as the food they eat is found in water.
They are quite tall – some of them can grow up to a height of 1.5 metres.
That is almost as tall as a human!
These birds have very long legs so they can walk far into the water.
Although most photos will show you pictures of flamingos wading in the shallow water, these birds can also swim!
Like other water birds such as ducks, flamingos have webbed feet.
Webbed feet help birds push water back and swim across a water body
They are also powerful fliers and can fly at speeds of more than 50 kilometres an hour – that’s the speed at which cars move on roads.
They can travel over long distances and even cover the distance of nearly 500 kilometres at one time – that’s more than the distance between Delhi and Lucknow!
Watching a flock take off is an amazing sight – like an airplane, they need to pick up speed by running before they can lift off.
They run, flapping their wings before gracefully lifting off into the sky.
What makes the flamingo stand out?
Other than its pink colour, one of the things that make the flamingo so different from other birds is its long, long neck!
The flamingo’s neck is made up of 19 bones!
The long neck is extremely useful in helping the flamingo fish for its food – it’s almost like having an extra-long fishing rod.
The lifespan of a bird is connected to its size – the bigger it is, the longer it lives.
Given how big they are, it is not surprising that flamingos live quite long.
Flamingos usually live for 20-30 years.
The Greater Flamingo lives the longest, up to 30-33 years.
Among birds, flamingos have one of the longest lifespans.
Lifespan: The number of years for which a person or animal usually lives
There are just six kinds of flamingos in all, but they are found all over the world, from North and South America to Europe, Africa and Asia.
Did you know?
that the most endangered species of flamingo is the Andean flamingo – less than 30,000 of these birds are left in the world.
Endangered: In danger of becoming extinct, when not even one of a certain kind of animal is left in the world
In India, flamingos are found in many places across the country.
Large numbers are seen in states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
In India we see two kinds of flamingos – the Greater Flamingo and the Lesser Flamingo.
As you may have guessed, the Greater Flamingo is bigger than its shorter cousin, the Lesser Flamingo.
Flamingos are often found in huge flocks of thousands of birds that look like carpets of pink flowers scattered over the surface of blue lakes and water bodies.
The largest flocks of flamingos are found in the lakes of East Africa – here, sometimes, more than a million gather at a time.
This is a photograph of a flock of Lesser Famingos taken at Lake Bogoria in East Africa.
Lake Bogoria is a very unique kind of water body called a ‘soda’ lake.
The water in soda lakes has a huge quantity of different kinds of salts mixed in it.
This keeps away many animals that need freshwater with less salt to drink – but for the flamingo, these soda lakes are like a five-star restaurant!
Did you know?
that the flamingo eats with its head upside down.
Before the eggs can be laid, the nest has to be built.
Unlike birds that build nests made of twigs on trees, flamingos build their nests on the ground.
They use sticks, stones and mud to create a mound that looks like a little volcano on the ground.
The design of the nest is very clever really – the top of the mound dips like a saucer, so that the egg does not roll away.
Flamingo eggs can be quite big.
So a female bird mostly lays only one egg.
For almost a month, the parent birds take turns to keep the egg ...