The nature of these birds is peaceful, they rarely engage in fights with each other. During the mating season, the flamingos arrange a collective “wedding” dance. They get lost in a large group and descend in shallow water with small steps.
Nest flamingos, too, amicably at a distance of 0.5 -1 m from each other, choosing for this hard-to-reach places – islands, swampy banks and shallows. Nests of flamingos look very unusual – they are cone-shaped turrets up to 70 cm high, molded from mud and mud.
At the top of this pedestal is a tray with eggs. Such nests of birds are built to protect the masonry from the corrosive water of salt lakes. Flamingos are not very prolific and in one clutch they have only 1-3 eggs. They are in turn incubated by both parents within a month. Even more amazing are the flamingo chicks. In the first days of life, they look like adopters because they are not at all like their parents. Covered chicks white fluff, their legs are short, and the beak is completely straight! How can I not remember the relationship with the geese! Nestlings are born sufficiently developed, but the first days are spent in the nest. Parents feed them with a kind of “bird’s milk” – a special eructation from goiter tender pink.
After two weeks, the beaks of the chicks begin to bend and they gradually switch to self-feeding, but for a long time are under the supervision of adults. At the same time the chicks get into the herd, and several adult birds guard them, after a while the “guard on duty” changes. Young people for a long time come to go “ugly ducklings” with dirty gray plumage, because the maturity of flamingos reach only 3-5 years.
The life of the flamingo is full of dangers. Because of the peculiarities of their physiology, these birds are often injured, wounded flamingos in nature are almost doomed. Flamingos are hunted by almost all local predators – from hyenas and baboons to kites and foxes. Only a man by some miracle has bypassed this bird with his gastronomic gaze. But people always attracted the appearance of these birds, because of their beauty they wanted to have all the zoos, but the flamingos never became ordinary inhabitants of the poultry houses. Contain these waterbirds in special conditions, and it is possible to breed only when large groups are kept.
