[Illustration: FLAMINGOES ON THEIR NESTS.]
Quantities of drift grass and weed are always found floating where a herd has been feeding, which at first led us to suppose that their food consisted of water-plants (as with geese), but that is not the case. The floating grasses are only incidentally uprooted by the birds while delving in the mud. The Spanish marshmen say flamingoes "live on mud," and truly an examination of their crops appears to confirm this. But the mud is only taken in because of the masses of minute creatures (_animalculae_) which it contains, and which form the food of the flamingo. What precisely these living atoms are would require both a microscopical examination and a knowledge of zoophites to determine. The tongue of a flamingo is a thick, fleshy organ filling the whole cavity of the mandibles, and furnished with a series of flexible bony spikes, or hooks, nearly half an inch long and curving inwards. Flamingoes' tongues are said to have formed, an epicurean dish in Roman days. However that may be, we found them, on trial, quite uneatable--tough as india-rubber; even our dogs refused the "delicacy." This bird's flesh is dark-red and rank, quite uneatable.
In the New World the mystery of the nesting habits of the flamingo (_Phoenicopterus ruber_) was solved just three years later, and in a precisely similar sense.
Showing the spikes on tongue and lamellae on mandibles.
We will close this chapter with a reference to a recent and most complete demonstration of our subject--that of our namesake, Mr. Frank M. Chapman, of the American Museum, New York, in his _Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist_. Therein is set forth, in Chapter IV., the last word on this topic. In America, as in Spain, the final solution of the problem was only attained after years of patient effort and many disappointments. With the thoroughness of thought and honesty of purpose that marks our transatlantic progeny while treating of natural phenomena, this book sets forth the life-history and domestic economy of the flamingo, from egg to maturity, illustrated by a series of photographs that are absolutely unique.[51] We conclude by quoting our bird-friend's opening sentence: "There are larger birds than the flamingo, and birds with more brilliant plumage, but no other large bird is so brightly coloured, and no other brightly coloured bird is so large. In brief, size and beauty of plume united reach their maximum development in this remarkable bird, while the open nature of its haunts and its gregarious habit seem specially designed to display its marked characteristics of form and colour to the most striking advantage. When to these superficial attractions is added the fact that little or nothing has hitherto been known of its nesting habits, one may realise the intense longing of a naturalist, not only to behold a flamingo city--itself the most remarkable sight in the bird-world--but to lift the veil through which the flamingo's home-life has been but dimly seen."