James Flamingo
| James Flamingo | ||||||||||
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James Flamingo ( Phoenicoparrus jamesi ) |
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| Phoenicoparrus jamesi | ||||||||||
| ( PL Sclater , 1886) |
The James Flamingo ( Phoenicoparrus jamesi ) is a bird in the flamingo family .
features
The James Flamingo has a pink head, the rear back and neck are speckled or striped red. The wing edges are black, as is the tip of the beak. The base of the beak is yellow, the skin around the eyes turns dark red during courtship. The legs are alternately striped with gray and red. He is 70-80 centimeters long, 125-135 centimeters high and 1.8-2.6 kilograms. This makes it the smallest species of flamingo after the Lesser Flamingo.
Way of life and distribution
The flamingos live on salt lakes from an altitude of 2000 meters in southern Peru via Bolivia to northern Chile. Most of the animals migrate down the mountains in winter, but some stay.
The animals feed exclusively on diatoms and crabs, which are abundant in the salt lakes of the high plateaus. They filter these out of the water with their beak. In contrast to the greater flamingo , they never completely submerge their heads when they eat. Like all flamingos, they absorb the crabs' red pigment in their plumage. In the courtship season it will then be very pink. The animals have courtship behavior similar to the greater flamingo .
Systematics
The James flamingo was previously placed in the genus Phoenicopterus . However, this measure is considered to be out of date, as today it belongs to the genus Phoenicoparrus with the Andean flamingo . The birds differ from the Chilean flamingo and the greater flamingo by the missing fourth toe and the more rounded beak.
literature
- David Burnie: Animals the Great Picture Encyclopedia. Dorling Kindersley, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-8310-0202-9 .
Web links
- BirdLife International (English)
- Phoenicopterus jamesi, Sclater, 1886 from ITIS
- Phoenicoparrus jamesi inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2014.