View allAll Photos Tagged Digestive
Lammergeier's also known as Bearded Vultures have been gradually reintroduced to a number of European locations including the Alps because the population has dwindled. Over the last decade or two birds from these projects as well as birds who are born to parents who have been in these projects have started to wander as far North as Denmark and the Netherlands.
This particular bird was first seen over Jersey in the English Channel in mid-spring. What looked like a very similar bird was then see in the Netherlands and then Belgium. The central tail feathers are missing. The middle tail feathers are longer so the tail would be diamond shaped. Now the tail looks forked and one would think it is a Black Kite on steroids!
A lucky observer saw a huge bird over her garden on the 27th of June and then over an hour later it was sighted over Derbyshire. Eventually it was tracked and it has since then stayed in the Peak District National Park.
I caught up with it yesterday and was astonished to see it. I have seen 2 wild ones before but to see one within 45 minutes of my home? Lots of people going to see it still.
A similar aged Bearded Vulture appeared in Southern Britain in the spring of 2016. Who knows how many more will turn up?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearded_vulture
The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), also known as the lammergeier and ossifrage, is a bird of prey and the only member of the genus Gypaetus. This bird is also identified as Huma bird or Homa bird in Iran and north west Asia. Traditionally considered an Old World vulture, it actually forms a minor lineage of Accipitridae together with the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), its closest living relative. It is not much more closely related to the Old World vultures proper than to, for example, hawks, and differs from the former by its feathered neck. Although dissimilar, the Egyptian and bearded vulture each have a lozenge-shaped tail—unusual among birds of prey.
The population of this species continues to decline. In 2004, it was classified by the IUCN Red List as least concern; since 2014, it is listed as near threatened.[2] The bearded vulture is the only known vertebrate whose diet consists almost exclusively (70 to 90 percent) of bone.[3] It lives and breeds on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, the Caucasus,[4][5][6] Africa,[7] the Indian subcontinent, and Tibet, laying one or two eggs in mid-winter that hatch at the beginning of spring. Populations are residents.
Distribution and habitat
The lammergeier is sparsely distributed across a vast, considerable range. It can be found in mountainous regions from Europe east to Siberia (Palearctic) and Africa. It is found in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Caucasus region, the Zagros Mountains, the Alborz, the Koh-i-Baba in Bamyan, Afghanistan, the Altai Mountains, the Himalayas, Ladakh in northern India, western and central China, Israel (Where although extinct as a breeder since 1981, single young birds have been reported in 2000, 2004 and 2016 [8]), and the Arabian Peninsula. In Africa, it is found in the Atlas Mountains, the Ethiopian Highlands and down from Sudan to northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, central Kenya and northern Tanzania. An isolated population inhabits the Drakensberg of South Africa.[9]
This species is almost entirely associated with mountains and inselbergs with plentiful cliffs, crags, precipices, canyons and gorges. They are often found near alpine pastures and meadows, montane grassland and heath, steep-sided, rocky wadis, high steppe and are occasional around forests. They seem to prefer desolate, lightly-populated areas where predators who provide many bones, such as wolves and golden eagles, have healthy populations.
In Ethiopia, they are now common at refuse tips on the outskirts of small villages and towns. Although they occasionally descend to 300–600 m (980–1,970 ft), bearded vultures are rare below an elevation of 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and normally reside above 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in some parts of their range. They are typically found around or above the tree line which are often near the tops of the mountains, at up to 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in Europe, 4,500 m (14,800 ft) in Africa and 5,000 m (16,000 ft) in central Asia. In southern Armenia they have been found to breed below 1,000 m (3,300 ft) if cliff availability permits.[10] They even have been observed living at altitudes of 7,500 m (24,600 ft) on Mount Everest and been observed flying at a height of 24,000 ft (7,300 m).[4][5][6][9][11][12]
During 1970s and 1980s the population of the bearded vulture in southern Africa declined however their distribution remained constant. The bearded vulture population occupies the highlands of Lesotho, Free State, Eastern Cape and Maloti-Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal. Adult bearded vultures utilise areas with higher altitudes, with steep slopes and sharp points and within areas that are situated closer to their nesting sites. Adult bearded vultures are more likely to fly below 200 m over Lesotho. Along the Drakensberg Escarpment from the area of Golden Gate Highlands National Park south into the northern part of the Eastern Cape there was the greatest densities of bearded vultures.
Abundance of bearded vultures is shown for eight regions within the species' range in southern Africa.[13] The total population of bearded vultures in southern Africa is calculated as being 408 adult birds and 224 young birds of all age classes therefore giving an estimate of about 632 birds.[13]
Description
This bird is 94–125 cm (37–49 in) long with a wingspan of 2.31–2.83 m (7.6–9.3 ft).[9] It weighs 4.5–7.8 kg (9.9–17.2 lb), with the nominate race averaging 6.21 kg (13.7 lb) and G. b. meridionalis of Africa averaging 5.7 kg (13 lb).[9] In Eurasia, vultures found around the Himalayas tend to be slightly larger than those from other mountain ranges.[9] Females are slightly larger than males.[9][14] It is essentially unmistakable with other vultures or indeed other birds in flight due to its long, narrow wings, with the wing chord measuring 71.5–91 cm (28.1–35.8 in), and long, wedge-shaped tail, which measures 42.7–52 cm (16.8–20.5 in) in length. The tail is longer than the width of the wing.[15] The tarsus is relatively small for the bird's size, at 8.8–10 cm (3.5–3.9 in). The proportions of the species have been compared to a falcon, scaled to an enormous size.[9]
Unlike most vultures, the bearded vulture does not have a bald head. This species is relatively small headed, although its neck is powerful and thick. It has a generally elongated, slender shape, sometimes appearing bulkier due to the often hunched back of these birds. The gait on the ground is waddling and the feet are large and powerful. The adult is mostly dark gray, rusty and whitish in color. It is grey-blue to grey-black above. The creamy-coloured forehead contrasts against a black band across the eyes and lores and bristles under the chin, which form a black beard that give the species its English name. Bearded vultures are variably orange or rust of plumage on their head, breast and leg feathers but this is actually cosmetic. This colouration may come from dust-bathing, rubbing mud on its body or from drinking in mineral-rich waters. The tail feathers and wings are gray. The juvenile bird is dark black-brown over most of the body, with a buff-brown breast and takes five years to reach full maturity. The bearded vulture is silent, apart from shrill whistles in their breeding displays and a falcon-like cheek-acheek call made around the nest.
Physiology
The acid concentration of the bearded vulture stomach has been estimated to be of pH about 1. Large bones will be digested in about 24 hours, aided by slow mixing/churning of the stomach content. The high fat content of bone marrow makes the net energy value of bone almost as good as that of muscle, even if bone is less completely digested. A skeleton left on a mountain will dehydrate and become protected from bacterial degradation, and the bearded vulture can return to consume the remainder of a carcass even months after the soft parts have been consumed by other animals, larvae and bacteria.[16]
Behaviour
Diet and feeding
Like other vultures, it is a scavenger, feeding mostly on the remains of dead animals. The bearded vulture diet comprises mammals (93%), birds (6%) and reptiles (1%), with medium-sized ungulates forming a large part of the diet.[17] Bearded vultures avoid remains of larger species (such as cows and horses) probably because of the variable cost/benefit ratios in handling efficiency, ingestion process and transportation of the remains.[17] It usually disdains the actual meat and lives on a diet that is typically 85–90% bone marrow. This is the only living bird species that specializes in feeding on marrow.[9] The bearded vulture can swallow whole or bite through brittle bones up to the size of a lamb's femur[18] and its powerful digestive system quickly dissolves even large pieces. The bearded vulture has learned to crack bones too large to be swallowed by carrying them in flight to a height of 50–150 m (160–490 ft) above the ground and then dropping them onto rocks below, which smashes them into smaller pieces and exposes the nutritious marrow.[9] They can fly with bones up to 10 cm (3.9 in) in diameter and weighing over 4 kg (8.8 lb), or nearly equal to their own weight.[9]
After dropping the large bones, the bearded vulture spirals or glides down to inspect them and may repeat the act if the bone is not sufficiently cracked.[9] This learned skill requires extensive practice by immature birds and takes up to seven years to master.[19] Its old name of ossifrage ("bone breaker") relates to this habit. Less frequently, these birds have been observed trying to break bones (usually of a medium size) by hammering them with their bill directly into rocks while perched.[9] During the breeding season they feed mainly on carrion. They prefer limbs of sheep and other small mammals and they carry the food to the nest, unlike other vultures which feed their young by regurgitation.[17]
Live prey is sometimes attacked by the bearded vulture, with perhaps greater regularity than any other vulture.[9] Among these, tortoises seem to be especially favored depending on their local abundance. Tortoises preyed on may be nearly as heavy as the preying vulture. To kill tortoises, bearded vultures fly with them to some height and drop them to crack open the bulky reptiles' hard shells. Golden eagles have been observed to kill tortoises in the same way.[9] Other live animals, up to nearly their own size, have been observed to be predaciously seized and dropped in flight. Among these are rock hyraxes, hares, marmots and, in one case, a 62 cm (24 in) long monitor lizard.[9][18] Larger animals have been known to be attacked by bearded vultures, including ibex, Capra goats, chamois and steenbok.[9] These animals have been killed by being surprised by the large birds and battered with wings until they fall off precipitous rocky edges to their deaths; although in some cases these may be accidental killings when both the vulture and the mammal surprise each other.[9] Many large animals killed by bearded vultures are unsteady young, or have appeared sickly or obviously injured.[9] Humans have been anecdotally reported to have been killed in the same way. This is unconfirmed, however, and if it does happen, most biologists who have studied the birds generally agree it would be accidental on the part of the vulture.[9] Occasionally smaller ground-dwelling birds, such as partridges and pigeons, have been reported eaten, possibly either as fresh carrion (which is usually ignored by these birds) or killed with beating wings by the vulture.[9] While foraging for bones or live prey while in flight, bearded vultures fly fairly low over the rocky ground, staying around 2 to 4 m (6.6 to 13.1 ft) high.[9] Occasionally, breeding pairs may forage and hunt together.[9] In the Ethiopian Highlands, bearded vultures have adapted to living largely off human refuse.[9]
Breeding
The bearded vulture occupies an enormous territory year-round. It may forage over two square kilometers each day. The breeding period is variable, being December through September in Eurasia, November to June in the Indian subcontinent, October to May in Ethiopia, throughout the year in eastern Africa and May to January in southern Africa.[9] Although generally solitary, the bond between a breeding pair is often considerably close. Biparental monogamous care occurs in the bearded vulture.[20] In a few cases, polyandry has been recorded in the species.[9] The territorial and breeding display between bearded vultures is often spectacular, involving the showing of talons, tumbling and spiralling while in solo flight. The large birds also regularly lock feet with each other and fall some distance through the sky with each other.[9] In Europe the breeding pairs of bearded vultures are estimated to be 120.[21] The mean productivity of the bearded vulture is 0.43±0.28 fledgings/breeding pair/year and the breeding success averaged 0.56±0.30 fledgings/pair with clutches/year.[22]
The nest is a massive pile of sticks, that goes from around 1 m (3.3 ft) across and 69 cm (27 in) deep when first constructed up to 2.5 m (8.2 ft) across and 1 m (3.3 ft) deep, with a covering of various animal matter from food, after repeated uses. The female usually lays a clutch of 1 to 2 eggs, though 3 have been recorded on rare occasions.[9] which are incubated for 53 to 60 days. After hatching, the young spend 100 to 130 days in the nest before fledging. The young may be dependent on the parents for up to 2 years, forcing the parents to nest in alternate years on a regular basis.[9] Typically, the bearded vulture nests in caves and on ledges and rock outcrops or caves on steep rock walls, so are very difficult for nest-predating mammals to access.[18] Wild bearded vultures have a mean lifespan of 21.4 years,[23] but have been observed to live for up to at least 45 years in captivity.
Reintroduction in the Alps
The bearded vulture had a very poor reputation in early modern Europe, due in large part to tales of the birds stealing babies and livestock. The growing availability of firearms, combined with bounties offered for dead vultures, caused a sharp decline in the bearded vulture population around the Alps. By the beginning of the 20th century, they had completely disappeared from the Alpine regions.
Efforts to reintroduce the bearded vulture began in earnest in the 1970s, in the French Alps. Zoologists Paul Geroudet and Gilbert Amigues attempted to release vultures that had been captured in Afghanistan, but this approach proved unsuccessful: it was too difficult to capture the vultures in the first place, and too many died in transport on their way to France. A second attempt was made in 1987, using a technique called "hacking," by which young individuals (from 90–100 days) from zoological parks would be taken from the nest and placed in a protected area in the Alps. As they were still unable to fly at that age, the chicks were hand-fed by humans until the birds learned to fly and were able to reach food without human assistance. This method has proven more successful, with over 200 birds released in the Alps from 1987 to 2015, and a bearded vulture population has reestablished itself in the Alps.[25]
Threats and conservation status
The bearded vulture is one of the most endangered European bird species as over the last century its abundance and breeding range have drastically declined.[26] It naturally occurs at low densities, with anywhere from a dozen to 500 pairs now being found in each mountain range in Eurasia where the species breeds. The species is most common in Ethiopia, where an estimated 1,400 to 2,200 are believed to breed.[9] Relatively large, healthy numbers seem to occur in some parts of the Himalayas as well. It was largely wiped out in Europe, and by the beginning of the 20th century the only substantial population was in the Spanish and French Pyrenees. Since then, it has been successfully reintroduced to the Swiss and Italian Alps, from where they have spread over into France.[9] They have also declined somewhat in parts of Asia and Africa, though less severely than in Europe.[9]
Many raptor species were shielded from anthropogenic influences in previously underdeveloped areas therefore they are greatly impacted as the human population rises and infrastructure increases in underdeveloped areas. The increase in human population and infrastructure results in the declines of the bearded vulture populations today. The increase of infrastructure includes the building of houses, roads and power lines and a major issue with infrastructure and bird species populations is the collision with power lines.[27] The declines of the bearded vulture populations have been documented throughout their range resulting from a decrease in habitat space, fatal collisions with energy infrastructure, reduced food availability, poisons left out for carnivores and direct persecution in the form of Trophy Hunting.[28]
This species is currently listed as near threatened by the IUCN Red List last accessed on 1 October 2016, the population continues to decline as the distribution ranges of this species continues to decline due to human development.
Conservation action
There have been mitigation plans that have been established to reduce the population declines in bearded vulture populations. One of these plans includes the South African Biodiversity Management Plan that has been ratified by the government to stop the population decline in the short term. Actions that have been implemented include the mitigation of existing and proposed energy structures to prevent collision risks, the improved management of supplementary feeding sites as well to reduce the populations from being exposed to human persecution and poisoning accidents and to also have outreach programmes that are aimed as reducing poisoning incidents.[27]
Etymology
This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Vultur barbatus.[29] The present scientific name means "bearded vulture-eagle".
The name lammergeyer originates from German Lämmergeier, which means "lamb-vulture". The name stems from the belief that it attacked lambs.[30]
In culture
The bearded vulture is considered a threatened species in Iran. Iranian mythology considers the rare bearded vulture (Persian: هما, 'Homa') the symbol of luck and happiness. It was believed that if the shadow of a Homa fell on one, he would rise to sovereignty[31] and anyone shooting the bird would die in forty days. The habit of eating bones and apparently not killing living animals was noted by Sa'di in Gulistan, written in 1258, and Emperor Jahangir had a bird's crop examined in 1625 to find that it was filled with bones.[32]
The ancient Greeks used ornithomancers to guide their political decisions: bearded vultures, or ossifragae were one of the few species of birds that could yield valid signs to these soothsayers.
The Greek playwright Aeschylus was said to have been killed in 456 or 455 BC by a tortoise dropped by an eagle who mistook his bald head for a stone – if this incident did occur, the bearded vulture is a likely candidate for the "eagle".
In the Bible/Torah, the bearded vulture, as the ossifrage, is among the birds forbidden to be eaten (Leviticus 11:13).
More recently, in 1944, Shimon Peres (called Shimon Persky at the time) and David Ben-Gurion found a nest of bearded vultures in the Negev desert. The bird is called peres in Hebrew, and Shimon Persky liked it so much he adopted it as his surname.[33] [34]
Robot bearded vultures appear in some science fiction literature, including the first volume of the Viriconium series by M. John Harrison and Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks.
Valrhona chocolate brownies with cinnamon digestive crust, torched marshmallows
Valrhona chocolate brownies with cinnamon digestive crust, torched marshmallows
For the crust:
10 digestive cookies
2 tsp cinnamon
75g unsalted butter, melted
1 tbs sugar
Brownie batter:
100g unsalted butter
115g good quality dark chocolate (of at least 68% cocoa mass, Valrhona Araguani 72%)
2 eggs
1/8 tsp salt
½ tsp vanilla extract
75g flour
Marshmallow topping:
200g marshmallows
1.Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease a 8 by 8 inch baking pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
2. In a food processor, pulverize the digestive cookies to crumbs. This should yield about 1 ½ cups of cookie crumbs. (Alternatively, place cookies in a ziplock and bash with a rolling pin to achieve the same result.)
3.Add the cinnamon, sugar and unsalted butter to the crumbs. Pulse several times in the food processor (or mix in a bowl with your hands) until you obtain a wet sandy mixture that starts to clump together.
4. Press the crust mixture evenly with your hands into the baking pan. Bake in preheated oven for 15 min until crust starts to brown.
5.Remove from the oven and adjust the oven temperature to 200C
6.In a microwave (in 30 seconds bursts at high power) or in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter together.
7.Stir in the eggs one a time until incorporated. Mix in the salt and vanilla extract.
8.Add the sifted flour to the batter and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until batter is smooth and shiny with no more visible streaks of flour, about 10 strokes. Transfer batter to the baking pan and smooth the surface.
9.Bake in preheated oven at 200C for 20 min, or until surface looks dry and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean with a few moist crumbs.
10.Remove from the oven and let the brownies cool to room temperature
11.Change the oven setting to broil at the highest heat.
12.Scatter the marshmallows evenly on top of the brownies in one layer. Broil until the marshmallows are start to melt and form a golden crust, 1-2 minutes. Watch them carefully so as to ensure they don't start to burn!
13.Slice the brownies with a knife dipped in water and serve.
Entre deux poissons, l'heure est au repos/ Time to rest between two fishes.
Phoque Gris, Grey Seal (Halichoerus grypus)
37/365 (798)
ANSH 59 Challenge, Something I love to eat
Something quick and simple! I ate the digestives and I also drank the glass of milk.....can't remember the last time I drank glass of milk and surprisingly it went down very well with the digestives.
Sometimes, I count myself lucky. Lucky with the life I'm living, with the people I know and the places they take me. This year again I was fortunate position to have christmas lunch at the ferme of L's grandparents. Excellent food and wine, chicken that run around on that farm the same morning (bad luck, chicken!), champagne and all sorts of other wines. After having had all that, I had a walk over the country that goes with the farm, where the colza is already pushing and the orge is waiting for winter to pass by. I was slightly tipsy, and ever so happy.
And you know what? The days, they'll get longer from this point onwards!
Found on a local walk, the siding is removed on this old barn, and yesterday 3 bottles of digestive were sitting on the timbers.
Pristhesancus plagipennis uses curved proboscis to inject digestive enzymes prior to devouring victim from the inside — my Townsville garden
By Elisa Schorn.
From the anatomical literature and drawings collection at Heidelberg University--HeidICON.
A stack of exorbitantly expensive imported McVities digestive biscuits. Had to be quick on this one - there won't be a stack for very long!
ODC: stack
Constructive criticism welcome!
Latex, acrylic, spray paint, shellac, varnish, India Ink, tar, on reclaimed board
20 x 25 x 1.5
red dot
Venus Optics Laowa 25mm f2.8 2.5-5x Ultra Macro of a Dark Chocolate Digestive @ 2.5x
Part of my Ultra Macro Sweets series
I have, over the years, gravitated to plain biscuits such as Digestives for my afters treat. However, come Christmas my son, who lives in Peterborough which has a wonderful British shop, gets me all kinds of goodies. This year I received a package of Marks & Spencer Milk Digestives. I also received a box of M&S tea, a Cadbury's Dairy Milk and Smarties (so much better than our versions here), Robertson's Shredless Marmalade, a jar of Pickled Onions and Imperial Leather Soap. It was all grand.
Funny story- kind of. I took these photos and whilst processing them I noticed it was the French side of the Christie Digestives box that was showing. (All products sold in stores in Canada have to have bilingual packaging by law). So back to my bedroom studio to shoot it all over again with the English side showing. It was a brain fart moment.
We're here looks at Biscuits today and I'm showing off a box of Christie Digestives and a half-eaten package of M&S Milk Chocolate Digestives. The bite out of the biscuit is courtesy of my teeth in case you were wondering. The rest magically disappeared at the end of the shoot.
"Flibbity Jibbit" by Vernon Grant. An advertising leaflet sponsored by "The 'Junket' Folks" at Chr. Hansen's Laboratory and printed at Little Falls, N.Y. Copyright 1943.
For those curious like me, a direct quote from Wikipedia:
"Junket is a milk-based dessert, made with sweetened milk and rennet, the digestive enzyme which curdles milk. It might best be described as a custard or a very soft, sweetened cheese.
To make junket, milk (usually with sugar and vanilla added) is heated to approximately body temperature and the rennet, which has been dissolved in water, is mixed in to cause the milk to "set". (Temperature variations will inactivate the enzyme in the rennet, causing the dessert to fail.) The dessert is chilled prior to serving. Junket is often served with a sprinkling of grated nutmeg on top. For most of the 20th century in the eastern United States, junket was often a preferred food for ill children, mostly due to its sweetness and ease of digestion.
The same was true in the United Kingdom where, in medieval times, junket had been a food of the nobility made with cream, not milk, and flavoured with rosewater and spices as well as sugar. It started to fall from favour during the Tudor era, being replaced by syllabubs on fashionable banqueting tables and, by the 18th century, had become an everyday food sold in the streets. In the United States, junket is commonly made with a prepackaged mix of rennet and sweetener from a company eponymously known as Junket.
Dorothy Hartley, in her compendious "Food in England"[1] has a section on rennett followed by a section on 'Junkets, Curds and Whey or Creams'. She cites rum as the commonest flavouring, and clotted cream as the 'usual accompaniment'. She notes that the practice of heating the milk to blood heat is new one; originally, junket was made with milk as it was obtained from the cow, already at blood heat."
Fripon après déjeuner...décontrasté dans le canapé...comme disait Garcimore le magicien de mon enfance.
PLEASE DO NOT FAVE WITHOUT LEAVING A COMMENT. THANK YOU.
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Latin name: Phoenicopterus - Flamingo
Flamingos or flamingoes are a type of wading bird in the family Phoenicopteridae, the only family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. There are four flamingo species in the Americas and two species in the Old World.
Flamingos usually stand on one leg while the other is tucked beneath their body. The reason for this behaviour is not fully understood. Recent research indicates that standing on one leg may allow the birds to conserve more body heat, given that they spend a significant amount of time wading in cold water. However, the behaviour also takes place in warm water. As well as standing in the water, flamingos may stamp their webbed feet in the mud to stir up food from the bottom.
Young flamingos hatch with greyish reddish plumage, but adults range from light pink to bright red due to aqueous bacteria and beta-Carotene obtained from their food supply. A well-fed, healthy flamingo is more vibrantly colored and thus a more desirable mate; a white or pale flamingo, however, is usually unhealthy or malnourished. Captive flamingos are a notable exception; many turn a pale pink as they are not fed carotene at levels comparable to the wild.
Flamingos filter-feed on brine shrimp and blue-green algae. Their beaks are specially adapted to separate mud and silt from the food they eat, and are uniquely used upside-down. The filtering of food items is assisted by hairy structures called lamellae which line the mandibles, and the large rough-surfaced tongue. The pink or reddish color of flamingos comes from carotenoids in their diet of animal and plant plankton. These carotenoids are broken down into pigments by liver enzymes. The source of this varies by species, and affects the saturation of color. Flamingos whose sole diet is blue-green algae are darker in color compared to those who get it second hand (e.g. from animals that have digested blue-green algae).
Flamingos are very social birds; they live in colonies whose population can number in the thousands. These large colonies are believed to serve three purposes for the flamingos: avoiding predators, maximizing food intake, and using scarce suitable nesting sites more efficiently. Before breeding, flamingo colonies split into breeding groups of about 15 to 50 birds. Both males and females in these groups perform synchronized ritual displays. The members of a group stand together and display to each other by stretching their necks upwards, then uttering calls while head-flagging, and then flapping their wings. The displays do not seem to be directed towards an individual but instead occur randomly. These displays stimulate "synchronous nesting" (see below) and help pair up those birds who do not already have mates.
Flamingos form strong pair bonds although in larger colonies flamingos sometimes change mates, presumably because there are more mates to choose from. Flamingo pairs establish and defend nesting territories. They locate a suitable spot on the mudflat to build a nest (the spot is usually chosen by the female). It is during nest building that copulation usually occurs. Nest building is sometimes interrupted by another flamingo pair trying to commandeer the nesting site for their own use. Flamingos aggressively defend their nesting sites. Both the male and the female contribute to building the nest, and to defending the nest and egg. Occasional same-sex pairs have been reported.
After the chicks hatch, the only parental expense is feeding. Both the male and the female feed their chicks with a kind of crop milk, produced in glands lining the whole of the upper digestive tract (not just the crop). Production is stimulated by the hormone prolactin. The milk contains fat, protein, and red and white blood cells. (Pigeons and doves—Columbidae—also produce a crop milk (just in the glands lining the crop), which contains less fat and more protein than flamingo crop milk.
For the first six days after the chicks hatch, the adults and chicks stay in the nesting sites. At around seven to twelve days old, the chicks begin to move out of their nests and explore their surroundings. When they are two weeks old, the chicks congregate in groups, called "microcrèches", and their parents leave them alone. After a while, the microcrèches merge into "crèches" containing thousands of chicks. Chicks that do not stay in their crèches are vulnerable to predators.
Taken on our trip to Pensthorpe Nature Reserve in Norfolk. Part of the main group of flamingos.
Taken with my Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5.6-6.3 Di VC USD A011 Lens and framed in Photoshop.
Better viewed in light box - click on the image or press 'L' on your keyboard.