Flamingo Friday--The Andean Flamingo

Source:
Copyright Trevor Rickard and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Today I want to share with you a little about the Andean Flamingo. First I want to share that they are on the endangered list because their numbers are plummeting.I am going to share information I found in Birds edited by Tim Harris. It is part of the Facts at Your Fingertips and Endangered Animals series by Brown Bear Books. I will also add some information I found on-line. We will start with this YouTube video of some Andean flamingos in Bolivia.


The Andean flamingo is the rarest of the world's five species of flamingos. They belong to one of the oldest bird families which originated over 50 million years ago and are now threatened by the continuing exploitation and deterioration of their habitat. The Andean flamingo has show a decline equal to 24 percent in 15 years. Breeding success is consistently low and the adults live 50 years (therefore considered long-lived).

By Valerio Pillar (DSC_5251.JPG (DSC_5241 cropped)) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

They live on the puna. The puna is a high, cold, dry plateau in the Andes Mountains. These flamingos live in Peru, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The flamingos live in lakes where the water is ten times as salty as the sea. The lakes are home to diatoms which are microscopic single-cell algae which is what these flamingos eat. Like all the other flamingos, the Andean flamingo is an upside down filter feeder. (For more on feeding see my post here.) Here is a YouTube video of some Andean flamingos feeding Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust near Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.


In the winter the Andean flamingos migrate to the lower wetlands. It is expected that this migration is due to the extreme aridity of the lakes in winter.  (Source)

The species nest in only ten or so major colonies and the breeding sites are under increasing pressure. Away from regular colonies, the flamingos are still hunted for their meat, feathers and fat (used in traditional medicine). Most of the birds killed are juveniles. Some people also remove their eggs for personal consumption or to be sold. There have also been an increase in mining near the breeding colonies and the development of the mining industry and towns to support it are major threats. There is water pollution as well as water diversion which cause fluctuating water levels. (For more on breeding and the life of a chick see my post here.

Source: Arpingstone at Wikimedia Commons

Now what makes the Andean flamingo different than the other species of flamingos? They are the only flamingos with yellow legs. Their bodies are pale pink with bright underparts and noticeable black patch on the wings.  Their bills are yellow and black and of course curved. (Source) They have three forward facing toes with no hind toes. Their voice is nasal and raspy in the calls in the colonies. The young Andean flamingos are grey in color. (Source)

By Paulo Fassina (Flamingo Flying 2) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I should note that only the greater flamingo is not considered threatened. Even with several million birds (all four species combined) they are threatened due to hunting, long breeding cycle and there are fewer than 30 major breeding sites in the world.

I'll be sharing this in the Multicultural Kid Blog Hispanic Heritage Blog Hop. Have you entered the amazing giveaway yet?

Flamingo Friday--Fish and Flamingo: A wonderful story of an unusual friendship

Today I am going to share a book Hazel and I have been enjoying. It is a tale of an unusual friendship between a flamingo and a fish. The book is called the Fish and Flamingo and is written by Nancy White Carlstrom. The two became friends and talked every day about their lives. One day the flamingo tells the fist about flying at sunrise and the beautiful pink sky. The fish tells the flamingo about coming to the surface of the water at night time and seeing the glowing stars. Each wishes to show their friend the beauty they have seen, but do not know how to do it since the friend is not awake at the correct time.

One day the flamingo tells the fish that she will be leaving with her flock the next day. She tells him to be at the same spot at the same time the next day since she will be flying overhead and will wave to him. The fish is so excited and he tells all his friends and has them come with him. 

At the time the flamingo flies over with her flock, the fish and his friends look up and see a pink sky. The fish thinks that his friend has found a way to show him the sunrise and finds it so beautiful. The flamingo looks down and sees many fish and as the sun comes out the silver on each fish sparkles and the flamingo thinks the fish is giving her the gift of seeing the stars. 

Neither friend knows that they have given their gift to one another, but they both feel so honored that the other has.

For this book, we tried out soft pastels. Hazel immediately drew a sun and I suggested we draw the sunrise. She and I added pink and smudged it all together. Then I worked on the ocean. I made it blue and then added some silver. The silver did not shine enough, so we added some glitter glue to be the fish showing the flamingos the stars. I loved how it came out and how well it goes with the story.

Flamingo Friday--Flamingos' Coloring

Welcome to our second Flamingo Friday!! We have been enjoying learning more about flamingos and hope you are too! Today we are sharing a non-fiction book with you and something we learned from it.

We have been reading several flamingo books. We will share each one with you eventually. If you missed the first one which was the wordless Flora and the Flamingo, you can check it out here. Today we are going to share Wild Flamingos by Bruce McMillan.

Now before I begin with what we did with this book, I would like to point out the wonderful picture on the cover. I love it because you can see the black flying feathers of the flamingo. Did you know they had black feathers?

Source

This book focuses on flamingos on the Caribbean island of Bonaire. The species of flamingo are the Greater Flamingos which are the largest of the flamingos. Their average height is five to five and a half feet tall. Their average weight is eight pounds for the males (who are taller) and six and a half for the females. Their populations is estimated to be half of the number there was before Europeans first came to the Americas. Bonaire protects the flamingos and their breeding ground. There is concern about the development of their feeding area in Venezuela though. The book goes through the lives of a flamingo from birth until adulthood and returning to nest again.

Now many people know that flamingos get their color from the food they eat. They eat small shellfish and immature brine flies at both the free-swimming larvae and intermediate chrysalid stages. All of these animals eat aquatic plants and bacteria that contain the same chemicals that make carrots orange. So for a simple craft we decided to paint with carrots. We experimented with a few different methods. First we took a carrot and tried to use it as a paintbrush. I gave Hazel pictures to color that I printed out. The first one came from Lucy Learns.

This method worked all right, but was not great. Here is our end result:

Our other method involved grating the carrot and then placing the pieces on the picture and hammering them into the picture.

We put a piece of paper on the bottom and top. I think we actually flipped it so the picture was on top. Immediately afterward the picture looked like this:

This coloring page came from The Color. Then after it dried a bit, I picked off some of the carrot flakes and we got this:

We also bought a can of carrots to try to paint with, but we haven't had time yet. 

The other interesting thing I learned about flamingos is how they eat. The flamingos always eat with their heads upside down. Their top jaw is hinged and moves like our lower jaws. They filter-feed and are able to separate the food from water and mud. Their bills are lined with hair like teeth that filter the food. Sometimes you will see a flamingo move its feet and bill around before eating. This is to stir up the mud a bit and get the food in the water since it is easier to filter water than mud. 

So that is our lesson flamingos this Flamingo Friday!! I hope you enjoyed it!! And definitely check out Wild Flamingos by Bruce McMillan for more about the Greater Flamingos in Bonaire!

Flamingo Friday--How a Flamingo Beak Works

Today we are going to share the book Flamingos, Loons and Pelicans by Mel Boring. This book has a good amount of information about many different types of water birds. The reason I am sharing it today is because I was trying to think about a way to make a model of the flamingo beak and low and behold I open this book and discover they have an activity to do just that.

Some things I learned from this book about flamingos. They have yellow eyes. Airplanes are the flamingos biggest enemy. When one flies near a flamingo, the bird will go into a frenzy and may smash its own egg. Years ago there were no flamingos born in the United States, but then some came to live near Miami, Florida. The lake there is home to about 900 flamingos.

Now more about how flamingos eat. Flamingos are upside-down filter-feeders. So to eat, it sticks its beak between its legs, upside down. The beak works like a cup. The top of the beak is hinged like our bottom jaw, so it can move and scoop. It scoops up the murky water and the flamingos pump their tongues to filter the water through slits in their billtops. Once the water is out the flamingo is left with algae and small fish for food. 

Flamingo Beak Set Up

Now following the books suggestion on trying to "eat" like a flamingo, I put some small stones and water in a a large bowl. Then I found two spoons--one slotted and one not. They suggested a slotted spoon and a wooden spoon, but I could not get this to work with the bend on my slotted spoon.

Next I had Hazel stand over the bowl and try to scoop rocks and water into the spoons (while bending in half). She however had trouble not squatting to do it and had more success by squatting.

The rocks after the water is drained out represents the food the flamingo would have eaten.

The other activity in this book is making bird tracks. A flamingo's is about nine inches long. Flamingos have webbed feet too.

I hope you are enjoying our adventure in learning more about flamingos.

Flamingo Friday

Today I am going to start a new series on flamingos. Now Hazel has loved flamingos from a young age. They were one of her favorite animals at the zoo from the first time we went there. Since she has shown an interest in them we tend to focus on them a bit. So each Friday we will share a book, movie, craft, activity about flamingos. I love this picture of Hazel at Sea World this June with one of the flamingos who was being taken back to his cage with a couple of his friends. You can see how big they actually are.

However today we are going to share a wonderful book we found at the library. It is wordless. The book is Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.

Flora is a young girl who dresses in her pink bathing suit and swimming gear to try to act like the flamingo. She tries to copy the flamingos poses.

We went through and tried some of the poses too. However a bathing suit would have made it easier to see the poses. Sorry!

The flamingo keeps checking out what Flora is doing, but Flora pretends she is not copying the bird when it looks.

Hazel and Flora did well until the sleeping pose came. Then they both ended in a bit of a somersault. 

At this point the flamingo invites Flora to dance with it teaching her the poses. They dance as a couple for some of it. We did this, but could not get pictures. I did take this last picture of her though.

We truly enjoyed Flora and the Flamingo and trying to copy the movements in it. I hope you will check it out and have enjoyed our first flamingo post.

Summertime Fun Ideas from Oriental Trading

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to the products for your convenience but do not receive anything if you buy from them.

So one of the things that got me going on our Summertime Fun Series is this amazing review for Oriental Trading. We picked out a variety of things to review to bring different summertime activities to you. Hope you will try some of them out.

Flamingo Friday--Paper Plate Flamingos

So this week I thought we would finally share the craft I have had in my head for quite awhile. I thought I had seen something like it on-line, but when I went to look for the link, I could not find it. We decided since we focused on baby flamingos last week to make a mommy flamingo and a baby flamingo. I cut a regular sized paper plate in half as well as a small (cake) sized one in half. I gave Hazel the small half to start gluing on feathers. We used white since baby flamingos are white or grey. I cut out necks and heads from construction paper and we taped them onto the plate (glue did not stick well on the glossy side) and we folded a pipe cleaner in half to be the legs.

Since I was busy cutting heads and taping on legs and heads, Hazel added feathers to my baby as well. We talked about how flamingos have yellow eyes, so she drew two on her baby. I tried to explain we would only see one on that side of the head.

For the mommy flamingos, we used the larger plates. We used two pipe cleaners for the legs since their legs are longer than the babies. I cut the heads out of white construction paper since their beaks are white and black and Hazel used her dot markers to make the head and necks pink (and the eyes yellow) on both heads. She glued the pink feathers to hers and I used a feather boa for mine. We originally had trouble finding just pink feathers so we thought the feather boa would work. I added a few extras of the feathers for the tail.

Now I think we will use these as decorations at her birthday party.

Hazel's

So how do you like our simple flamingo craft? Did I mention Hazel was home sick today when we did this and it really did not take too long and she loves them?

Happy Flamingo Friday!! (With the weather we have had here, it feels like flamingo weather and not our typical September weather.)

Flamingo Friday: Greater Flamingos

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Source: By Yogendra Joshi 
(March baby MarchUploaded by Snowmanradio)
 [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Today I thought we would take a look at the largest species of flamingos, the greater flamingo. The greater flamingos can be found in Africa, Southern Europe and Southern Asia. The picture above is of four greater flamingos in India.

Source: By Jmalik at en.wikipedia 
[GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], from Wikimedia Commons

Greater flamingos range from 43 to 60 inches in height and weigh between 4.4 to 8.8 pounds. The greater flamingo has pinkish-white plumage with red wing coverts and black secondary flight feathers. There bills are pink with a black tip and their legs are completely pink. The remain the whitish-grey until several years into their adult life when they gain their pink coloring.

Source: By aschaf (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aschaf/4830702055/) 
[CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The lifespan of a greater flamingo in captivity is said to be 60 years, however the oldest is around 80 years and is in Adelaide Zoo in Australia. Like most flamingos their greatest threat is man. Ancient Romans considered flamingo tongue a delicacy. And occasionally flamingos in the Rann of Kutch salt marsh in Pakistan and India get electrocuted when they sit on electric cables near their breeding grounds. (Source)

So that is a little about the greater flamingo. If you missed the other species we have shared: Chilean and Caribbean and Andean flamingos. We still need to discuss the lesser flamingos and James flamingos.  I hope you will join us for Sharing Saturday this weekend!

Flamingo Friday: Marco Flamingo

I have been waiting for the cold weather to share this flamingo book with you. In New England it has been winter cold lately, so I think this is the perfect time to share. The book is Marco Flamingo by Sheila Jarkins. This book is in both English and Spanish. Hazel got frustrated when I read her the Spanish, but we keep trying. Apparently there is a whole series of books about Marco Flamingo. I will try to find some of the other versions to see where Marco explores.

In this story, Marco is curious about winter. He asks the winter birds when they return what it is like. They all tell him, "You don't want to know." However he really does, so he takes off to fly north. He discovers all sorts of new things like skiing, snowshoeing, snowballs, etc. He has a great time and loves the weather. He does add winter gear in each picture: scarf, hat, sweater and mitten boots. It is a wonderful book about trying new things and not being afraid to be curious. 

To go with this book, I made Miss Mingo a scarf. I am in the middle of making doll clothes and one of my patterns included a loop scarf, so I tried it out. I also had some fabric that looks knitted that I bought ages ago for dollhouse crafts and I thought this would be perfect. I am going to use it with Hazel's Christmas/birthday gifts. She is getting an 18-inch doll from Santa this year and most of her gifts stem around that. So that is the first adventure of Marco Flamingo. I hope you will join us for Sharing Saturday!!

Flamingo Friday: Sylvie

For Flamingo Friday I thought I would share one of our favorite flamingo story books that we discovered at a library story time. Sylvie by Jennifer Sattler is a book about a young flamingo named Sylvie who wonders one day why flamingos are pink. When Sylvie's mother tells Sylvie the reason they are pink, Sylvie wonders if she will turn different colors if she eats different foods or different things. Sure enough she changes different colors and designs. Then her stomach doesn't feel well and she doesn't feel like Sylvie anymore. She wants to go back to being pink.

To go along with this book, we decided to make some pipe cleaner flamingos. I got this idea at Craft4Kids. We bought some extra large and puffy pipe cleaners which we used for their bodies and then used regular pipe cleaners for the neck, head, beak and feet. First we made some pink ones and Hazel got creative and put a red head on one.

To make them you need one large pink pipe cleaner and two small ones plus pieces of white and black pipe cleaners. To start fold the large one in half and then wrap one end of a small pink one around the fold to form the neck and head. Then fold the second small pink one around the large one to form the legs and feet.

To make the beak wrap the black piece around the middle of the white and then attach the white to a fold in the pink neck and then wrap the pink rest of the pink to form the head and hide the ends of the white. Next wrap the large pipe cleaner to hide both small attachments and form the body. Finally we curled the feet instead of worrying about toes. After making the pink ones, we decided to make some like Sylvie after she ate everything including a bathing suit (yuk!). 

So that is our flamingo fun this Friday!! I hope you enjoyed it!!