(Flamingos and their creche in Skala Polichnitos)
What strange birds, those flamingos! If they’re not happy with their
home – in saltpans or other marshy areas –, if the water level is too low or
it’s too hot or too cold, they simply say: “Let’s move”. Officially flamingos
are not migrant birds that live here in the summer and somewhere else in the
winter, but they might well change their habitat due to the weather.
On Lesvos you can find two regions with saltpans (Skala Kalloni and
Skala Polichnitos), where in summer and winter you may see flamingos. Where do
they come from? The closest place for the flamingos on Lesvos to have come from
is mainland Turkey, just on the other side of the Aegean, above Izmir: the Gediz
Delta, a 8000 hectare Valhalla for birds. Some 17,000 flamingos live there
in the winter, laying thousands of eggs from which little grey flamingos crawl.
Or could the Lesvorian flamingos come from further away, like Lake Tuz, a large
salt lake just south of Ankara (Turkey). It seems to me that both Lake Tuz and
the Gediz Delta are wonderful places to live for a bird which feeds on the plants
and small animals that live in salt areas.
Putting aside the question of where they actually come from, how do you
suppose the flamingos know that, in such and such a period, life in Lesvos is
better? Do you think they Face-book or twitter like: “Yeah, great water with
lots of delicacy’s and nice temperatures here in Skala Polichnitos. Come!”?
And there is another strange thing: when they decide to go for a long
holiday (most flamingos eventually return to their birthplace), they choose
their destination according to the prevailing winds of their first autumn. Studies
of a group flamingos in the south of France showed that some of them went
holidaying in Spain and others went to Tunisia or Turkey. So it is possible
that on Lesvos you can find flamingos from the French Camargue, I mean they
might think that Lesvos is the Turkish Gediz Delta.
Another weird thing is that flamingos know the art of how to change food
into colours. The cute pink colour they acquire is from eating algae containing
carotenoid and not, as the popular story says, from eating pink shrimps (which
they also eat). Just imagine if our hair became red from eating masses of
carrots, or green by consuming lots of spinach, or white by eating bananas.
That would be fun.
As much fun as looking at a large groups of flamingos, balancing on one
leg and filtering the algae, shrimps or little crayfish from the water is; to
me it seems a little tiring to stand all day on one leg, especially as God gave
them two legs. It is believed that this one leg acts as a cooler (dogs also
cool themselves by staying on four legs in the water) and that putting two legs
in the water would cause too much cooling to the body. Another theory is that should
they get one leg stuck in the mud, they can use the other one to pull
themselves free.
In any case, it seems to me that flamingos have a carefree life,
especially now that the Roman Empire is long past: a time when people hunted
flamingos in order to serve them at fancy dinners. Now I understand why Lesvos
was such a beloved holiday destination for the Romans: I bet plenty of stuffed
flamingos or flamingo tongues were served here, both considered great
delicacies in those times.
As far as I know they didn’t eat the eggs, or the chicks. Flamingo chicks
are not as desirable as cute yellow chicken chicks, because they’re grey and
only when they get older and have eaten well do they turn into those beautiful
creatures with pink feathers. When they’re about two years old their parents
send them to a small crèche and later on to a larger one where thousands of
other kids come. Last week we saw such a crèche in Skala Polichnitos: ugly grey toddlers who must have been on a school trip because there are rarely baby
flamingos born on Lesvos.
And what do you suppose they do the whole day long? They eat and they
blather. Just like the storks, another bird to be seen on Lesvos. Nowadays the
black stork is very popular amongst bird watchers and you can see plenty of
them at the half-dried rivers around Kalloni, at the saltpans and one has even been
spotted at the water reservoir of Molyvos. I am sure they gossip and who knows
if the storks, who are migrating birds, try to persuade the flamingos to come
with them to Africa where they spend their winters.
That particular journey is not without dangers, especially when wearing
scientific equipment. A few days ago a
stork was arrested in Egypt because he wore a suspicious electronic device.
In any case, most flamingos do not like to travel that far. And they
prefer to fly overnight, so that probably means they’re not really into sightseeing.
Having said that, a few weeks go a large group of flamingos arrived on Lesvos, along
with the large numbers of Turks who have visited the island this summer. Does
that mean that the flamingos here do come from Turkey to have an all-inclusive
holiday?
(with thanks to Mary Staples)
© Smitaki 2013
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