Sorting out who's "top dog" (or "top flamingo", I suppose).
A couple of behaviours today that I observed amongst the small flock of juvenile Chilean and Caribbean flamingos that currently reside in the flamingo enclosure at the far end of the Big Pen (or "Swan Lake" as it is known on maps and in guide books). These birds are developing nicely and are getting pinker each time I visit; the three juvenile Chilean flamingos are indeed now looking more and more like the adult birds. And only the dirty grey legs and bill, and slightly faded pink plumage distinguish the Caribbeans from adults. In spite of the dank, grey autumnal weather, there was a lot of activity amongst this flock and birds were foraging, feeding and arguing with vigour. Two activities stand out for description. The first was a fight between two of the Caribbean flamingos; one bird, as standing on one leg, minding its own business and another bird seemingly wished to walk through the space that the resting bird occupied. Flamingos don't always have the best of manners and do tend to try and push and shove each other out of the way.
The video belows shows that both of these birds were evenly matched; the resting bird would not give way and the bird wishing to move wouldn't give up either. What is interesting in the behaviour of the flamingo that was thwarted in its attempts to move where it wanted to go. If you look in the footage, you will see that it engages with the other bird and they posture and spar with each other, but then it reaches into the water and pretends to filter feed. This is known as a re-directed behaviour as it commonly occurs in situations where an individual wishes to do something but is prevented from doing by another animal, and therefore channels its energy into a different action. So in this case, the flamingo on the right wants to move past the flamingo on the left, but this bird is standing up to it, so the challenging bird cannot complete its desired behaviour and pretends to feed instead to "calm itself down". Isn't biology fun?!
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFzZbpWyN0A&feature=youtu.be']
The second cool thing that I watched today was a juvenile Chilean flamingo teaching itself how to filter feed in the right way. This feeding style is an inherent behaviour (it occurs on instinct and does not need to be taught) but it needs to be refined with practice so that the flamingo is an efficient feeder as possible. In this case, the bird was frantically swishing its head around from side-to-side with water going everywhere, but eventually it did seem to master the skill with refinement. It just goes to show that practice does indeed make perfect!
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52bLBiL7q9M&feature=youtu.be']
