Flamingos/Flamenco del Caribe (Phoenicopterus ruber ruber)
There are six species of flamingos in the world. The major flamingos and small flamingos distributed in Africa are famous for their huge communities. The Caribbean flamingo, also known as the American flamingo, is widely distributed in North America, South America and Central America. The Rio Lagartos Nature Reserve, located in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, is a Caribbean flamingo designated by UNESCO Bird sanctuary.
Rio Lagartos is a small fishing village with the largest lagoon and a natural habitat for flamingos in the Yucatan Peninsula. The Best place to rent a local certified guide with special permit for boat tours, come and set up a camera on the boat, and quietly we will rowed to the flamingos, for taking pictures of their most beautiful and natural state.
The Caribbean flamingo feeds on fish, shrimp, shellfish and algae in the water, and the color of its feathers is particularly red. Compared with the African flamingo that only feeds on algae in saline lakes, the color is much brighter. This is different from them. The food is directly related.Brine_shrimp
We hope that waiting will bring the most beautiful moments to you and I have always believed that the beauty of nature and life can awaken the kindness hidden in people’s heart.
Sensitive to loneliness, they always walk in flocks. This causes the transparency of the air to be covered with pinks, reds and blacks. There the endless cycle is gestated and sprouts that allows them to remain, endure, survive the floods that can flood their eggs and the devastating hands of men.
One of the largest, most colorful and most beautiful birds in the world is the Caribbean flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber ruber), with fiery reddish plumage that varies from pink to red, from crimson to scarlet, a product of the carotenoid pigments (similar to those of carrots) contained in invertebrates and algae that they consume. It is a large species, measuring between 1.12 and 1.22 m in length and weighing two to three kg; It is immediately recognized by its long legs, its relatively short body and its unmistakable curved beak. Its legs are used to ford the waters and its long neck is used to search for food on the muddy bottom, supported by the black and yellowish curved beak made up of filtering structures called lamellae or bristles. The notes it emits are honks, which vary from the common and loud warning huh-huh-huh, to the deep, resonant nasal honk-honk-honk call, which is very similar to that of geese.
It is an aquatic bird that always stays in groups, both for feeding and nesting; To do this, they prefer warm and inhospitable places, almost always in shallow water lagoons near the coast, with high salinity, muddy soils and where there is a large amount of microscopic algae, insect larvae, mollusks and crustaceans, shrimp. To obtain this tiny food, they use their beak as a spoon, with it they remove the silt from the bottom and trap the food material by filtering it through the lamellae, through which the muddy water passes. Like most gregarious species, they apparently lead a monogomous life and there is no sexual differentiation, although males can be larger than females. They reach sexual maturity between two and three years, and are very long-lived; maximum ages of 27 years have been recorded in the wild and 50 years in captivity. Their origin is considered one of the oldest among living birds, fossil evidence of the primitive flamingo Parascaniornis from the Cretaceous (135 to 70 million years ago) suggests that they were once distributed in Europe, North America and Australia, as well as in many of the areas where they still live; However, they now only occupy isolated areas, mainly in the tropics and sometimes at high altitudes.
In Mexico, they live in the Yucatan Peninsula, in places bordered by sandy bars sometimes covered by coastal dune vegetation and separated from the continent by a mosaic of floodplain lands. This coast is considered the only place on the mainland of the American continent where it has nested successively and uninterruptedly since time immemorial. Outside the country we can find their populations in isolated regions of the Caribbean and in southern Florida, the Galapagos, southern Europe, northern South America, northern Africa and southern Eurasia. In America they live in the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, northeast Brazil, Guyana, Netherlands Antilles and Mexico (Yucatán). One of the six species recorded in the world, it prefers the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, from the Celestún estuaries to the west and Lagartos to the east, to Punta Holbox and Cabo Catoche to the east, with sporadic records indicating that it can roam as far west as the south of the state of Veracruz and Campeche. To the east it reaches the coastal waters of the Ascensión and Espiritu Santo bays, in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, in the state of Quintana Roo, where it is a rare winterer with groups of a few hundred.
In Yucatán, the population develops its life cycle throughout the entire northern peninsula, with migratory movements of almost 300 km from its winter sites and concentration areas, in Celestún, and on the west coast, to the reproduction areas in Río Lagartos to the northeast; although, throughout the year, they are distributed in places such as Yaymitun, Bocas de Dzilam, San Felipe, Las Coloradas, El Cuyo, Petén Hú, Punta Mecoh and Yalmacal. The reproductive season varies according to climatic conditions, and marks the change in behavior of the adults, but the beginning of reproduction can be located from mid-March, from the first displays of courtship. Before copulation, the male chases the female and makes grunting sounds, ruffling his dorsal feathers and waving his wings. He pecks at her neck and she also ruffles her dorsal feathers until she is in a passive position. Finally, copulation takes place, lasting five to twelve seconds, and during it the male spreads his wings to stop. Reproduction culminates a whole series of activities carried out by the bird; From here, everything revolves around obtaining food, pre-nuptial displays, pair formation and nest building. Everything contributes to the simultaneous laying and incubation of the maximum possible number of eggs, a goal that is not achieved by the colony every year, because during the nesting season they are very susceptible to any disturbance.
REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT Breeding colonies are located on the banks of bodies of water, on narrow ledges, sandy islets or on low sandy bars. The preferred areas for nesting are found in the towns of Petén Hú, Punta Meco and, to a lesser extent, in Las Coloradas, El Cuyo and Yalmacal, all located on the east coast. However, weather conditions, such as hurricanes and storms, or disturbances caused by man have influenced their behavior. The first clutches are in May with an average incubation period of 28 days carried out by both parents; The birth takes place from June, lasting until the beginning of August and the chicks begin their first flights in July, becoming dominant in October, when the young manage to join the activities of the adult population. During the breeding season, dispersal to nearby sites takes place and, shortly after, the flock migrates to the western end of the peninsula. With the first spring rains, reproductive synchronization becomes evident, since during March and April, year after year, they return to their breeding sites located in Ría Lagartos and, since the beginning of the nineties. To Uaymitún, on the central coast.
The female only lays one egg and rarely lays two or three. These are made up of a dull white shell and coloration and often with scaly white calcium deposits on the surface. They are long, elliptical in shape at one end and the vegetative pole more pronounced; Their average weight is 100 to 133 g, and they have an average length of 86-91 by 54-56 mm. Incubation is carried out by both parents during a period that varies from 27 to 31 days, with shift changes in the nest at dawn and dusk. Among the factors adverse to incubation we can mention the precipitation that increases in summer, which can destroy the nests, as well as the tides that erode the basal part of the nest and lead to the dragging of the eggs. After the chicks are born, they remain in the nest for several days and, little by little, they begin to walk clumsily, until about 10 days later they join the other newborns and, in groups, go into the water. During the first days, the chickens have soft white down that gradually changes to a pale pink or grayish color, which identifies the young up to one year old. From then on they acquire the beautiful pink plumage of adults.
The young are born with a straight beak, which limits their ability to obtain food in the same way as their parents, so they are fed from beak to beak with a regurgitated papillous substance. It is a secretion composed of protein, fat and few carbohydrates, with high nutritional value similar to mammalian milk. During the first days of life, the chicks insert their beak into that of both parents to feed on the nutritional secretion that promotes their rapid development. When adults, they obtain their food in a very special way, as they put their beak in the water, with their head in an inverted position, due to their markedly bent beak. The tongue pumps the water and expels the sucked mud several times per second to filter it inside the beak with its numerous bristles, which retain the phytoplankton and zooplankton composed of chlorophycean algae and diatoms, as well as tiny crustaceans, gastropods and insect larvae, which are extracted from the bottom. To facilitate obtaining food, they constantly stir up the muddy bottom with their paws and rarely eat while swimming.
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AND SURVIVAL It is a bird that occupies wide floodplain strips and coastal estuaries in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula; there where estuaries and coastal lagoons locally called “rías” are formed, with hypersaline waters used since pre-Hispanic times for salt extraction. For centuries one of the largest populations of flamingos on the continent has been found here, estimated at the beginning of this decade at 26 thousand individuals. For its conservation, the coast of the Gulf of Mexico has protected areas such as special biosphere reserves: Ría Lagartos, in the municipalities of San Felipe, Río Lagartos and Tizimín, and Ría Celestún in Yucatán and Campeche; and there are others of a state nature such as El Palmar and Bocas de Dzilam. The regional richness of habitats is made up of petenes, mangroves, coastal vegetation, cenotes and low jungles, in a warm dry climate and with rain in summer. Among the few enemies of flamingo we could mention raccoons, gray foxes, seagulls and some birds of prey or egrets that devour their eggs. Other causes of mortality are diseases that affect the respiratory, digestive and nervous systems, due to bacteria or viruses. However, the most serious causes of mortality are human disturbance; because on foot, by car, boat, motorcycle, plane or helicopter, visitors insist on approaching the birds that, frightened, take flight, collide with each other, hurt the chickens and roll the eggs that break or fall into the water; Just as harmful was the clandestine capture and sale of birds for ornamentation and zoos. Other adverse factors are summer rains and high tides that affect the clutch; Hurricanes, storms and impacts caused by man are equally influential, as are pollution, road infrastructure, housing construction, expansion of salt mines and uncontrolled urban growth.
When man did not yet dominate the earth and many species had already disappeared, about 70 thousand years ago, others evolved and adapted to the environment. Among that fauna was already the flamingo that lived in groups, as it still does. Today, this beautiful bird is considered threatened with extinction and is protected by the Mexican government in its remote marshy lands and saline estuaries; Likewise, scientists are also making efforts to preserve the future of this shy bird in southeastern Mexico.
Flamingos were here during Mayan time and they lefts some proves in Chichen Itza Mayan site in the jaguar temple are 2 columns that has a description of the Northern coast the arrive in Rio Lagartos :
