Nombre en español: Flamenco Chileno

Nombre en inglés: Chilean flamingo

Nombre científico: Phoenicopterus chilensis

Familia: Phoenicopteridae

El flamenco chileno​ o flamenco austral (Argentina, Bolivia y Uruguay)⁴​(Phoenicopterus chilensis) es una especie de ave de la familia Phoenicopteridae. Se lo conoce también como solor o tokoko en idioma kunza.

La especie está considerada como casi amenazada en la lista Roja de la IUCN desde el 2004.​

Descripción

Posee una altura de 1,10 a 1,30 m. De plumaje rosado claro (salmón), presenta algunas zonas más oscuras cerca de la cola. El pico es grande, encorvado hacia abajo, de color claro en la parte más cercana a la cabeza y negro en la parte más extrema. Las piernas son claras, a excepción de la articulación del tarso (mal llamada rodilla), que es de un rosado intenso. Los ojos son de color amarillo.

Distribución

Esta es la especie de la familia Phoenicopteridae que habita y se reproduce más al sur del mundo.

Nidifica en Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Perú y Uruguay, mientras que en el sur de Brasil solo es un migrador no reproductivo. Es vagante en Ecuador, Paraguay y en las islas Malvinas.​

En Argentina nidifica en múltiples colonias a lo largo de todo el país,​ con excepción del nordeste, donde es un migrador no reproductivo. El país cuenta con la mayor población de esta especie con cien mil ejemplares, seguido por Chile, con treinta mil ejemplares, mientras que Bolivia y Perú reúnen el resto de la población de algunos miles más. Registros del año 2011, sin embargo, indicarían cifras superiores para la especie, estimadas en trescientos mil ejemplares.​

En Chile se distribuye a través de todo el territorio; se pueden hallar concentraciones importantes de estas aves en los salares de Surire y de Atacama, en la reserva nacional El Yali, en la isla de Chiloé y en la Patagonia chilena.

Hábitat

Vive en zonas de agua de baja profundidad​ como lagunas, salares, estuarios y desembocaduras de ríos.

Alimentación

Se alimenta de invertebrados, gambas y moluscos.

​Chilean flamingo

The Chilean flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis) is a species of large flamingo at 110–130 cm (43–51 in) closely related to the American flamingo and the greater flamingo, with which it was sometimes considered conspecific. The species is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN.

It breeds in South America from Ecuador and Peru to Chile and Argentina and east to Brazil; it has been introduced into the Netherlands. Like all flamingos, it lays a single chalky-white egg on a mud mound.

These flamingos are mainly restricted to salt lagoons and soda lakes but these areas are vulnerable to habitat loss and water pollution.

Description

The plumage is pinker than the slightly larger greater flamingo, but less so than the Caribbean flamingo. It can be differentiated from these species by its grayish legs with pink joints (tibiotarsal articulation), and also by the larger amount of black on the bill (more than half). Young chicks may have no sign of pink coloring whatsoever, but instead remain gray or peach.

Diet

The Chilean flamingo’s bill is equipped with comb-like structures that enable it to filter food—mainly algae and plankton—from the water of the coastal mudflats, estuaries, lagoons, and salt lakes where it lives.

Breeding

Chilean flamingos live in large flocks in the wild and require crowded conditions to stimulate breeding. During breeding season, males and females display a variety of behaviors to attract mates, including head flagging—swiveling their heads from side-to-side in tandem—and wing salutes, where the wings are repeatedly opened and closed. Flamingos in general have a poor record of successful breeding because they will delay reproduction until the environmental conditions are favorable for breeding.

Males and females co-operate in building a pillar-shaped mud nest, and both incubate the egg laid by the female. Both parents also take turns incubating the egg. Upon hatching, the chicks have gray plumage; they do not gain the typical pink adult coloration for 2–3 years. Both male and female flamingos can produce a nutritious fluid from glands in their crop to feed their young. Due to their diet, this crop milk is crimson in color.

In captivity

The first flamingo hatched in a European zoo was a Chilean flamingo at Zoo Basel (Switzerland) in 1958.

In 1988, a Chilean flamingo that lived in the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City, Utah, had mistakenly not received his routine wing clipping. The flamingo escaped, and became a local legend in the greater Salt Lake area known as Pink Floyd the Flamingo. Pink Floyd came to Utah in the winters to eat the brine shrimp that live in the Great Salt Lake, and flew north to Idaho and Montana in the spring and summer. Pink Floyd became a popular tourist attraction and local icon until his disappearance and presumed death after he flew north to Idaho one spring in 2005 and was never seen again.

Since there is such a decline in this species, breeding programs have been implemented in zoos to offset the decline of the wild stock numbers.

Fuentes: Wikipedia/eBird/xeno-canto