White and scarlet, or crimson--the Easter colours--are the colours of the flamingo, but the relative proportions of these vary according to the species. The European flamingo--the subject of the Plate--whose range extends from central Europe to the Canaries and the Cape Verd Islands, and thence all over Africa, and eastwards to Lake Baikal, India, and Ceylon, has, for instance, the greater part of the plumage white or pinkish white with scarlet wing-coverts and black quills, red legs, and the beak pink at the base and black at the tip. Much more gorgeous is the tropical American _P. ruber_, ranging as far south as Para and the Galapagos Islands, in which the general colour of the plumage is light vermilion, with brighter wing-coverts, the base of beak being yellow and the legs red. To the south of central Peru, in Uruguay, and perhaps in Brazil this species is replaced by _P. chilensis_, distinguished by the legs being grey with red joints, while the black of the beak extends upwards above the bend. In all the foregoing species a hind-toe is present, but this is lacking in two other South American species, namely, _P. (Phœnicoparrus) andinus_, the largest member of the family, of the Chilian and Bolivian Andes and Argentina, and _P. (P.) jamesi_, of southern Peru and Chile, in both of which the beak is yellow at the base and red in the middle, while the legs are yellow in the former and red in the latter. Lastly, there is _P. (Phœniconaias) minor_, of Africa, Madagascar, and India, which in general appearance much resembles the European species. [Illustration] Although flamingoes spend much of their time in wading, they are also good swimmers. Like geese and ducks, they associate in vast flocks, and further evidence of their kinship to that group is afforded by their loss of the power of flight during the height of the moulting season, and likewise by their “gaggling” cries, which are curiously like those of geese. In the breeding-season flamingoes resort to lakes, salt-lagoons, or the swamps in river-valleys, those of the Guadalquivir being one of their favourite haunts in Europe. Bare shores are an essential element in such breeding-colonies, for it is on these that the birds construct their curious sugar-loaf mud-nests, which have a cup-like depression at the summit for the reception of the one or two eggs, and vary in height from two to fifteen inches according to the depth of the water. The eggs, which are brooded by each sex in turn for a period of fully four weeks, have bluish coloured shells, covered with a rough chalky crust. When incubating, the bird sits with its legs bent beneath the body, although it was long supposed that these hung down on the sides of the nest.