With such a low stool to sit on you wonder what the mother bird does with her long legs. In some pictures in children's nature books of not so many years ago you'll find her represented as sitting on the nest with her legs hanging down the sides--but you see that couldn't be; the nest isn't tall enough. What she really does is to fold her legs under her body; just once, of course, at the joint. But they're so long that, even when folded, they reach out beyond her tail. While setting, the lady birds reach around with their long necks shovelling up things to eat and gossiping, more or less, with the neighbors; for the nests, you notice, are very close together. Sometimes two of them will reach across the narrow alley that separates the residence of Mrs. Flamingo Smith from Mrs. Flamingo Jones, take each other playfully by the bill and hold together for a while. Maybe this is their way of saying "Good morning," or "How do you do?" [Illustration: FLAMINGO SOCIETY NOTES FROM THE ZOO THE TOILETTE You'd expect a lady wearing so many nice feathers to be particularly careful about her dress, wouldn't you? A LITTLE NAP Queer notion, sleeping on one leg like that, isn't it? But then flamingoes _are_ queer! A TOUCH OF RHEUMATISM Of course flamingoes don't go around like that even in zoos. This is the artist's joking way of telling that in our northern climate they are subject to rheumatism. And the keepers actually do oil their legs.] You'd hardly think it--with those long legs of theirs--but the flamingoes swim beautifully. With their long necks drawn back--the way swans do it, you know--they are very graceful, and a flock of them floating about is one of the loveliest sights in the world. They look like a big, fleecy, pink cloud resting right on the surface of the water. You can now find only a few flamingoes in Florida, where there used to be so many; but go on south into Central and South America and there are thousands of them. They are still fairly numerous in countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In Persia they are called "red geese." And the name isn't so far wrong as you'd think. You notice that, unlike those stilt-walkers, the herons, the flamingoes have webbed feet. Like geese and ducks, also, they have those rows of tooth-like ridges on the edges of their bills. It is these "teeth" that, coming together, act as strainers. But a queer thing about their bills, besides the funny-way they have of crooking down all of a sudden, is that the upper bill is smaller and fits down into the lower. Stranger still, the birds can raise and lower this upper bill like the cover of a coffee-pot.