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Figure

Flamingos on Lake Parinacochas, and Mt.  Sarasara
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The flamingo is an amusing bird to watch.  With its haughty Roman nose and long, ropelike neck, which it coils and twists in a most incredible manner, it seems specially intended to distract one’s mind from bathymetric disappointments.  Its hoarse croaking, “What is it,” “What is it,” seemed to express deep-throated sympathy with the sounding operations.  On one bright moonlight night the flamingoes were very noisy, keeping up a continual clatter of very hoarse “What-is-it’s.”  Apparently they failed to find out the answer in time to go to bed at the proper time, for next morning we found them all sound asleep, standing in quiet bays with their heads tucked under their wings.  During the course of the forenoon, when the water was quiet, they waded far out into the lake.  In the afternoon, as winds and waves arose, they came in nearer the shores, but seldom left the water.  The great extent of shallow water in Parinacochas offers them a splendid, wide feeding ground.  We wondered where they all came from.  Apparently they do not breed here.  Although there were thousands and thousands of birds, we could find no flamingo nests, either old or new, search as we would.  It offers a most interesting problem for some enterprising biological explorer.  Probably Mr. Frank Chapman will some day solve it.

Next in number to the flamingoes were the beautiful white gulls (or terns?), looking strangely out of place in this Andean lake 11,500 feet above the sea.  They usually kept together in flocks of several hundred.  There were quantities of small black divers in the deeper parts of the lake where the flamingoes did not go.  The divers were very quick and keen, true individualists operating alone and showing astonishing ability in swimming long distances under water.  The large black ducks were much more fearless than the flamingoes and were willing to swim very near the canoe.  When frightened, they raced over the water at a tremendous pace, using both wings and feet in their efforts to escape.  These ducks kept in large flocks and were about as common as the small divers.  Here and there in the lake were a few tiny little islands, each containing a single deserted nest, possibly belonging to an ibis or a duck.  In the banks of a low stream near our first camp were holes made by woodpeckers, who in this country look in vain for trees and telegraph poles.

Occasionally, a mile or so from shore, my boat would startle a great amphibious ox standing in the water up to his middle, calmly eating the succulent water grass.  To secure it he had to plunge his head and neck well under the surface.