Volcano Flamingos (July yarn club)

I knew I wanted July's installment of Nature's Interwoven Threads to focus on flamingos. It was a good time to dye a cheerful, summery yarn, and the pink birds seemed like the right starting point.

I expected to be writing about a Florida or Caribbean ecosystem, but as soon as my research included mention of "volcano flamingos" I was transfixed by these resilient, and unexpected birds, and the habitat where they live. I hope you are too!

Photo credit: user Ljmdbw via Wikimedia Commons

Three species of flamingos live and breed in the highlands of the Andes mountains, known as the Altiplano. The plateau is the second highest in the world (after the Tibetan), and is mostly in Bolivia with a bit in Peru and Chile. Parts of it are quite dry, and the climate can be extreme, but it is home to rich human cultures and fascinating wild ecosystems. 

There are three species of flamingos that live and breed side-by-side in some places, which is quite unusual. Other species of flamingos, found in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, all stake out their own areas and don't usually overlap.

We'll start with the Chilean Flamingo, which is rather a light pink.

Photo: Satdeep Gill, Creative Commons license

The Andean Flamingo is distinguished by its yellow legs

Photo: Thomas Fuhrmann, Creative Commons

And, finally, the Puna Flamingo (also known as James Flamingo) is the smallest of the three.

Photo: Havardtl, Creative Commons

You may know that flamingos get the beautiful pink color in their feathers from the food they eat. Baby flamingos are mostly gray and the color of their adult feathers develops as they accumulate carotenoid pigments from their prey, especially crustaceans such as krill.

These three species of flamingo have the most amazing adaptations that allow them all to live in the same habitat. Although their diets consist of the same basic things (algae and krill), they aren't competing with each other for food because each species has slight differences in their bills which creates a specialized diet not shared by the other flamingos.

Flamingo bills are the most complex of any birds, and have lamellae, or "teeth" that are like the baleen of whales. They put their heads upside down in the water and use their powerful tongues to push water in and out of their bills. Their lamellae trap all sorts of yummy algae, plankton, crustaceans, insects, and other invertebrates. 

Each of our three volcano flamingos has different size lamellae, which allows them to feed on different prey and all live side-by-side. They aren't competing for the same resources, so they can all survive together.

Photo: psyberartist, Creative Commons

Because they feed upside down, the top part of the flamingo bill is mobile, while the bottom part is fixed: the opposite of nearly all other animals, who move their lower mandibles only! (Did you just open your mouth to confirm that it's your lower jaw that is moving? It's cool. I did too.)

Flamingos live and breed primarily on soda, or alkaline lakes (lakes with a basic, as opposed to acidic, pH). These lakes are created when there is little outflow from the lake, and an arid environment leads to a lot of water evaporation from the lake. As water flows into the late, it carries sediments from its travels overland, including salts. Because the lake has little or no outflow, the sediments get trapped in the lake, and as water evaporates from the lake, the salt gets more concentrated.

Our volcano flamingos, and all the other plants and animals in their ecosystems, have adapted over time to the conditions of the soda lakes. Your skin would be damaged by the very basic pH of the water, but flamingos have extra thick and tough skin on their legs to protect them.

Like all animals who live in specialized, extreme habitats, the volcano flamingos are facing threats that are decreasing their populations. The soda lakes where they breed (only laying one egg every few years), are valued for their lithium reserves, which are now mined extensively for batteries. 

This is concerning because flamingos play an important roll in their ecosystems. In areas where the flamingos have disappeared, the algae they typically feed on explodes, affecting the oxygen levels in the lakes and disrupting all species that live in it. Flamingos also feature prominently in many human cultures on the Altiplano. As such a magnificent, and unique bird, they are included in lore and rituals stretching back for centuries. 

I was delighted to learn more about the animals of the high, volcanic plains in the Andes. The ecosystem allowed me to pick cheerful, summery colors for the July yarn. It includes stripes for the yellow legs of the Andean Flamingo, the lighter pink of the Chilean Flamingo, Blue-green Algae, Puna Flamingo (bright pink), Soda Lake (gray-blue), and the Krill that create the color in the flamingos' wings.

Here are some of the resources I used to learn more about the Altiplano, and flamingos.

• Flamingos of the Altiplano, High in the Bolivian Andes from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Andean Flamingo Conservation from Indiana University
  

I also borrowed a book from my library: You Glow in the Dark by Liliana Colanzi. It is a collection of short stories, some of which are set on the Altiplano. The stories are experimental and not always linear, but very captivating. The first is The Cave, and it is an excellent example of the interconnectedness of ecosystems. There are a few paragraphs about how the tiniest change in an environment can have cascading effects on human history. The second story includes knitting! The stories are intense, and can be brutal. I am enjoying, and do recommend, the book (here is a link to it on Bookshop.org: buy online to support local bookstores, not billionaires), but know that these are not conventional stories, and there are some disturbing moments.

There is one more ecosystem to explore in August! Join us!