AN IMMATURE GREATER FLAMINGO IN GREATER MANCHESTER
ASTLEY MOSS POOLS EAST, 24th MAY 2002
ACCOUNT, IDENTIFICATION AND ORIGINS
by Ian McKerchar
At approximately 18:00 hours on the 24th of May 2002, whilst visiting Astley Moss East Pools, Greater Manchester to check breeding waders, I was very surprised to find a Greater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus). Unusually, the bird appeared very buffish/brown overall, with very little of the expected white plumage of adults or immatures and was clearly a juvenile.
The Astley Moss East Pools site consists of a large expanse of shallow flooded peat moss and is very attractive to waders (both breeding and passage), gulls and wildfowl. The weather was very clear, bright, with minimal cloud cover, but with a very strong south to south-westerly wind. P.Berry, I.Berry, P.M.Mckerchar and county recorder Judith Smith (who also videotaped the bird through a telescope, the videograbs of which are included in this document) also saw the bird, all of which have field experience of Greater Flamingo.
The whole pool is very open and with the very strong southerly wind the bird struggled to remain standing in the same place, but had found some shelter against an edge of the pool fringed with rushes. As I approached to approximately 120 feet, the bird attempted to wade away from me out into the open water, but was forced back towards me by the strong wind before taking a short flight back to its original location, where it then remained until 20:05 when all observers left. P.Berry returned with I.Berry later in the evening, after the strong winds had subsided slightly and the flamingo was out in the middle of the pool, but unfortunately was not to be found on the morning of the 23rd, leaving overnight as the winds subsided further.
Above: A view of the Peat Pools, the Greater Flamingo was usually along the closest edge
The following is a detailed description, compiled from field notes taken at the time of the sighting (observed with Swarovski 8.5x42 EL’s & Nikon FieldscopeIII ED 30xw/a):
Size and general impression:
Obviously a flamingo species, with very long, thin legs making up the majority of the overall size, a long, slim neck that was approximately the same length of the body, a comparatively small head, and broad, sharply decurved bill. The birds overall size (height) was difficult to assess, but was approximated at 1.2metres (utilising the known height of the rushes it was stood next to) and when mobbed by Black-headed Gulls and seen along side a Eurasian Curlew in flight the wing span of the Greater Flamingo was considerably larger, by approximately 1/3 in both comparative species. In flight the head and neck were held outstretched from the body, as were the legs, which protruded well beyond the tail, the wings themselves appeared quite slim in flight with pointed wing tips.
Upperparts:
The head was obviously paler than the neck and upperparts, appearing whitish and in profile showed a slight peak to the crown just behind the eye with a quite bulging throat. The very upper neck (meeting the head) was whitish, whilst the rest of the neck was pale brownish/ buff, although very slightly paler again on the fore-neck. Other than a single all white feather, the mantle colouration was slightly darker than the neck, a little more brownish, with obvious dark brown shafts to the feathers, especially noticeable on the similarly coloured scapulars (which were lanceolate in the upper scapulars). The scapulars also showed obvious pale greyish bases fading whiter on the lower- rears especially. The upper tail, upper tail coverts and rump appeared pure white, as was the back in an inverted ‘V’ pattern, the point of the V reaching the lower mantle area.
Underparts:
The breast and belly upto just before the legs were concolourous with the neck as was the feathering on the flanks (brownish/buff), although the flank feathering showed obviously whiter bases and were noticeably long and ‘loose’ looking, covering much of the lower portion of the wing at rest. The lower belly (around the legs), vent, under tail coverts and under tail was pure white.
Wings:
At rest the wing coverts were mainly hidden by the long, loose flank feathers and lower scapulars but glimpsed during preening the lesser and median coverts appeared very pale buff (slightly paler towards the bases) with darker feather shafts, whilst the greater coverts were obviously paler, whitish with seemingly no dark feather shafts. The tertials were very pale whitish (immediately noticeable in flight) with dark brownish feather shafts. The primaries and secondaries were very dark brownish/black. There was no primary projection beyond the tertials what so ever, the primaries seemingly disappearing into the tertials themselves. The open wings were only observed briefly during two very short flights and so not studied in any great detail but white areas were noticeable around the inner greater upperwing coverts especially, smaller amounts on the primary coverts and on the inner secondaries. Other than this the primaries and outer secondaries appeared very dark and the rest of the upperwing coverts pale buffish.
The underwing was not noted; although when P.Berry observed the bird in short flight later in the evening he did note bright pink axillaries.
Bare parts:
The bill shape was typically distinctive, being rather large and broad, bending sharply downward (almost at 90 degrees) close to the base, tapering evenly to a blunt tip and was lead-grey in colouration. The upper mandible from the tip of the bill to the point of the ‘bend’ in the bill and only the very tip of the lower mandible were black as were the ‘cutting edges’ of the mandibles also. The bare skin between the bill and eye was also lead-grey in colouration, the legs were dark greyish/brown although the inner tibia appeared paler and the iris was brown.
The shape of the bare skin on the face, between the bill and eye was rather fan shaped and broad, beginning from the upper and lower portions of the bill and tapering evenly to the eye. This was used as a separating factor from Chilean Flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis), the facial skin in Chilean Flamingo tapering much less evenly from bill base to eye, becoming quite narrow and forming concave edges, appearing much less extensive and noticeable in the field, although this feature seems only useful in young birds (Nigel Jarrett, Slimbridge pers.comm.).
Behaviour:
The bird seemed wary, initially trying to walk away from us even though we were some 120 feet from the bird (and using trees behind us as cover) and in our usual viewing position (one which doesn’t normally disturb waders at that range), but the bird struggled against the very strong winds and was forced back, finding some shelter against rushes at the edge of the pool (the only vegetated edge of the pools).
It showed no rings on the legs and fed (only for short periods once or twice) in the normal manner, utilising a sweeping motion of the bill in the water from side to side. The bird spent much time preening its wings and spent the remainder of its time asleep, with the neck and head pulled tight into the breast and the bill tight on the chest, giving an overall impression of an oval on legs from a distance.
The investigation into it's potential origins:
A copy of the video of the Greater Flamingo taken by Judith Smith was sent to Nigel Jarrett (avicultural coordinator at Slimbridge) and along with Barry Hughes and Tony Richardson all agreed that the bird was indeed a Greater Flamingo (utilising the facial skin shape as a relatively new identification feature they appear to have discovered to separate juvenile Greater from Chilean Flamingo).
Nigel Jarrett felt the bird was approximately 6 months old (on plumage characters) and had probably hatched sometime October to November 2001. He also commented “it is very unlikely that this taxon would breed in the UK in October-November, unless kept indoors under controlled environmental conditions e.g. temperature and day length altered i.e. a tropical house. As far as I’m aware nobody in the UK keeps Greater Flamingos this way”.
Blackbrook Zoo (who keep Greater Flamingos) commented that they felt it unusual for a captive flamingo to feed in a natural way as they are usually reared on pellets.
During the course of the year I contacted all zoos, aviaries, bird houses, wildlife parks etc in the UK I could find, to check whether they kept Greater Flamingos, if they bred and indeed if they had ‘lost’ one.
Out of 71 sites contacted in the UK I found only 12 that kept Greater Flamingos and only 6 that bred them. This is contrary to the latest UK Zoo Federation Inventory as some ‘locations’ I spoke to had ‘swapped’ their Greater Flamingos for other, more successful breeding species. None I contacted though had lost any of their juveniles.
I also contacted CITES, to check whether any juvenile birds had been imported in to the UK, in case one could have escaped this route, but none had been imported.
I made enquiries into the feral Dutch/German breeding population and was informed that in 2001 only 6 young were produced from this population of an unknown ratio of Greaters to Chileans, but fortunately all birds were ringed.
Whilst the possibility of a Greater Flamingo being bred and escaping from a tropical house outside the UK cannot be discounted, intriguingly a Greater Flamingo population from Apulia, Italy has bred uniquely late in the season since at least 1995. Indeed in 2000 there thewere 122 chicks on the 10th of November, although no details were forthcoming on exact breeding for 2001.
I would like to thank Nigel Jarrett et al. at Slimbridge for their help and advice on identification and UK whereabouts of juvenile Greater Flamingos and also Andy Paterson (Spain), Cathy.E.King (Netherlands), Nicola Baccetti (Italy), Pat Wisniewski at Martin Mere and Blackbrook Zoo.
The record was subsequently submitted to BBRC for assessment (in the format seen above) and was accepted as a Greater Flamingo, although all records of Greater Flamingo currently reside in category D (species that would otherwise appear in Category A except that there is reasonable doubt that they have ever occurred in a natural state) and form no part of the official British List.
Ian Mckerchar, 2002
Further information from A. J. Smith, County Recorder:
On the morning of May 26th 2002, I received a phone call from Ken Haydock who was birdwatching at Red Moss SSSI, Horwich, near Bolton. This site is being reclaimed for sphagnum moss regeneration by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust and contains several shallowly flooded peat lagoons, a similar habitat to that at Astley Moss. He was amazed to see a juvenile Greater Flamingo circling the lagoons, (about 0800hrs) being attacked by breeding Black-headed Gulls. The flamingo then departed in a SE direction down the Middlebrook valley towards Bolton, and was not seen again. Red Moss is 11km NNW of Astley Moss East peat pools. There was an unconfirmed report a few days later from Neumann’s Flash, Cheshire, but neither I nor CAWOS have been able to find the name of the observer, so this record has been lost.
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