Simply Lou: Those Fabulous Flamingos

article and illustration by Lou Davenport
original drawing, prismacolor on paper

Finally, there are a few signs of Spring showing themselves! The tom cats are serenading all the “ladies.” I’ve seen some daffodils, quince and forsythia beginning to bloom. It gets me in a “work in my yard” mood, and hopefully, this is my year to finally get it all back in shape before the heat and the mosquitoes run me back into the house!

Flower catalogs have been coming in for the past two months. All I can do is drool over all the pretty pictures of the luscious looking plants. None of them would last a month in my yard. Too much shade and not enough dirt. Too many trees with their never ending roots. So, I settle for what works for me. Hostas, ivy and lirope. I do have some Calla Lilly corms to plant. I’ve had one that has made it for years, through ice and snow! We’ll have to see.

In the front, I have a rose bush that just refuses to give up on me, and my red trumpet honeysuckle that has bloomed all year. But mainly, dewberry vines are determined to take over and I cuss them every year as I get all scratched up from pulling them up. (and I do wear my leather gloves!)

Since I can’t grow a lot of the plants I wish I could grow, I “fill in” with yard art! I absolutely love those pink plastic flamingos and have for years! Right now, I have two that are down….that is they have “bent legs” from a tree falling on them. I just ordered four new ones, and while I was ordering I found out they make “replacement” legs for them! Now, I can have six in my flock!

Those funny plastic flamingos were first designed in 1957 by a young art student, Don Featherstone. He was commissioned by Union Plastics, in the small town of Leominster, Massachusetts, “the plastic capital of the world,” to design a mold that could be used to mass produce the wonderful birds. He didn’t have a live model so he used pictures from National Geographic for his source. Who knew they would become such a cultural icon?! Union Plastics has since gone out of business, but the iconic “Featherstone” flamingo is still being made.
It turns out Don Featherstone was a real character himself. He and his wife dressed alike, always in some flamingo related prints, and of course, he had plenty of pink pants! He even gave his “new species” a full scientific name, phoenicopteris ruber plasticus. He also said he made it possible for all America to enjoy having “bad taste!” There’s a book he wrote, “Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass” that I had to order a while back. His sense of humor made me love my little flamingos even more!

When Featherstone died in 1979, USA Today wrote “rivaled only by the gnome and tiki torch, the pink flamingos are the ubiquitous lawn ornament of choice for homeowners seeking a vintage, kitschy, ironically tacky splash of summer Americana in the yard.” All I know is I just liked them then, and I like them now! Thank you, Mr. Featherstone!

The pink flamingos came out at a time when the building boom of post World War II was going strong. Most of the houses in those subdivisions looked alike, so to make their homes stand out from the rest, a lady just needed to go pick up a couple of the birds, stick them in her yard and TADA! Instant Mid-Century cool!

Along came the ecology movement and proponents were wanting to rid the planet of all things plastic. The little pink flamingos fell from favor, and Sears even stopped selling them. People looked at the flamingos as “tacky,” and they suddenly became “endangered.”

But, thanks to the 70s, the “lowly, tacky” flamingo began to make a comeback. Once again, things that weren’t “cool” were “cool” again! The little plastic flamingo went from low brow and tacky to a revered place in popular culture.

Did you know that the city of Madison, Wisconsin named the plastic pink flamingo its “city bird” in 2009? Some college kids played a prank using about 1,000 flamingos on the front lawn of the Dean’s Office at the University of Wisconsin in 2001. The prank has been remembered fondly through the years and the city council decided to vote that little plastic bird as their very own “city bird!”

The Smithsonian Institute even has two flamingos! They “live” in their display of “Great American Popular Kitsch!”

One of the most wonderful things I have ever seen was when I was in Austin, Texas several years ago. There was a very nice lawn and garden store on the side on a busy intersection. It had covered it’s front with about 1,000 or so flamingos! I learned that they paint them for different occasions. Before Lance Armstrong got busted, they painted them all yellow for the Tour de France! Just one of the great things that helped “Keep Austin Weird!” I sadly found out that the lawn and garden center with it’s flamingos is now gone. I wonder where the flock flew?
Real flamingos are most interesting themselves. There are six species living around the world, although none of them live in the United States. Our zoo right here in Monroe has, according to Gary Meirs, two kinds, “Great American Flamingo” and the “Chilean Flamingo” for a total of six. I admit besides the monkeys, the flamingos are my favorites to go see. It is said that flamingos have a long life span, 20 – 30 years and even up to 50 years old in captivity!

The flamingo is from one of the oldest avian families on earth. Fossils show their ancestors lived millions of years ago. Cave paintings of flamingos have been found in caves in Spain that were dated to over 5,000 years old.

Flamingos are monogamous and mate for life. Both the male and female build a mud nest for the one egg that will be laid that year. Both parents take turns sitting on the egg. Both parents feed the baby when it hatches, a special “crop milk” which is made in their digestive systems. They regurgitate the food into the baby. The “special baby food” is also red and it’s pigment is stored in the baby’s liver until it’s feathers begin to turn color when they are 2 – 3 years old. When the baby flamingo is born, it’s “downy like” feathers are a grayish-white. Their bills are straight and do not start to curve until they are about two years old. The same goes for their feathers, they begin turning color about the same time.

The habitats for flamingo are usually marshy mud flats that offer protection from predators. They live together in groups that are called flocks, stands, or my favorite, flamboyance’s. The birds do not migrate and only leave an area when the food has dwindled or there are too many predators. Luckily, for flamingos their natural habitat is not too enticing to predators.

Their curved bills serve a special purpose for “fishing for their supper.” They use their feet to stir up the muddy water, then, plunge their head into the water, twist their head upside down so the beak can be used like a shovel. The beak siphons out the water and what’s left is food such as small shrimp, shellfish, plants and plankton. “Carotenoids” in the flamingo’s diet are what gives the feathers their color. Their color also gave them their name, the Spanish word, flamenco, which means fire! Interestingly, when a flamingo looses a feather, the feather gradually returns to it’s original color of white!

The Flamingo has long legs and webbed feet that serve their purpose of letting the bird wade to find food. But, those webbed feet have another purpose as well. Flamingo’s can “walk on water” with those webbed feet to gain speed to help it fly! They don’t fly often but can reach up to 35 miles an hour! We might think of the joints on the flamingo’s long legs are “knees,” but they are really the ankles. The knee is under the feathers!

Flamingos are definitely fun to watch. When a tightly packed group walks together and then abruptly changes direction, it is said they are “marching.” They are very talkative to each other and seem to enjoy each others company. Flamingos even group the young chicks together in groups called a creche. It’s a bit like “flamingo day care!”

For me, the flamingo, real or plastic, is just something that makes me smile. I’ll have my new “flamboyance” out soon, and my back yard will be happy to see more have landed. Go buy yourself a few, and keep them off the “endangered” list!