Holbox. Pink Flamingos. Pristine beach. Shell
collecting.
Your journey begins with the 180 west to Nuevo XCan . Then
take the turn off to Chiquila. Then the ferry to the island.
Had a neighbor in St Calixte who had a pink flamingo on his front lawn and an Elvis photo on his wall.
Flamingo is the common name for the five species of a family of birds having exceptionally long legs and long, highly flexible necks.
Their relationship to other birds is uncertain; some orthonoligists ally them with the herons and ibises, but my accountant allies them with the ducks and geese (but what does he know?); and there is fossil evidence suggesting a relationship to shorebirds but not those who dirty windshields.
Their bills bend abruptly downward about midway; the upper mandible is narrow, and fits into the lower like the lid of a shoebox.
When they feed, flamingos dip the head under water and scoop backward with the head upside down (bon apetit bird). The edges of the bill have tiny narrow transverse plates called lamellae. The large fleshy tongue pressing against the inside of the bill strains the water out through the lamellae, leaving behind the small invertebrates and the vegetable matter upon which the bird feeds (poor things never had a Big Mac).
The largest species is the pink flamingo as seen in Holbox. It has two rather different subspecies, one vivid red and the other paler. The first of these breeds in the Caribbean area near your Holbox hotel, from Yucatán and the West Indies to the coast of northeastern South America. It breeds well in captivity but the plastic pink flamingo on my neighbor's lawn doesn't breed at all. It has as much chance of breeding as my mother-in-law climbing 3 flights of stairs.
Xaloc Resort cabins in ecotourist setting on beach in Holbox
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