The life history of flamingos and the banded stilt of Australia are astonishingly alike. Like flamingos, banded stilts are colonial, breed in great, densely packed colonies, nest in depressions in the ground and are regularly spaced about 30 centimeters (12 in.) apart, have white, unpatterned downy young with two coats of nestling down (unknown in other shorebirds but found in flamingos), and frequent saline temporary lakes (in this case in southern Australia) where they feed on enormous quantities of small crustaceans[…].