Flamingo
Phoenicopterus roseus
A long-legged pink filter-feeder that holds its bill upside down in the water and eats microscopic shrimp and algae. The famous pink is borrowed — pulled directly out of the food — and a flamingo fed the wrong diet fades to white.
Browse the Woodcut Wild shop →Habitat
Flamingos live on shallow saline and alkaline lakes, coastal lagoons, and salt flats — water hostile to most life, which is the point. The brine shrimp and cyanobacteria flamingos eat thrive in conditions that exclude competition and predators alike. Major populations cycle through East African Rift lakes, the Caribbean and South American coasts, southern Europe, and the salt flats of the Atacama and Andes.
Behavior
Flamingos feed by holding the bent bill upside down in the water and pumping with a thick tongue, drawing water through bristled lamellae that strain out shrimp, algae, copepods, and tiny crustaceans. They are intensely social, breeding in colonies that can exceed a million birds; courtship is a synchronized group display of head-flagging, wing salutes, and marching in step. Both parents incubate a single egg laid on a built-up mud cone and feed the chick a bright red 'crop milk' produced in the throat.
Marginalia
- The flamingo chick is born grey or white; the famous pink takes one to three years of feeding to develop.
- Both parent flamingos produce a bright red 'crop milk' — secreted from the upper digestive tract and dripped into the chick's beak — that loses them their own color until the chick is weaned.
- Flamingos can drink water near boiling point at geothermal springs and process it without harm, and have salt glands above the eyes to excrete the brine.
- The pink courtship display can synchronize an entire colony of hundreds of thousands of birds, marching in step in a single rippling mass.
Kin & neighbors
Common questions
Why are flamingos pink?
Because of what they eat. Brine shrimp and blue-green algae are packed with carotenoid pigments — the same family that makes carrots orange and salmon pink — and the flamingo's body shunts those pigments straight into the growing feathers. A flamingo on a carotenoid-poor diet fades to greyish white within a season; zoos in the early 20th century learned this the embarrassing way and now supplement diets to keep the birds the color the public expects.
Why do flamingos stand on one leg?
To save heat and effort. Lifting one leg cuts in half the surface area in contact with cold water, reducing heat loss; the lock in the supporting leg's hip joint also means the bird is supporting its full weight passively, with no muscular work — actually more comfortable than standing on two. Studies show one-legged flamingos sway less than two-legged ones, so it is also the more stable posture.
Are there wild flamingos in Florida?
Yes, finally — and barely. Flamingos were native to south Florida historically, wiped out by plume-trade hunting around 1900, and presumed for decades to be only escapees from the racetrack or zoos when they appeared. Genetic work in the 2010s confirmed that some of the birds turning up in Florida Bay are flying in from the Yucatán and Cuba and that a small returning wild population is reestablishing itself in the Everglades.
How long do flamingos live?
A long time for a bird. Wild flamingos commonly reach 20 to 30 years, and the record-holder, a greater flamingo named Greater at Adelaide Zoo, lived to at least 83. Long-lived in part because their habitat — caustic alkali lakes — kills nearly anything that might want to eat them.
Can flamingos fly?
Yes, well — though they take off and land badly. They need a running start across the water of 20 yards or more to get airborne, and migrate between lakes in long V-formations at speeds around 35 mph and altitudes up to 15,000 feet over the Andes. The standing-around-in-the-shallows public image obscures genuinely capable long-distance fliers.