American Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber): Facts and Habitat

Appearance: the reddest flamingo

Adult American flamingos are a rich salmon-pink to reddish pink over the whole body, much darker than the pale greater flamingo of the Old World. The wing coverts on top of the wing are red, and the flight feathers are black, so a flamingo in flight shows a striking pink-and-black pattern. The eye is pale yellow.

The bill is the giveaway that this is a flamingo and not another pink wader. It is thick and sharply bent downward in the middle, pale pink to whitish at the base and black on the outer third. The long legs and webbed feet are pink. Males and females look alike, though males are noticeably larger.

Young birds look nothing like their parents. Chicks hatch covered in gray-white down with a straight, pinkish bill and swollen pink legs that soon turn dark gray. Juveniles are gray-brown, and it takes about three years for them to reach full adult color. The pink comes from pigments in their food, explained in detail in why flamingos are pink.

In Florida, people sometimes confuse flamingos with roseate spoonbills, which are also pink. Spoonbills are smaller, have a flat, spoon-shaped bill and feed by sweeping it from side to side rather than by filtering upside down.

How big is an American flamingo?

American flamingos are the largest flamingos in the Americas and, together with the greater flamingo, the largest of all flamingos. A standing adult is about 120–145 cm (47–57 in) tall. Relative to body size, flamingos have the longest legs and necks of any bird.

The flamingos of the Galápagos Islands are noticeably smaller than Caribbean birds and lay smaller eggs. They are genetically distinct and are sometimes separated as the subspecies P. r. glyphorhynchus.

Habitat and range

American flamingos need large, shallow bodies of salty or brackish water with soft mud and plenty of tiny prey. Typical places are coastal lagoons, salt pans, river deltas, mangrove-lined estuaries and shallow inland lakes. Many of these waters are far too salty for fish, which means less competition for food and fewer predators.

The main breeding areas are in the West Indies and around the southern Gulf of Mexico. Great Inagua in the Bahamas holds one of the largest colonies, with tens of thousands of birds. Other important sites include Cuba, Hispaniola, Bonaire, the north coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico (Ría Celestún and Ría Lagartos), and the coasts of Colombia, Venezuela and northern Brazil. A small, separate population lives in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador.

The species is the only flamingo that occurs naturally in North America. It was once common in South Florida and the Florida Keys, disappeared from the state around 1900, and is now slowly returning. The full story is in are there wild flamingos in Florida?.

Flamingos are not strictly migratory, but they are nomadic. Flocks move between lagoons when water levels, salinity or food supplies change, usually flying at night.

Diet and filter feeding

The American flamingo is a filter feeder. It wades through shallow water, lowers its head between its legs and turns its bill upside down, so the bent upper jaw lies against the mud. Unlike most birds, its upper jaw is the moving part.

Inside the bill are rows of comb-like plates called lamellae. The thick tongue works like a piston, pumping water and mud in and out several times a second, while the lamellae trap food and let everything else drain away. Flamingos also stamp their feet and walk in small circles to stir up prey from the bottom.

Food includes brine shrimp and other tiny crustaceans, small snails and clams, insect larvae such as brine fly and midge larvae, worms, algae, diatoms and seeds of water plants. A flamingo can keep its head under water for long periods while feeding. Salt glands above the eyes remove excess salt, which then drips out through the nostrils.

Behavior and social life

Flamingos are highly social. They feed, rest and breed in flocks, and a breeding colony may hold thousands of pairs packed onto a single mudflat. Living in crowds helps them spot predators and seems to stimulate breeding.

They are noisy birds. The usual call is a goose-like honking, and a busy colony is a constant chorus of honks and grunts. Parents and chicks recognize each other by voice.

Before breeding, groups of flamingos perform synchronized group displays. Dozens of birds march together with necks stretched upward, turn their heads from side to side (“head-flagging”), flash the black-and-red wings in a “wing salute” and preen in unison. These displays help unpaired birds find partners and bring the whole colony into breeding condition at the same time.

Resting flamingos often stand on one leg with the other tucked under the body and the head laid on the back. Research suggests this posture saves body heat and takes very little muscle effort, as explained in why flamingos stand on one leg.

Reproduction and life cycle

American flamingos usually breed for the first time at about 3–6 years old. Pairs work together to build a nest: a mound of mud scraped up with their bills, often about 30 cm (12 in) high, with a shallow cup on top. The mound keeps the egg above rising water and away from the hottest ground.

The female lays a single large, chalky-white egg. Both parents take turns incubating for about 28–32 days, with shifts that can last more than a day while the off-duty partner feeds.

Newly hatched chicks have a straight bill and cannot filter food. Both parents feed them a nutritious “crop milk”, a fluid rich in fat and protein produced by glands in the upper digestive tract. Flamingo crop milk contains red pigment, and parents often fade to a paler pink during a long breeding season.

After about a week the chicks leave the nest and gather in large groups called crèches, which can hold thousands of young guarded by a few adults. Parents still find and feed their own chick by its call. Young flamingos can fly at about 2.5–3 months old.

Lifespan

Flamingos are among the longest-lived birds. Wild American flamingos often live 20–30 years or more, and birds in zoos regularly pass 40 years. The record for any flamingo belongs to a greater flamingo at Adelaide Zoo in Australia, which was at least 83 years old when it died in 2014.

Predators and threats

Healthy adult flamingos have few natural predators, partly because their salty feeding grounds are hard for land predators to reach. Eggs and chicks are more vulnerable to birds of prey, gulls, raccoons and other animals, and colonies can lose many nests to flooding or storms.

The biggest threats come from people. American flamingos were hunted for food and feathers, and their eggs were collected, for centuries. Today the main problems are disturbance of breeding colonies by boats, aircraft and tourists, loss and development of coastal wetlands, and changes to water levels and salinity in lagoons, including from salt production and hurricanes.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classes the American flamingo as Least Concern. It has a wide range and a large total population spread over many colonies. Several colonies that were nearly wiped out in the 20th century have recovered under protection, such as the colony in Inagua National Park in the Bahamas. Because flamingos depend on a small number of breeding sites, each major colony still needs careful protection.

Myths and facts

Myth: flamingos’ knees bend backward. The joint that seems to bend the “wrong” way halfway down the leg is actually the ankle. The real knee is higher up, hidden by feathers close to the body.

Myth: flamingos are born pink. Chicks are gray-white, and juveniles stay grayish for their first couple of years. Adults are pink only because of pigments in their food.

Myth: all big pink flamingos are one species. The American and greater flamingos were long lumped together, but most authorities now treat them as separate species. See the greater flamingo for the Old World bird.

Relationship with people

The American flamingo is the national bird of the Bahamas and an unofficial symbol of Florida, even though wild flamingos were rare there for most of the 20th century. The plastic pink lawn flamingo, designed by Don Featherstone in 1957, made the bird an icon of American popular culture. Today, watching wild flocks in places such as Ría Celestún in Mexico or Bonaire is a major draw for nature tourism.