99 Fun Facts About Flamingos

What pigment in flamingos' diet is primarily responsible for their distinctive coloring?

Carotenoids such as beta-carotene and canthaxanthin, taken in from algae and small crustaceans, are broken down in the liver and deposited in the feathers; a diet without them leaves a flamingo pale.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Queen's croquet game uses live flamingos as what?

In Lewis Carroll's 1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts' croquet game uses live flamingos as mallets, hedgehogs as balls and doubled-over soldiers as hoops.

What color are flamingo chicks when they first hatch?

Chicks hatch with greyish-red down; the adult pink builds up only as pigments from the diet are broken down by liver enzymes and deposited in the feathers.

Which is the largest species of flamingo?

The greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) is the largest species, standing up to 150 cm (nearly 5 feet) tall and weighing up to 4 kg.

What is one leading theory for why flamingos stand on one leg?

The leading theory is that standing on one leg conserves body heat by keeping a bare leg out of cold water, although the pose also occurs in warm water, so the behaviour is not fully understood.

How do flamingos take their food from the water?

Flamingos feed head-down with the bill held upside down, pumping water through it with the tongue and straining out algae and tiny invertebrates; stamping the feet stirs prey up from the mud.

What is the term for a group of flamingos?

A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance, a collective noun that plays on the birds' showy pink plumage; 'stand' is the plainer alternative.

Which of these substances do both flamingo parents produce to feed their chick?

Both parents secrete crop milk from glands lining the upper digestive tract; it is rich in fat and protein and tinted red by the same dietary pigments that colour the feathers, so parents visibly fade while feeding a chick.

Which U.S. state is the plastic lawn flamingo most iconically associated with?

Florida's flamingo image dates to Carl Fisher's Flamingo Hotel, opened on Miami Beach in 1921, and the pink plastic lawn bird became shorthand for Sunshine State kitsch.

Who designed the original plastic pink lawn flamingo in 1957?

Don Featherstone, a sculptor at Union Products, modelled the 1957 plastic lawn flamingo on National Geographic photographs; he and his wife famously wore matching outfits every day for decades.

Which flamingo species has the highest altitude habitat, living near Andean lakes above 3,500 meters?

James's flamingo (Phoenicoparrus jamesi), also called the puna flamingo, lives on saline Andean lakes at an average of about 4,000 metres. It is a partial elevational migrant, breeding as high as 4,870 m and dropping to around 2,300 m out of season.

Unlike an adult's, a newly hatched flamingo chick's bill is what shape?

A flamingo chick hatches with a straight bill and develops the adult's downward bend only after a few weeks, when it can begin to filter-feed for itself.

Which 1980s TV series opened its title sequence with a flock of flamingos taking flight?

Miami Vice's title sequence, used from its 1984 debut, opens on flamingos lifting off, an image that tied the birds to the show's neon Miami aesthetic.

What unique adaptation inside a flamingo's bill helps it filter food?

Flamingos have lamellae — thin, comb-like or hair-like structures lining the inside of their bills — that work as a filtration system to trap food while expelling water and mud.

At least how old was Greater, the flamingo that died at Adelaide Zoo in 2014?

Greater, a greater flamingo that arrived at Adelaide Zoo as an adult in 1933, was at least 83 when it was euthanised in January 2014, one of the oldest known birds.

What kind of water body do flamingos usually inhabit?

Flamingos favour shallow saline or alkaline lagoons and soda lakes, whose caustic, mineral-rich water grows the algae and tiny crustaceans they filter out while few predators can follow them in.

What do flamingos build their nests out of?

The female usually picks the spot, and pairs aggressively defend the site against neighbours trying to commandeer it.

How many eggs does a flamingo typically lay per breeding season?

A replacement can be laid if the first is lost; the chalky-white egg sits on a mound of mud.

Which species is also known as the Caribbean one, despite living in the Galápagos too?

The American flamingo is also called the Caribbean flamingo; its isolated Galápagos population is genetically distinct, noticeably smaller-bodied and lays smaller eggs.

What synchronized behavior are flamingos famous for performing before mating?

Flamingos court in synchronised group displays such as head-flagging, wing-saluting and marching, with 15 to 50 birds performing at once, which helps synchronise nesting across the colony.

What is the approximate wingspan of a greater flamingo?

A greater flamingo's wingspan is about 140-165 cm, on a bird that stands 110-150 cm tall and weighs 2-4 kg.

In Fantasia 2000's Carnival of the Animals segment, a flamingo plays with what toy?

In Fantasia 2000's 'Carnival of the Animals' segment, set to Saint-Saëns, one playful flamingo bedevils its straight-laced flock with a yo-yo.

In which country would you find wild flamingos at the Camargue wetlands?

The Camargue, the Rhône delta in southern France, holds one of Europe's largest greater flamingo colonies, which nests on the salt pans of the Fangassier lagoon.

What happens to a well-fed captive flamingo that does not get wild-level carotene?

In the wild a pale or white bird is usually unhealthy or malnourished, which is why bright colour signals a good mate.

At what speed can flamingos fly?

They tend not to hit that pace on shorter local flights.

In which Spanish region is Fuente de Piedra, Iberia's largest greater flamingo colony?

Laguna de Fuente de Piedra, near Antequera in Málaga province, Andalusia, is the Iberian Peninsula's largest greater flamingo colony, with thousands of pairs nesting in wet years.

What colour are a flamingo's flight feathers?

A flamingo's primary and secondary flight feathers are black, which is why a bird that looks all pink on the ground shows bold black wing edges in flight.

How long after hatching does a flamingo chick typically stay at the nest?

A flamingo chick stays on the nest for about a week (five to twelve days), fed by both parents, before walking off to join the colony's other chicks in a large nursery group.

How many of the flamingo species are native to the Americas?

Four species are native to the Americas: the American, Chilean, Andean and James's flamingos; the greater and lesser flamingos live across Africa, Europe and Asia.

Why have zoos put mirrors in flamingo enclosures?

Mirrors make a small captive flock seem larger, which encourages breeding; flamingos are highly social and reluctant to nest unless they see a crowd of displaying birds.

Which is the smallest of the six living species?

The lesser flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor) is the smallest flamingo species, standing about 80-90 cm (roughly 3 feet) tall. Despite being the smallest, it is the most numerous, with populations estimated in the millions.

How do flamingo chicks in a colony find their parents among thousands of identical-looking adults?

The birds are notably noisy, with calls ranging from grunts and growls to nasal honking.

What is the name for the large group nursery where flamingo chicks gather while parents feed?

Chicks gather in a crèche, a nursery of hundreds or thousands of young watched over by a few adults; they first form smaller groups at about two weeks old that later merge, and stragglers are easy prey.

In ancient Rome, what part of the flamingo was considered a delicacy?

The tongue, which Pliny the Elder also records, and the Shield of Minerva mixed them with pike livers, peacock brains and lamprey milt. Vitellius reigned for eight months in AD 69 and was remembered mostly for eating.

What role does the 1972 John Waters film play in flamingo pop culture?

The film's stars live in a trailer beside a gazing ball and a pair of the plastic birds.

Which country's coat of arms is supported by a flamingo and a blue marlin?

The Bahamas' coat of arms, granted in 1971, has a flamingo, the national bird, standing on land and a blue marlin on the sea as supporters, echoing the islands' geography.

What did a study of flamingo cadavers show about the one-legged pose?

Living birds also sway less on one leg than on two, supporting the idea that the pose saves energy.

What type of crustacean is a major food source for flamingos and contributes to their pink color?

Brine shrimp (Artemia) are a major food source for many flamingo species. These tiny crustaceans are rich in carotenoid pigments that, once metabolized by flamingos, produce their characteristic pink coloring.

Which joint is the backward-bending one halfway up a flamingo's leg?

Its ankle, so a standing flamingo is effectively on tiptoe, and the true knee sits up against the body hidden under the feathers. The same is true of every bird.

Which large stork preys on flamingo chicks at East Africa's soda lakes?

Marabou storks patrol East Africa's soda lakes and seize flamingo chicks and weakened adults, wading in where most other predators are deterred by the caustic water.

From which city's zoo did two unclipped flamingos escape in 2005, one turning up in Texas 14 years later?

Two flamingos whose wings had not been clipped flew from the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, in June 2005; one, known as No. 492, was later seen repeatedly on the Texas and Louisiana coasts, including in 2019.

In what year did the casino at Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo resort in Las Vegas open?

The Flamingo's casino opened on 26 December 1946 with the hotel unfinished; it closed within weeks, reopened in March 1947, and Siegel was shot dead that June.

What specific type of algae that grows in alkaline lakes is a primary food source for lesser flamingos?

Lesser flamingos feed almost entirely on Spirulina, a blue-green alga (a cyanobacterium) that blooms in alkaline soda lakes, straining it through an unusually fine-filtering bill.

What happens to adult flamingos' feather color during breeding season?

The oiling is most frequent while birds are displaying for mates and drops off once eggs hatch.

At roughly what age can a young flamingo first fly?

Young flamingos make their first flights at around 10 to 12 weeks, roughly three months old, having spent weeks in a nursery of thousands of chicks while their parents fed elsewhere.

Which British wetland centre has kept all six flamingo species?

WWT Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, founded by Sir Peter Scott in 1946, has kept all six flamingo species and long served as a centre of captive flamingo research.

Up to how many flamingos can Kenya's Lake Bogoria support?

Lake Bogoria, a hot-spring soda lake in Kenya's Rift Valley, can hold up to 2 million lesser flamingos when its algae bloom, making it one of the species' most important feeding sites.

What is the incubation period for a flamingo egg?

28-32 days, about a month, a week longer than a chicken's 21. Off-duty stints between nest reliefs can run 21 to 60 hours, and the chick is grey and straight-billed at first.

What Tata Chemicals facility was proposed at Lake Natron, Tanzania, in 2006?

Tata Chemicals proposed a soda ash plant to extract sodium carbonate from the lake's brine; the plan was shelved after international opposition from conservation groups.

Which Mexican state's Ría Lagartos reserve is a major American flamingo nesting site?

Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, on the north coast of Yucatán state, holds Mexico's principal American flamingo nesting colony, with many birds moving west to Celestún after breeding.

Which zoologist introduced the flamingo family Phoenicopteridae in 1831?

Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew, erected the family Phoenicopteridae in 1831 after spending the 1820s in the United States cataloguing its birds.

Flamingos carry feather lice of a genus otherwise found only on which birds?

The shared Anaticola feather lice, otherwise found only on ducks and geese, were once used to argue that flamingos were really waterfowl, an idea molecular studies later overturned.

What does Mirandornithes, the name of the flamingo-grebe clade, mean?

Mirandornithes means 'miraculous birds', from Latin mirandus, a name chosen for how extremely flamingos and grebes have diverged from other birds while sharing at least 11 unique skeletal traits.

A 2014 genome study grouped flamingos with sandgrouse and which other birds?

The 2014 Jarvis et al. genome study placed flamingos and grebes with doves, pigeons and sandgrouse in a clade it named Columbea, confirming that flamingos are not waterfowl.

Who formally described the Caribbean flamingo as Phoenicopterus ruber in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus named the species Phoenicopterus ruber in the 1758 tenth edition of Systema Naturae, drawing on Mark Catesby's earlier description and illustration of the bird from the Bahamas.

Bonaire, site of a major American flamingo breeding colony, belongs to which European country?

Bonaire, whose Pekelmeer salt pans host one of the Caribbean's four main American flamingo breeding colonies, has been a special municipality of the Netherlands since 2010.

What foot feature separates the two Phoenicoparrus flamingos from the other four species?

Andean and James's flamingos, the genus Phoenicoparrus, have no hind toe (hallux), while the three Phoenicopterus species and the lesser flamingo keep a small one.

Which flamingo is the only species with yellow legs?

The Andean flamingo is the only species with yellow legs and feet; it lives on high-altitude salt lakes of the central Andes alongside James's and Chilean flamingos.

Harry Berkeley James, namesake of a flamingo species, managed what kind of business in Chile?

Born in Walsall, England, he sponsored the collecting expedition on which Charles Rahmer took the first specimen.

Phoenicoparrus jamesi is also known as which flamingo?

The puna is the high grassland plateau of the central Andes where the species feeds on diatoms at the water's edge.

Which naturalist described the greater flamingo in 1811?

Peter Simon Pallas, a German-born zoologist who spent most of his career in Russia, named Phoenicopterus roseus in 1811 in his Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica.

The northernmost natural breeding colony of greater flamingos, near Lake Tengiz, is in which country?

Lake Tengiz lies in Kazakhstan's Korgalzhyn nature reserve, where several thousand pairs nest at about 50 degrees north, roughly the latitude of Kyiv.

A feral flock of zoo-escaped flamingos breeds at Zwillbrocker Venn in which country?

Zwillbrocker Venn, a bog reserve in Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia beside the Dutch border, hosts a feral colony of mostly Chilean flamingos that has bred there since the 1980s, Europe's northernmost.

Which bird takes about half the flamingo eggs and chicks lost to predators in the Mediterranean?

Adults have few natural enemies; it is the nests that suffer, from raptors, crows and gulls alike.

Which hormone triggers flamingo parents to produce the secretion they feed their chicks?

Prolactin, the hormone behind milk production in mammals, triggers the glands lining both parents' upper digestive tract to secrete the red, fat-rich food they give their chick.

Which zoo hatched Europe's first captive-bred flamingo in 1958?

Zoo Basel in Switzerland hatched Europe's first zoo-bred flamingo in 1958 and has since raised hundreds, many of them sent on to other collections around the world.

What builds up in heavy rings on lesser flamingo chicks' legs at their caustic breeding lake?

Wading through the caustic water leaves chicks with heavy anklets of soda crystals hardening on their legs; birds that cannot shed them fall behind the nursery and die.

Outside Africa, lesser flamingos breed in salt pans of which country?

Outside Africa the lesser flamingo breeds only in India, at the Rann of Kutch and the nearby Zinzuwadia and Purabcheria salt pans in the country's west.

Roughly what share of the world's lesser flamingos hatch at a single East African lake?

About 75% of the world's lesser flamingos hatch at one Tanzanian soda lake, which is why the RSPB warned that an industrial plant proposed there could devastate the East African population.

Which 2008 documentary, the first released under the Disneynature label, follows lesser flamingos at Tanzania's caustic Lake Natron?

The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos, which premiered in France with narration by Zabou Breitman. Lake Natron's water is alkaline enough to burn skin, which keeps predators away from the nests.

Which British group scored the Disneynature flamingo film, yielding 'Arrival of the Birds'?

The Cinematic Orchestra, with the London Metropolitan Orchestra, scored the 2008 Disneynature flamingo film; its track 'Arrival of the Birds' later closed the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.

What is the best-known flamingo viewpoint in Kenya's Lake Nakuru National Park?

Baboon Cliff, on the lake's western shore, is Lake Nakuru's classic viewpoint; from above, the shallow water can be hard to make out beneath the shifting mass of pink birds.

Which Caribbean island's Renaissance resort keeps tame flamingos on a private beach popular for photos?

Renaissance Island, a private islet owned by the Renaissance Aruba resort, keeps a small flock of tame flamingos on its Flamingo Beach, a fixture of social-media holiday photos.

Kamfers Dam, South Africa's only lesser flamingo breeding site, lies beside which city?

Kamfers Dam lies just north of Kimberley in the Northern Cape; lesser flamingos began breeding there only after a mining company built an S-shaped artificial island in 2006.

Stranded Kamfers Dam chicks were flown in 2019 to the SANCCOB rescue centre in which city?

After heat and a halt in pumped water dried Kamfers Dam in January 2019, abandoned chicks were flown to SANCCOB in Cape Town and other rescue centres around South Africa to be hand-reared.

Laguna Colorada, a blood-red Altiplano lake 4,278 metres up and a key flamingo breeding ground, lies in which country?

Bolivia, in the Eduardo Avaroa reserve near the Chilean border, and the red comes from algae and sediment, not the birds. It was listed as a Ramsar wetland in 1990.

Which Andean salt flat, the world's largest, hosts flamingo breeding grounds around its edges?

Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat at over 10,000 km², is visited by Chilean, Andean and James's flamingos, which breed around its edges each November.

The white islands dotting Laguna Colorada's red water are deposits of what?

The white islands are borax deposits; borax mining at other Andean lakes is a leading threat to the region's flamingos, along with water extraction.

'Flamingo City', a noted flamingo site alongside Nal Sarovar, is in which Indian state?

Flamingo City, a breeding ground in the Great Rann of Kutch, and the Nal Sarovar bird sanctuary are both in Gujarat, where greater flamingos winter along the coast in large numbers.

Which flamingo can be told apart by its greyish legs with pink joints?

The Chilean flamingo has grey legs with contrasting pink joints, and more than half of its bill is black; it ranges across southern South America from Peru to Tierra del Fuego.

Pink Floyd, a Chilean flamingo that escaped an aviary in 1988 after a missed wing-clipping, became a celebrity in which city?

Salt Lake City, whose Tracy Aviary he fled; he wintered on the Great Salt Lake and summered in Idaho and Montana, and fans petitioned for him to be given company before he vanished in 2005.

Which continent has flamingos only in the fossil record?

Australia had flamingos until the Pleistocene, when its inland lakes dried; fossils of several species come from the Lake Eyre basin, but none survive on the continent.

Which 2023 hurricane scattered flamingos as far north as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?

Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida's Big Bend in August 2023, carried flamingos, probably swept up from Mexico or Cuba, deep into the eastern US, with sightings as far north as Wisconsin and Ohio.

What was the radio-tagged flamingo that proved a wild year-round flock near Key West called?

Conchy, a flamingo captured at Key West's naval air station in 2015 and fitted with a satellite tag, stayed in Florida Bay year-round; a 2018 study used such evidence to argue Florida's flamingos are native, not zoo escapees.

Which Miami-area racetrack's infield flock earned it Audubon designation as a flamingo sanctuary?

Hialeah Park's owner Joseph Widener stocked its infield lake with flamingos in the 1930s, and the breeding flock won the track an Audubon sanctuary designation; escapees fuelled decades of wild-sighting confusion.

Which British zoologist described James's flamingo in 1886?

Philip Sclater, long-serving secretary of the Zoological Society of London, described James's flamingo in 1886 from specimens collected in Chile by Charles Rahmer.

Greater flamingos have nested since 1993 at the Molentargius salt pans on which Italian island?

Greater flamingos have nested at the Molentargius salt pans on the edge of Cagliari, Sardinia, since 1993, wading within sight of the city's apartment blocks.

Billy Wilkerson, who first proposed the Flamingo in Las Vegas, founded which publication?

Billy Wilkerson founded The Hollywood Reporter in 1930 and ran Sunset Strip nightclubs such as Ciro's; Siegel muscled him out of the Flamingo project months before the mobster's own murder in June 1947.

Budgeted at $1,000,000, what did the Las Vegas Flamingo finally cost under Bugsy Siegel?

The Flamingo's cost ballooned to about $6 million; when builder Del Webb fretted about being paid, Siegel reassured him that mobsters 'only kill each other'.

One story says Bugsy Siegel named the Flamingo after which red-haired girlfriend?

Virginia Hill, Siegel's red-haired girlfriend, was supposedly nicknamed 'Flamingo' for her long legs; a rival account credits a Miami racetrack whose flamingo flock Siegel saw as good luck.

Who bought the Flamingo in 1967, before selling control to Hilton?

A Japanese group led by Kenji Osano had agreed to buy it that same year but backed out over gaming-licence delays.

Union Products, maker of the original plastic lawn flamingo, was based in which Massachusetts city?

Union Products of Leominster, Massachusetts, made the birds from 1957 until it closed in 2006; the moulds then passed to Cado, a blow-moulder in neighbouring Fitchburg, which resumed production.

Which U.S. city declared the plastic flamingo its official bird in 2009?

Madison, Wisconsin, where the Pail and Shovel Party covered the university's Bascom Hill with the birds in 1979; the city's soccer club, Forward Madison FC, founded in 2018, put one on its crest.

Miners in the high Andes once killed flamingos for fat believed to cure which disease?

Miners in the high Andes killed flamingos for their fat, which was believed to cure tuberculosis; egg collecting for sale has been a bigger threat to the high-altitude species.

John Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972) was shot for about $12,000 in and around which city, the director's lifelong home?

Baltimore, where Waters and most of his cast grew up, is the setting for nearly all his films, including Hairspray; the city has since embraced its most notorious son.

Which drag performer starred in Pink Flamingos as 'the filthiest person alive'?

Divine, born Harris Glenn Milstead, who later inspired Ursula in The Little Mermaid and played Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. The film was banned in several countries, then added to the US National Film Registry in 2021.

Flamingo Land, which opened in 1959 as the Yorkshire Zoological Gardens, is a theme park and zoo in which English county?

North Yorkshire, at Kirby Misperton, where a colony of flamingos was among the first animals housed; the Gibb family bought it in 1978 and built it into a combined theme park and zoo.

Apicius's Roman cookbook says which bird may be substituted in its boiled flamingo recipe?

Apicius's De re coquinaria boils the flamingo with dill and vinegar and serves it with a date-and-spice sauce, noting that the same recipe serves for parrot.

The world's largest Caribbean flamingo breeding colony is in a national park on which island?

Inagua National Park on Great Inagua holds the world's largest Caribbean flamingo colony, which rebounded from a low of a few thousand birds to more than 50,000 and has reseeded neighbouring islands.