American Flamingo Life History

Habitat

American Flamingos inhabit shallow saline lagoons and estuaries.

Food

American Flamingos feed mainly on crustaceans, mollusks, insect larvae, and other aquatic invertebrates. They also eat some seeds, plant material, and algae. Individuals forage by holding their head underwater as they slowly stride along in shallow lagoons and estuaries. As the head moves through the water, they use their large tongues to push water through comblike structures (called lamellae) in their bills, filtering out small food items. This is very similar to the way whales strain out crustaceans using their baleen.

Nesting

Nest Placement

Both sexes build the nest on mud flats or salt flats along the edge of lagoons.

Nest Description

Caribbean breeders build a volcano-shaped mud cone, with a shallow cup on top. On the Galapagos, the nest is a small pile of rocks and debris.

Nesting Facts

Behavior

American Flamingos are social birds, foraging in noisy flocks that can include hundreds or thousands of birds, and nesting in huge, dense colonies (one colony in Cuba contained 80,000 birds). They stride slowly through shallow water on their long legs and dip their heads underwater to feed on aquatic invertebrates. In flight, flamingos fully extend their long necks while their stiltlike legs stretch far beyond the body. Flocks typically fly in a V-formation.

Flamingos are thought to be monogamous. Females nearly always lay just a single egg. Both sexes incubate the egg and care for the chick. Adults feed young hatchlings with “flamingo milk,” a special liquid produced in the parents’ digestive tract. A week or two after hatching, chicks leave the nest and join large crèches—a flamingo nursery school of sorts. Several adults watch the chicks in the crèche, but each chick is fed by its own parents.

Conservation

Partners in Flight estimates American Flamingo’s global population size at 180,000 breeding individuals and rates the species a 13 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a species of fairly low conservation concern.

Credits

Bird Banding Laboratory. North American Bird Banding Program Longevity Records. Version 2023.2. Eastern Ecological Science Center. US Geological Survey. Laurel, MD.

del Hoyo, J., P. F. D. Boesman, and E. F. J. Garcia (2020). American Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.grefla2.01

Dunne, P. (2006). Pete Dunne's essential field guide companion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, USA.

Howell, S. N. G., and S. Webb (1995). A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and northern Central America. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.

Partners in Flight (2023). Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2023.

Sibley, D. A. (2014). The Sibley Guide to Birds, second edition. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

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