The flamingo is a red or pink coloured bird. It has long legs and black beeks. There are five species of flamingos: Lesser, Caribbean, Greater, Chilean, Andean and James. They are related to storks. Flamingos range in height from 90-120 cm and weight from 1-4 kg. The wingspan of flamingos ranges from 95 to 100 cm. Flamingos in the wild can become 20-30 years old, but in a zoo, they can get up to 50 years old. The James flamingo can fly up to 60 km/h.
The five species of flamingos live in different parts of the world. The most common flamingo, the Greater lives in Africa, southern and southwest Asia. Today there are about 80.000.000 flamingos and they live in colonies with up to 1.000.000 birds.
Fossils of 40. million old flamingos have been found, making flamingos to some of the worlds oldest species of birds.
Flamingos eat a lot of algae, crustacea, small fish and Shrimps. Flamingos are born white, the pigments from the shrimps make them pink. In zoo the flamingos are fed many of the same things as in the wild, but they also eat pellets.
Flamingos dance to mate. When a flamingo has found a partner, they start to build a nest, it can take them up to 6 weeks to build. They build it on top of a mud pyramid, thereby reducing the temperature in the nest from the boiling heat of the swamp. They have to protect their nest from other flamingos trying to steal it. Some flamingos are lazy and don’t want to build there own. When the egg is in the nest, the parents have to wait 27-30 days until it will hatch, and a grey fluffy baby flamingo will come out. After a week the baby will leave the nest. The parents will feed the baby flamingo with red milk, and it will change colour to pink after a week.
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