The word "flamingo" comes from the Spanish and Latin word "flamenco" which means fire and refers to the bright colour of the birds' feathers.
With only six species, flamingos are found around the world from the Caribbean and South America to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. They are also popular guests at many zoos, aviaries, aquariums, marine parks, and botanical gardens well outside their native ranges.
The flamingo’s pink or reddish color comes from the rich sources of carotenoid pigments (like the pigments of carrots) in the algae and small crustaceans the birds eat. We eat carotenoids, too, whenever we munch on carrots, beets, and certain other veggies, but not enough to turn us orange! American flamingos, a subspecies of greater flamingo, are the brightest, showing their true colors of red, pink, or orange on their legs, bills, and faces. In zoos and aviaries, captive flamingos are often fed a specialized diet that will help preserve and enhance their unique coloration.
Flamingos are extremely social birds that live in groups of varying sizes, from a few pairs to tens of thousands. A flock of Flamingos is called stand, colony, regiment, or flamboyance. these terms can be applied to any size above a pair. Their numbers add to the impressiveness of ritualized flamingo displays; the purpose of these displays is to stimulate hormone production and ensure that as many birds as possible will breed.
Flamingos are quite adaptable, and they can be found in a range of wet habitats from freshwater to saltwater, including mudflats, lakes, coastal lagoons, open marshes, and relatively shallow salt lakes. In many areas, flamingos can subsist in brackish water that does not offer enough food for other birds, and in those regions, large flocks are more common as flamingos gather in great numbers to take advantage of abundant food with little competition. The breeding grounds may contain over a million individuals, appearing like pink sheets over the water bodies they dwell in.
There are more to these fascinating, eye-catching, birds of heaven.
