Flamingo: 10 Fun Facts

The flamingo is a strange-looking bird, whose body is rather smaller than that of the stork, but which, owing to its great length of neck and leg, measures on average six feet, from head to foot. 

10 Fun Facts About Flamingos:

1. There are several different species found in Mediterranean and tropical countries, all more or less red in color and varying in size. 
2. They migrate in V-shaped flocks. 
3. Their necks are extremely slender and flexible, and their big, naked bills are bent abruptly down, as if broken near the middle.
4. In feeding, the bird stands nearly erect, thrusting its neck downward and burying its bill and perhaps its head in the water, with the top of the bill downward. 
5. It then sways its head from side to side, causing currents of water to pass back and forth through the bill, where fine horny projections strain out the seeds and the small animals that are stirred up from the bottom by the bird's feet. 
6. The birds nest in the warm countries in large colonies, upon muddy flats near the water level. 
7. Their nests are big cones of reeds and sticks, cut off squarely at such a height that the mother bird can sit with her legs dangling down the sides, though she usually sits with them folded up beneath her.
8. The flamingo of North America nests in the latitude of Florida. 
9. The male has a light red plumage, whose large feathers have black quills; the females are pale pink and the young nearly white. 
10. As is the case with other beautiful birds, their handsome plumes made them sought by hunters in the past and laws have been passed for their protection.

More About Flamingos From The Web:

• Captured Flamingos Get Hydrotheraphy
• How baby flamingos get their pink color

Flamingos at Lake Nakuru by Ruedi Abbuhl.