San Diego Zoo Flamingos

San Diego Zoo Flamingos are recognizable due to their pink or reddish color which comes from the rich sources of carotenoid pigments (like the pigments of carrots) in the algae and small crustaceans that the birds eat. The Caribbean flamingos Phoenicopterus ruber ruber are the brightest, showing their true colors of red, pink, or orange on their legs, bills, and faces. At the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, the flamingos are fed a special pellet diet that is made for flamingos. This food has all the nutrients the flamingos need, and even a pigment that helps keep their beautiful color.

The flamingo feeds by sucking water and mud in at the front of its bill and then pumping it out again at the sides. Briny plates called lamellae act like tiny filters, trapping shrimp and other small water creatures for the flamingo to eat. Sometimes they swim to get their food, and sometimes by upending (tail feathers in the air, head underwater) like ducks.

Flamingos lay a single large egg, which is incubated by both parents. At hatching, a flamingo chick has gray down feathers. It also has a straight, pink bill and swollen pink legs, both of which turn black within a week. After hatching, the chick stays in the nest for 5 to 12 days. During this time, the chick is fed a type of "milk"� called crop milk that comes from the parents' upper digestive tract. Flamingos share this trait with pigeons. Adult flamingos have few natural predators. That's because flamingos tend to live in inhospitable places where the lagoons are pretty bare of vegetation, so few other birds or animals come there.