This high-intensity courtship stops at any point if either bird turns and the other does not follow, the heads are raised, unison movements are stopped, or the pace of movement is slowed. In high-intensity courtships, males and females walk at a quick pace with their heads dropped in a false feeding posture. For low-intensity courtships, males and females walk in unison with their heads raised. Both parties make synchronized movements until one member aborts this process. If interest is mutual, a female walks by the male, and if the male is receptive, he walks with her. While males usually initiate courtship, females control the process. The bill is pink and white with an extensive black tip. The wing coverts are red, and the primary and secondary flight feathers are black. Most of its plumage is pink, giving rise to its earlier name of rosy flamingo and differentiating adults from the much paler greater flamingo. The males weigh an average of 2.8 kg (6.2 lb), while females average 2.2 kg (4.9 lb). They measure from 120 to 145 cm (47 to 57 in) tall. Their life expectancy of 40 years is one of the longest in birds.Īdult American flamingos are smaller on average than greater flamingos, but are the largest flamingos in the Americas. Like all flamingos, it lays a single chalky-white egg on a mud mound, between May and August incubation until hatching takes from 28 to 32 days both parents brood the young for a period up to 6 years when they reach sexual maturity. The American flamingo is a large wading bird with reddish-pink plumage. Individual at SeaWorld San Diego cleaning its feathers From a distance, untrained eyes can also confuse it with the roseate spoonbill. Large flocks of flamingos are still known to visit Florida from time to time, most notably in 2014, when a very large flock of over 147 flamingos temporarily stayed at Stormwater Treatment Area 2, on Lake Okeechobee, with a few returning the following year. The study also indicated that these flamingos may be increasing in population and reclaiming their lost range, slowly but steadily returning home. However, a study published in 2018, involving an abandoned young flamingo named Conchy found in Key West, indicates that the occasional flamingos observed in parts of Florida are in fact natives, with some even permanently staying in Florida Bay year-round. During the 1950s, birds from the captive population at Hialeah Park frequently escaped, thus leading to the conclusion that all modern flamingos in Florida were escapees, although at least one bird banded as a chick in the Yucatán Peninsula has been sighted in Everglades National Park. Since the arrival of Europeans, the population started to decline, up until the 1900s, where it was considered completely extirpated. The existence of flamingo eggs in museum collections labeled as collected from Florida indicates that they likely nested there as well. The American flamingo is also found in South Florida and the Florida Keys, both of which were likely the northernmost extent of its distribution. An example habitat is the Petenes mangroves ecoregion of the Yucatán. Its preferred habitats are similar to those of its relatives: saline lagoons, mudflats, and shallow, brackish coastal or inland lakes. They are sometimes separated as Phoenicopterus ruber glyphorhynchus. The population in the Galápagos Islands differs genetically from that in the Caribbean the Galápagos flamingos are significantly smaller, exhibit sexual dimorphism in body shape, and lay smaller eggs. It is a vagrant to Puerto Rico, Anguilla, Barbados, and Honduras. The American flamingo breeds in South America (in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, coastal Colombia and Venezuela, and northern Brazil), in the West Indies ( Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), The Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands), and tropical areas of continental North America (along the northern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, and Cameron Parish, Louisiana, and extreme southern Florida in the United States).
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