Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Flamingo

Phoenicoparrus ruber

Description:

Flamingos or flamingoes are a type of wading bird in the genus Phoenicopterus (from Greek φοινικόπτερος meaning "purple wing"), the only genus in the family Phoenicopteridae. There are four flamingo species in the Americas and two species in the Old World. Flamingos often stand on one leg, the other tucked beneath the body. The reason for this behavior is not fully understood. Some species of Flamingos have the ability to have half of its body to go into a state of sleep, and when one side is rested, the flamingo will swap legs and then let the other half sleep, but this has not been proven. Recent research has indicated that standing on one leg may allow the birds to conserve more body heat, given that they spend a significant amount of time wading in cold water. As well as standing in the water, flamingos may stamp their webbed feet in the mud to stir up food from the bottom.

Habitat:

All flamingos are found in tropical and subtropical areas.

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

3 Comments

KarenL
KarenL 11 years ago

Hi Tohtli, nice photo!
I have edited the text you copied from wikipedia to remove the annotations & other non relevant text. When you do use text copied from an external source in future, please can you clean it up in this way before sharing the spotting. Thanks.

Scott Frazier
Scott Frazier 11 years ago

Description edited.

Ashish Nimkar
Ashish Nimkar 11 years ago

I feel its great pose... Open beak and wings spread...
This one indicates recovery of their habitat from deadly pollution in Gulf...

Tohtli
Spotted by
Tohtli

Tizimin, Yucatán, Mexico

Spotted on Oct 11, 2010
Submitted on Jul 6, 2012

Spotted for Mission

Related Spottings

Lesser Flamingo Lesser Flamingo Flamenco Parina chica

Nearby Spottings

Colibrí tijereta, eliza hummingbird Cormorant, camacho Vaca Crab

Reference

Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team