Flamingo

The flamingo is a tall wading bird famous for being pink. It is not born pink. Flamingo chicks hatch grey or white, and turn pink over the following years because of pigments in the algae and tiny shrimp they eat. A flamingo that stops eating them gradually fades, making it the only bird whose colour is technically a receipt.^[1]

Eating

A flamingo feeds with its head upside down, sweeping its beak backwards through the water and filtering out the food. Ornithologists have described this as a perfectly sensible way to eat for anyone whose head is upside down, and have stopped there.^[2]

Standing on one leg

Flamingos often stand, and even sleep, on one leg. Scientists have offered several explanations, including keeping warm and saving effort, and are agreed only that the other leg is fine and is simply not needed at the moment.

A 2006 attempt by the Wading Bird Survey to count flamingo legs in a large flock was abandoned after the total kept coming out at roughly half what it should have been.

Groups

A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance. Proposals to call it a pinkness, a wobble or a lot of flamingos were all rejected by the committee responsible, which had already ordered the stationery.^[3]

See also

• Pink – what it eats its way into
• Giraffe – another tall animal with a long neck and a system
• Lake – where it stands

References

1. Wader, W. (2003). You Are What You Eat: Birds. Lagoon Press.
2. Shrimp, S. (1995). “Upside Down: A Feeding Study”. Avian Notes 1: 180.
3. Committee on Collective Nouns (1988). Final List. Stationery already printed.