So when in Bonaire, keep your eyes open for these big, beautiful pink birds. The word “flamingo” comes from the Latin and Spanish for “fire” referring of course to their bright pink feathers. The name flamingo means fire and brilliance. Don’t bother me”.ĭo you know what a group of flamingos is called? It’s called a flamboyance. During this time their white color basically means “Please leave me alone.

That’s because the breeding is so intensive and so much of their food is used for their chicks. Flamingos – both male and female – can lose their pink pigments outside of breeding season. As a flamingo dines on algae and brine shrimp, its body metabolizes the pigments - turning its feathers pink.

They are also found in the microscopic algae that brine shrimp eat. What makes the flamingos so pink? Carotenoids give carrots their orange color or turn ripe tomatoes red. The flamingos are born white to grayish white and turn pink from their food, but there is also an occasional black flamingo seen as well. It is estimated that about 1000 chicks are born each year in Bonaire. The gestation period is between 27-31 days. Flamingos have the same mate for one year, then off to the next mate for another year. Usually only one egg is laid and both parents take care of the baby chick, which is born grayish white, until it is ready to go join the other juveniles in “pre-school”. The flamingos can breed up to three times a year, but their main breeding season is from March-July. 🙂 There used to be more flamingos than people on the island, but that is changing with more people coming to live in Bonaire. We don’t see flamingos here at home, unless at the zoo, so we were real excited to see them and to see so many of them. We saw so many flamingos in Bonaire, both down in the south and also at the Washington Boka Slagbaai National Park up in the northern part of the island. They can also live to be about 40 years old. They tend to breed more in Bonaire than in other parts of the Caribbean, but they flock over to close-by Venezuela often since there is more food for them them over there.įlamingos are big, beautiful, pink birds. Bonaire is one of four places that these flamingos breed.

They are also the only flamingos that are native to America. They are known as both the American Flamingo and the Caribbean Flamingo. Pink flamingos are the national bird of Bonaire.

Flamingo lose pink