Flamingos live in large colonies, often near water that is slightly salty. Flamingos often mate for life and also have loyal lifelong friends. Once they find a mate, they build a nest. Often the female picks the spot, then both parents use their bills to scoop and pile mud to form a cone-shaped mound. They might add stones, straw, leaves or feathers to their nest, as well. They then create a shallow well in the top with their webbed feet where the female lays a single egg. If there isn’t mud, they use stones to make their nest. The nests are one to two feet high, which keeps the baby above the level of the water and from the more intense heat closer to the ground.
There may be thousands of nests close together in one colony. Each one looks identical, but every bird knows which is its own. Just one egg is laid each year. The parent flamingos share in incubating it for about a month and feeding the baby bird after it hatches.
The fluffy chicks are covered with white or gray down. Their bills at first are straight and their legs are short, but their legs grow quickly and their bills begin to curve after about 11 weeks. After two to three months they can fly and are full-grown in a year or two. However, they do not turn pink until they are two or three years old. At six years old, they are ready to be parents. With great displays of their pretty wings, necks, heads and legs, mates are chosen, and soon a new pair is building a nest and raising their first little chick. Flamingos can live 20 to 30 years in the wild, and some have lived up to 50 years.
Shrimp are one of the flamingo’s favorite foods, and it is the carotenoids found in them, along with that in the small crabs, algae and other foods they eat, which gives them their color. (Carotenoids are what give orange carrots their color.) Their bodies digest the carotenoids safely and absorb them into their fats. They are then deposited into their feathers and skin.
Flamingos’ beautiful coloring is because of what they eat. Did you know that what we are feeding on also shows in our lives? I’m talking about our mental food, not the food we eat. The Lord Jesus is the “bread of life” (John 6:4848I am that bread of life. (John 6:48)), and if we read the Bible and think about Him, we will grow more like Him. But if we feed on the polluted food that this sinful world offers us, things like worldly entertainment or books that tell of bad things, our lives will be affected in the wrong way. What are you “eating”?
Did You Know?
Flamingos often have loyal lifelong friends.
Messages of God’s Love 5/11/2025