diagnostics

113-122 cm, 1.6-1.8 kg. The smaller and darker pink of Africa's two flamingos. Males larger. Plumage pink, but paler when not breeding. Juvenile birds smaller than adults, and brownish grey; immature birds smaller and whiter than non-breeding adults. Bill deep crimson to maroon, tipped black, and appears all-black at a distance. Bill of juveniles and immature dark grey-black, turning dark maroon when reaching adulthood (Simmons 2005).

trophic

The Lesser Flamingo occurs on open, eutrophic, shallow saline and alkaline wetlands, such as salt pans and coastal lagoons and estuaries (Brown et al. 1982, Williams and Velásquez 1997). Lesser Flamingos are colonial nesters, with colonies numbering tens of thousands (Simmons 2005). Nest turrets of varying height are constructed on flooded pans (Berry 1972). Breeding takes place usually during the summer months after pans are inundated, but may extend into winter (Simmons 1996). One egg is laid, very rarely two (Berry 1972). Chicks leave the nest at c. six days old, and join crèches. Breeding success depends upon the extent and period of flooding around the breeding colonies, which affords the eggs and chicks sufficient protection from raptors and mammalian predators such as Brown Hyena Parahyaena brunnea and Black-backed Jackal Canis mesomelas (McCulloch and Irvine 2004). On Sua Pan, chick mortality rapidly increases as the pan dries up owing to predation (McCulloch and Irvine 2004). Chick crèches move long distances (up to 60 km) from the nesting sites to find refuge in water bodies elsewhere on the drying pan. Adults will abandon the chicks only when the pan dries up completely, in years of below average rainfall. Sexual maturity reached at 3-4 years. There are insufficient data to estimate annual mortality and survival (Childress et al. 2008). A generation length of 15.5 years is provided by BirdLife International (2014).

The Lesser Flamingo feeds by wading in shallow water, with bill upside-down, filtering cyanobacteria from the water surface, and small diatoms from bottom layers (Berry 1972). At Sua Pan, for example, large flocks congregate along the shallow edges of the flooded pan, filtering an algal mix of predominantly Oscillatoria: a filamentous blue-green algae and diatoms from the mud surface (G McCulloch, unpubl. data). It occurs in large flocks, often with Greater Flamingos (Berry 1972). When moving between water bodies, Lesser Flamingos often fly in ‘V'-shaped skeins of thousands of birds, usually at night (Simmons 2005i).