The Andean Flamingo (Phoenicopterus andinus) is a bird species in the Flamingo family restricted to the ChileanAndes. It is closely related to James's Flamingo.
Like all flamingos it lays a single chalky white egg on a mud mound. Its population in Northern Chile was badly hit hit by drought, which cause the breeding lagoon areas to dry up, either preventing nest building, or allowing predation especially from the Culpeo Fox, Pseudolopex culpaeus.
Andean Flamingos, like all the group, feed by filtering small items from water with their specialised bills. They have a deep, narrow lower mandible, which allows them to eat small foods such as diatoms, in contrast to the wider bill of larger species, which take bigger prey items.
Most of the plumage is pinkish white. The Andean Flamingo is the only species that has yellow legs and feet.
The greater flamingos are from 110 to 130 centimeters tall.
Young flamingos leave the nest after about 5 days but return to the nest to be fed. After about two weeks, the young are herded into a group called a creche and start to find their own food.
Flamingo's eggs and chicks are preyed upon by birds such as eagles and vultures and animals such as lions, leopards, cheetahs, foxes, dogs and jackals.
The greater flamingo breeds in standing water or on low islands in shallow ponds, salt pans, and lagoons, building a conical mound of mud topped by a slight depression in which the one egg (rarely two) is laid.
The greater flamingo is classified as Phoenicopterus ruber, its vivid red subspecies as Phoenicopterus ruber ruber, and its paler subspecies as Phoenicopterus ruber roseus.
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