American flamingo

How it lives

It lives in shallow salt lagoons, ponds and mud flats, in colonies that can number in the thousands. It lays a single egg, incubated for about 28 to 32 days, and chicks fledge at about 65 to 90 days. It breeds across the Caribbean, including the Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Turks and Caicos and the Virgin Islands. On Anegada, flamingos use the old salt ponds, where Flamingo Pond has a raised lookout.

Where it goes

Flamingos can move between salt ponds, and in the British Virgin Islands they have also been recorded away from Anegada, including at Necker Island, Mosquito Island and ponds on Tortola. On Anegada the flock lives mainly in the western salt ponds.

We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.

Populations

Listed as Least Concern. In the Caribbean, hunting wiped out many colonies: thousands of flamingos lived on Anegada in the 1830s, and they had gone by about 1950 to the 1960s, depending on the source. In 1992, 22 birds from Bermuda were released on Anegada and the flock has grown, with about 200 birds counted in 2016. The western salt ponds were designated a Ramsar site on 11 May 1999 and are an Important Bird Area. In Florida, flamingos were largely wiped out by 1900.