AT an average height of 1.65-metres, the greater flamingo is distributed over most of Southern Africa except the Kalahari and Drakensberg.
They are nomadic, moving north in winter.
This flamingo loves large bodies of shallow water, both inland and coastal, with saline and brackish waters preferred.
Its voice is a goose-like, double ‘honk-honk’ often in chorus and a chuckling ‘kuk-kuk’.
It is highly gregarious, often numbering hundreds of birds.
The greater flamingo feeds by wading with its bill, upside down in water, filtering out small organism. It may stir the mud with its foot, and swims well in deep water. The flocks fly in long V formations at speeds of about 50 to 60 km/h.
The food is microscopic algae and small aquatic invertebrates.
The greater flamingo’s nest is a cone of mud with a hollow top on a rocky islet; in dense colonies of hundreds of thousands of pairs.
It lays a pale blue egg with incubation lasting 27 to 31 days. The hatchlings leave the nest after five days to join the creche of hundreds of young.
The young feed independently from about 70 to 75 days, and they fly after 75 days.
Its Zulu name is uNondwebu.
