Of the six species of flamingo, the American Flamingo is the only species of flamingo naturally found in North America. They range from northern South America through parts of the Caribbean and into southern Florida in the United States. It is also known as the Caribbean Flamingo and was previously known as the Rosy Flamingo.
American Flamingos are highly gregarious and are known to only breed when in a large colony of birds -- usually at least 50 birds but up to thousands. Flamingos feed in shallow water, filtering out food items from the water with sieve-like structures on their beak called lamellae.
The American Flamingo has the brightest pink plumage of all the flamingo species. All flamingos get their pink plumage from the food they eat.
Conservation
The American Flamingo is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2012 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). The population trend appears to be increasing, and hence the species does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is very large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.