Andean Flamingo

The Andean flamingo is the largest flamingo of the Andes and one of the two heaviest flamingos in the world. It is pale pink with a deep wine-pink lower neck, breast and wing coverts, and the black flight feathers form a bold black triangle over the rear of the body when the wings are folded. It is the only flamingo with yellow legs and, like James's flamingo, it has only three toes. The heavy, down-curved bill is pale yellow at the base and black for most of its length. Juveniles are uniformly pale grey (Wikipedia, general species account).

It filters diatoms from the bottom layer of shallow salt lakes with a deep-keeled bill, and changes its feeding depth to match whichever flamingo species it is feeding with. Birds can travel up to 700 miles in a day: in summer they live on high salt lakes, and in winter many move to lower wetlands, east to the plains of Argentina or north to southern Peru. Its calls include a high, passerine-like peep, a rough quack often given in flight and a quiet chuckle (Wikipedia, general species account).

Breeding is concentrated in northern Chile, extreme southwestern Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. Mining in the salt flats, which takes water and disturbs nesting, is the main threat, and egg poaching has a long history on the altiplano. Bolivia, Chile and Peru have signed an international memorandum of understanding on the species' conservation (Wikipedia, general species account). On this guide it is a target species of the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna Reserve, Sajama National Park and the lagoons around the Salar de Uyuni.