Lesser Flamingo

Lesser Flamingo (Phoenicopterus minor) is a species in the flamingo family of birds which occurs in Africa (principally in the Great Rift Valley), across to northwest India. It is the smallest and most numerous flamingo, probably numbering up to a million individual birds.

Like all flamingos it lays a single chalky white egg on a mud mound. Most of the plumage is pinkish white.

Its clearest difference from Greater Flamingo, the only other Old World species, is the much more extensive black on the bill. Size is less helpful unless the species are together, since the sexes of each species are also different in height.

This species feeds exclusively on the alga Spirulina plantensis, which occurs only in very alkaline lakes. Their deep bill is specialised for tiny food items.

The population in the two key east African lakes, Nakuru and Bogoria, have been adversely affected in recent years by suspected heavy metal poisoning.