Caribbean flamingos

Our adult Caribbean flamingos in today’s image certainly don’t have an easy task. Flamingo youngsters, like those here at the Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, mature around the age of three to five years, so while they don’t yet look like how we imagine flamingos, their trademark pink feathers will soon develop. The hot-pink colouring comes from the flamingo diet: They eat food that contains a lot of alpha and beta carotenoid pigments, such as algae, bugs, crustaceans and mollusks.
© Claudio Contreras/Minden Pictures