The alkaline water in the lake has a pH as high as 10.5, which is roughly on par with an ammonia solution. Lake Natron is incredibly dangerous for most of the world’s life, but not flamingos. This offers us a pretty good guess as to where the biggest flamingo population in the world can be found, at least during the breeding season, with more than 2 million of them coming to the lake to do the deed. To get even more specific, Lake Natron is home to more than 75 percent of lesser flamingo breeding activities. Kenya’s Lake Bogoria, Tanzania’s Lake Natron, and Ethiopia’s Lake Rudolf are just a few of the bodies of water these flamingos are known to flock to in the hundreds of thousands. Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia make up this area, and a handful of lakes in those countries are often teeming with lesser flamingo life. The central section of the East African Rift Valley is particularly the epicenter for lesser flamingo activity.
![lake natron flamingo season lake natron flamingo season](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/72/ba/b072bac647537c181c689c4e918c339f.jpg)
More specifically, eastern and southern Africa host large numbers of this flamingo species.Įven more specifically, the East African Rift Valley seems to be a massively popular place for lesser flamingos to congregate, with their largest flocks preferring that region. Lesser flamingos in the Namib Desert - Photo by Pyty/ Īs explained, lesser flamingos like to live in the Indian subcontinent and Africa.
![lake natron flamingo season lake natron flamingo season](https://pettime.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2-11-768x511.jpg)
With the lesser flamingo population dwarfing all other species of the fowl (the next-most populated species is the greater flamingo at 680,000), it’s a pretty good guess that wherever lesser flamingos really love to live is where you can find the biggest population of the beautiful bird. It was estimated that about 3.24 million of them resided on earth in 2020, with lesser flamingos mostly living in Africa, specifically the eastern and southern portions of the continent, as well as in Africa’s west, India, and Pakistan. Lesser flamingos are the smallest species of the bird in stature, but they’re the biggest in numbers. They live in shallow brackish salt water lakes, coastal estuaries and lagoons through central Peru, & south along the Andes to Tierra del Fuego. Others, like the lesser flamingo, can be found in many more areas, allowing for their population to boom, at least relatively.ĭid you know there are 6 species of flamingo, all belonging to 1 of the oldest bird groups? Here at #SFZoo we have Chilean flamingos. Some, like the James’ flamingos, are most restricted in where they live, which keeps their population growth limited. There are six species of flamingo - American, James’ (Puna), Chilean, greater, lesser, and Andean - and they each have differing population numbers and home bases. The bird can be found in every continent in the world, except Australia and Antarctica, illustrating its wide-spread population. It doesn’t seem as though there is a clear-cut answer to this question, but we can put some numbers together to come up with an educated guess.Īll flamingos live in tropical and subtropical areas, and those exist in a wide range of places on earth. Where Is the World's Biggest Flamingo Population? Flamingos are well spread out around the world. The great heights of the Andes, the lagoons of East Africa, and the rivers of India are just a selection of the places flamingos call home. But where is the biggest flamingo population?
![lake natron flamingo season lake natron flamingo season](https://austria-forum.org/attach/Geography/Africa/Kenya/Special_Information/Kenya_Flamingos/scaled-900x621-07_Flamingo%2C%20Kenia%2C%20Lake%20Bogoria.jpg)
Photo by KirillDorofeev/ įlamingos can be found on multiple continents, in several counties, and in different biomes across the globe.