Monthly Archives: September 2014

The SeaWorld Orlando Aviculture Team recently welcomed two new additions to their family – a Caribbean flamingo and a tawny frogmouth chick.

The flamingo chick hatched on August 16, weighing just a pound.  Although today it stands about 18 inches tall and weighs three pounds, when fully grown it will be five feet tall and double its weight. Its characteristic pink feathers start developing at three months, but the chick won’t gain its full color until it’s about three years old.  Flamingos’ bright pink feathers come from the carotenoid pigments they consume as part of the crustaceans found in their diet.

Guests can see the chick with its parents in the flamingo habitat located near Manta. Did you know that both flamingo parents share feeding responsibilities?  The chick is fed crop milk that comes from the parents’ upper digestive tract.  As the parents feed the chick, they actually lose their pink color – and their feathers turn a pale pink or even white.  Their color is regained as the chicks become more independent.  Caribbean flamingos, native to South America and the Caribbean, are by far the brightest and one of the largest of all the flamingos.