A flamingo's pink or reddish feather color comes from its diet, which is high in alpha and beta-carotene. People eat beta-carotene when they eat carrots. The typical flamingo diet consists of diatoms, seeds, blue-green alage, crustaceans, and mollusks they filter out of the water. Using their long legs and partially webbed feet, flamingos will stamp on the muddy bottom of lagoons to mix the food particles with the water. Flamingos drink fresh water.
Flamingos use their large beaks to filter small food items from the water.
A flamingo lowers its head into the water, upside-down. The lamellae act as strainers to remove the food particles from the water. Flamingos live in large groups all year long called colonies. Within a colony, flamingos breed in pairs. Every pair of flamingos does not breed every year, however.