A Flamingo Flamboyance Can Reach Over 1 Million Strong!

Photo by KirillDorofeev/Shutterstock.com

Flamingos are social creatures. They only fly solo when they have to. In some cases, flamingos can formulate a flamboyance that reaches more than 1 million strong!

Don’t get it twisted - this is not the case for all flamingos. It’s very common for flamingos to not live with 1 million other roommates. But it can and does happen.

Before we dive into the million-flamingo flamboyances, let’s get some things straight first.

What Is a Flamingo Flamboyance?

A flamboyance is the name for a group of flamingos. There are other informal terms you can use to describe a collection of fabulous fowls, like colony or flock, but flamboyance is the true moniker for a wide crowd of flamingos.

How Big Is a Flamboyance of Flamingos?

That question does not have a clear answer. A flamboyance of flamingos can be as few as two flamingos to well beyond 1 million (as mentioned above!). There is no set amount that flamingos congregate in, with the extras instructed that they must go find their own flamboyance. Thus, there is no definition for a flamboyance’s size.

However, somewhere between 50 and a couple hundred is typical for a flamingo flamboyance in the wild. The size of a flamboyance is dependent on a variety of factors, like species and availability of resources, but that is the range they generally fall into.

In captivity, flamboyances are often smaller. Zoos can’t offer the same amount of space that open wetlands can, so more limited flamboyances are to be expected.

When Would a Flamboyance Reach 1 Million?

This is not something happening frequently all over the world. There is one species and one place in which this occurs: lesser flamingos at Lake Natron in Tanzania.

At this other-worldly African lake, more than 1 million lesser flamingos have been counted as they feast, breed, and otherwise chill out in some of the least-hospitable waters on earth.

Lake Natron is not a nice place for most earthly life. Its alkaline water has a pH that can go as high as 10.5, and it would burn your skin if you were to take a plunge in your fleshy, human body. But that’s why lesser flamingos love it. They are one of the few animals that can survive and thrive in Lake Natron’s conditions, which means plenty of peace and quiet.

Flamboyance of Lesser Flamingos at Lake Natron - DanitaDelimont/Shutterstock.com

This is what draws in such an immense amount of pink birds. For a flamboyance to reach 1 million, there needs to be enough food, enough space, and enough safety to make it work. Lake Natron is the only place on earth in which a flamboyance of such size has been recorded, which implies its environment is the only one on earth that can support 1 million flamingos at once.

Can Flamingos Be Without a Flamboyance?

They don’t want to be, but yes, flamingos can be without a flamboyance.

It’s not something flamingos are going to choose on their own, but life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. There are numerous examples of individual flamingos being swept up and separated from their flamboyances, both in captivity and in the wild, and forcing them to make ends meet on their own. All it takes is a nasty, unfortunately-aimed gust of wind to pull a loyal flamingo away from its flamboyance.

This is how flamingo sightings in unusual American states occurred in 2024 after Hurricane Idalia dispersed flamingos across the eastern half of the country. Ohio, Texas, Massachusetts, and more became temporary homes for some lost flamingos, often found by themselves.

Many of those flamingos rejoined with flamboyances at some point. Maybe not their original ones, but one of them. But sometimes, flamingos don’t squad up with a flamboyance after separation. 

For example, a flamingo nicknamed Pink Floyd lived a full, lonely life after escaping a Utah sanctuary, wintering at the Great Salt Lake and spending his summers in the Idaho-Montana area. He was occasionally spotted traveling with other birds, illustrating just how social flamingos can be, but never with another fabulous fowl. In essence, he was a one-flamingo flamboyance.

But that is highly unusual and caused by a handful of odd factors that would be very difficult to replicate naturally. In the wild, and in regions where flamingos naturally occur, something like Pink Floyd’s story would be highly unlikely to unfold.