No. 43 on our checklistGreater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus)

For most of the last century the flamingo was a bird you read about, not one you saw, in the Danube Delta. That has changed. Since 2020 groups of Greater Flamingos have turned up again and again in the salty lagoons on the coast of the Danube Delta and Dobrogea, sometimes a few birds, sometimes hundreds. And since 2021 they nest here every year, in the south of the Danube Delta, as our guides have seen with their own eyes.

When to see it in the Danube Delta and Dobrogea

1. JanAbsent
2. FebAbsent
3. MarRare
4. AprRare
5. MayRare
6. JunRare
7. JulRare
8. AugRare
9. SepRare
10. OctRare
11. NovRare
12. DecRare

Status here

Occasional vagrant, summer breeder. 2021, First documented nesting after at least 80 years, repeated in 2022.

IUCN Red List

Least Concern

Our checklist

No. 43 of 385 · see the full checklist

How to recognise it

Nothing else in Europe looks like it. The Greater Flamingo is a very tall, very slim bird, with a long neck and long pink legs. An adult standing in the water looks white with a pink wash. When it opens its wings, the coverts show deep pink to red, and the flight feathers are black. The thick bill is bent down sharply in the middle, pale pink with a black tip.

Young birds are grey brown, with a grey bill, and they take three to four years to become fully pink. In flight a flamingo looks like a cross: neck stretched forward, legs stretched behind, and the red and black wings in the middle. Flocks fly in long lines and call with a goose like honking.

Feeding and nesting

The flamingo feeds with its head upside down. It walks slowly through shallow, salty water, sweeps the bill from side to side and pumps water through it with the tongue. Fine plates along the edges of the bill hold back small crustaceans, insect larvae, worms and seeds. The pink colour comes from pigments called carotenoids in this food; a flamingo that does not get them slowly turns pale.

It nests only in large colonies, on islands of mud or sand in salt lagoons and salt pans, where foxes and people cannot reach. Each pair builds a small cone of mud and lays a single egg on top. Both parents incubate it for about four weeks, and they feed the chick with a “milk” produced in the throat. In the south of the Danube Delta they found exactly this: huge sandbars with no access for people, where they have nested every year since 2021, including 2026. In autumn the grey young birds can be seen there next to the adults.

Where to see it in the Danube Delta

Flamingos look for shallow, salty water, so they are seen in the lagoons of the south of the Danube Delta and along the coast of Dobrogea, and they move a lot from one lagoon to another. Their nesting places cannot be reached from the Danube Delta at all, and we do not say where they are. Our checklist marks it rare from March to December.

On our birding tour of the Danube Delta and Dobrogea we do look for flamingos, on the Dobrogea days, in the coastal lagoons. We watch them from far away, through the telescope, which is all a birder needs. On our photo tours we do not look for them at all. A decent photograph of a flamingo means getting close, much closer than the distance at which the birds feel safe, and we are not willing to do that.

Interesting facts

• First seen in 1900. According to the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Administration, the first record of a flamingo in Romania dates from 1900. For a century after that, it remained a very rare stray.
• Ten birds made the news. In June 2020, ten flamingos at Sacalin were announced by the Reserve Administration as the largest group seen in Romania in a hundred years. Two years later, hundreds were feeding on Lake Golovița, near Jurilovca.
• A secret kept on purpose. The flamingos have nested in the Danube Delta every year since 2021, but you will hardly read about it. Every place that became known was besieged by people with boats, drones and cameras. In May 2021 a group that had settled at Sărături Murighiol, a strictly protected area, was followed for days and left without nesting. Since then, those who know where the colonies are keep quiet.
• Pink from food. Chicks hatch grey and white. The pink comes only from the pigments in their food, built up over three to four years.
• One big Mediterranean family. Ringing in the Camargue, in France, has shown flamingos moving between colonies all around the Mediterranean, as far as Turkey, Greece, Lebanon and Egypt. The nearest colonies to Romania are in Greece, Turkey and Montenegro.

Status and threats

The Greater Flamingo lives in southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia, and is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN. Its colonies depend on a few large salt lagoons and salt pans, so it is very sensitive to disturbance and to changes in water level.

Whether it keeps nesting in the Danube Delta depends mostly on whether it is left in peace. Its worst enemies here are the people who chase it for a photograph or a video, with boats and drones, some of them presenting themselves as nature photographers and going on even after being told many times that what they do is wrong. We do not want to be part of that. We watch flamingos only from a distance, through the telescope, we do not fly drones near them, and we do not take photographers to them.

In the Danube Delta today the greatest threat to nature is speed boats. Flamingos feed in open, shallow lagoons where a fast boat is seen and heard from far away, and a flock that takes off may not return. This is why our boats move slowly in the channels.