Since flamingo chicks have a higher survival rate if they are hand-reared, zookeepers are keeping the babies out of the spotlight for now. The baby birds were the 100th and 101st flamingo chicks to hatch at the zoo's Bird House. Two adorable flamingo chicks were born this month at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. (Image credit: Madelyn Duhon/Smithsonian's National Zoo) When they are older, the birds will join the zoo's flock of flamingoes outside, according to Smithsonian officials. The baby birds were the 100th and 101st flamingo chicks to hatch at the zoo's Bird House.Since flamingo chicks have a higher survival rate if they are hand-reared, zookeepers are keeping the babies out of the spotlight for now. Flamingos live 20 to 30 years in the wild or up to 50 years in a zoo. They will turn pink within the first couple years of life. Young reach maturity at 3 to 5 years old.Д«aby flamingos are gray or white. The egg will take 27 to 31 days to hatch, and the emerging chick will only be 2.5 to 3.2 ounces (73 to 90 g). Pairs will make nests out of mounds of mud, and the female will lay one egg at a time, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo.Д®ach egg is a little bigger than a large chicken egg, at 3 to 3.5 inches (78 to 90 millimeters) long and 4 to 4.9 ounces (115 to 140 grams). A group of flamingos will all mate at the same time so that all of the chicks will hatch at the same time. Once they mate, they tend to stay with that mate. It is believed that flamingos are monogamous, according to Sea World. The colony works together to protect each other from predators and to take care of the young. Groups of flamingos are called colonies or flocks. To eat, flamingos will stir up the bottom of the lake with their feet and duck their beaks down into the mud and water to catch their meal. Greater, Chilean and American flamingos have shallow-keeled bills, which allow them to eat insects, invertebrates and small fish.

Lesser, James' and Andean flamingos have what is called a deep-keeled bill. What a flamingo eats depends on what type of beak it has. If a flamingo were to stop eating food containing carotenoids, its new feathers would begin growing in with a much paler shade, and its reddish feathers would eventually molt away.

(Beta carotene is also present in many plants, but especially in tomatoes, spinach, pumpkins, sweet potato and, of course, carrots.) The mollusks and crustaceans flamingos snack on contain similar pigment-packing carotenoids.Д¬arotenoid levels in their food vary in different parts of the world, which is why American flamingos are usually bright red and orange, while lesser flamingos of the drought-plagued Lake Nakuru in central Kenya tend to be a paler pink.

Their tendency to eat both vegetation and meat makes them omnivores.ДЇlamingos are pinkВ because the algae they consume are loaded with beta carotene, an organic chemical that contains a reddish-orange pigment. Flamingos eat larva, small insects, blue-green and red algae, mollusks, crustaceans and small fish, according to Sea World.

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