The American Flamingos of Galápagos, and July 24th — a Day About Kinship
Image: Bing Daily Wallpaper · American flamingos on Isabela Island, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador (© Tui De Roy/Nature Picture Library). Bing wallpaper images are licensed for use as desktop wallpapers only; this is a linked reference, not a rehosted copy. Official original image
Open Bing today and the homepage shallows are awash in pink. A flock of American flamingos stands gathered in a saltwater lagoon on Isabela Island in the Galápagos, their long legs submerged, their reflections tinting the water's surface a faint rose. They are not one or two but an entire flock — some with heads down feeding, others looking up — a quiet scene that nonetheless feels ready to shift as one at any moment.
These are American flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber), the only species of flamingo found on Ecuador's Galápagos Islands — those "living fossil" archipelagos.
The camera is pressed low, almost skimming the water. The flamingos' slender necks curve into question marks, bills angled down into the water; behind them stretches the volcanic terrain unique to the Galápagos and a wide-open sky. The pinks vary in depth — the closest birds are strikingly vivid, while those farther away fade into a hazy wash of dawn-like color, as if someone had accidentally tipped over a palette across the entire lagoon.
That Pink Is Earned Through Diet
Here's the interesting part: that pink is not something they're born with. Flamingo chicks hatch greyish-white and only gradually turn red — the color comes from carotenoid pigments in the algae, brine shrimp, and tiny crustaceans they eat, accumulating over time and depositing into their feathers. In other words, you are what you eat — literally. Their feeding posture is equally distinctive: they tip their heads nearly upside down into the water and sweep their bills side to side like sieves, filtering out brine shrimp and plankton.
Flamingos are supremely gregarious birds. They feed together, rest together, and the whole flock will periodically shuffle position in unison, as though someone is issuing silent commands. When breeding season arrives, paired flamingos mound mud into cone-shaped nests on ground raised above the waterline and lay a single egg; both parents take turns incubating, then feed the chick a nutrient-rich "crop milk." The Galápagos flamingos do not migrate — they stay year-round by these briny lagoons, and the lake district near Puerto Villamil on Isabela Island is one of the most reliable spots in the entire archipelago to observe them.
Why Today, of All Days
July 24th is National Cousins Day in the United States — an informal holiday with no clear origin that gained popularity through social media, dedicated to those people who share our grandparents yet grew up on their own separate paths. Bing's international edition uses this flock of flamingos as a metaphor: they never go it alone, always gathering to feed, call, and move in sync. The bond between cousins works much the same way — even across distance, shared holidays, inside family jokes, and the beautiful chaos of summers together tie you into a flock that is "always changing, yet always connected."
The photograph was taken by wildlife photographer Tui De Roy. Her own story is inseparable from these islands: in 1955, at the age of two, she boarded a banana boat with her artist parents from Belgium and sailed to the Galápagos to live a self-sufficient pioneer existence. She never attended school, was homeschooled, and speaks four languages; she picked up a camera at sixteen and has since devoted her entire life to every creature and plant on these islands. It's said her father, because fresh water was so precious, even used seawater to rinse his black-and-white film. For Tui, who grew up here, a photograph of Galápagos flamingos is less a piece of work than a homecoming.
Tomorrow, this wash of pink will rotate off the Bing homepage. But if you happened to linger on it today, perhaps you'll think of that cousin you haven't contacted in ages — just like those flamingos in the lagoon, seemingly each standing on their own, yet long since joined into one flock.
Sources: National Day Calendar, "National Cousins Day"; Nature Picture Library and Oceanographic profiles of photographer Tui De Roy; ecological references on the American flamingo of the Galápagos (diet, breeding, and habitat).