The greater flamingo usually lives in shallow saline or alkaline wetlands, such as salt lakes, coastal lagoons, intertidal mudflats and saltworks, and may also visit other brackish waters such as sewage ponds and rice fields.
The greater flamingo visits Saudi Arabia as a passage migrant and winter visitor, regularly seen in March–April and October–January, notably in the Gulf of Jazan; some birds breeding in Kazakhstan fly about 3,000 km to winter on Arabian coasts.
1National Center for Wildlife — Wildlife Magazine: Flamingo local names / فنتير الشواطئ جذّابSRC-056
2Greater Flamingo — country/territory distribution (BirdLife DataZone data)SRC-358
3Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus — species factsheet text (BirdLife DataZone data; public page https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/greater-flamingo-phoenicopterus-roseus)SRC-357
The greater flamingo is seen regularly from West Africa east across the Mediterranean basin to south-western and southern Asia, and in sub-Saharan Africa. BirdLife records it in all states of the Arabian Peninsula: resident and passage in the UAE and Kuwait; wintering and passage in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Yemen; wintering in Bahrain, Iraq and Jordan. It breeds in Egypt, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and is resident in Iran, Cyprus, Tunisia, France, Spain, Italy and Turkey.