Masterfully created by Patricia Filomeno’s imagination, the Pink Flamingo coloring book series are a beautiful representation of Florida’s beloved Pink Flamingos.
Are Flamingos Native to Florida?
Flamingos flocking to conserved Florida wetlands may be natives after all.
Few Floridians have ever seen a flamingo in the wild, but recent chance encounters with the pink wading birds may help solve a century-old controversy: Are flamingos native to the state?
“It’s a mega-rarity, but I have seen them in flooded fields in West Palm, down near Snake Bight in the Everglades and near Flamingo in Monroe County,” said Roberto Torres, a field representative for the Conservancy’s Miami program. “They’re out there.”
Sightings like Torres’-an expert who has spotted them during bird surveys for the Conservancy-combined with an ecologist’s photograph in 2012 of a large flock in the Everglades and another in Palm Beach County, prompted scientists to question if flamingos truly belong in Florida.
The conventional wisdom said no. Florida flocks were thought to be Bahamian vagrants from Andros Island.
“Or maybe,” Torres said, “from Cuba or the Yucatan, where there are larger flamingo populations.”
A recent study, however, calls this assumption into question. Published in the American Ornithological Society’s February 2018 edition of The Condor, the study details how researchers used satellite trackers and aerial surveys, plus old-fashioned detective work in archives (including the accounts of feather traders in the 1800s who reported flocks in the thousands before overhunting all but wiped flamingos from the state).
The surprise conclusion of the study: Flamingos are likely native to Florida.
