Pink flamingos showing up more often in the South Florida wild again

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – The pink flamingo has been immortalized in plastic garden ornaments, stylized on logos, and has appeared in iconic scenes on the massive and small display, like the opening sequence of Miami Vice.

Most individuals in South Florida normally solely see the rose-colored chook in captivity.

That is, till not too long ago.

Valerie Preziosi, a conservationist and photographer in Big Pine Key, snapped pictures of a lone flamingo wading in pristine water in January. Before that, she mentioned there have been six flamingos noticed in July of 2020.

Preziosi mentioned the flock seen two years in the past had been “divided between the salt marshes of Ramrod and Big Torch Keys,” and provided a uncommon birdwatching expertise for residents and birdwatching fanatics.

In March, a flamingo and a white goose had been seen at a a horse race at Gulfstream park; the flamingo appeared to have been struck by a horse.

A spokesperson for Gulfstream Park mentioned just a few flamingos have been noticed in the infield over the final a number of years.

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“There definitely were flamingos in Florida in the 1800s, and unfortunately people hunted the populations here to extinction,” mentioned Dr. Steven Whitfield, a conservation biologist at ZooMiami.

Whitfield mentioned American Flamingos had been typically hunted for meals, and their feathers had been plucked for trend.

“A lot of people thought flamingos were non-native because the history was just so unclear,” Whitfield mentioned.

So when the birds began making appearances, he and his group of scientists wished to know the place they got here from.

That’s once they took word of a trio of flamingos close to Key West in 2015. After a storm chased two of them away, one lone chook remained. They named it Conchy.

“Conchy showed up at the naval air station in Key West. We were able to capture Conchy and put a satellite transmitter on him,” Whitfield recalled. “We expected him to go to Cuba or the Bahamas and to leave Florida pretty quickly. But he ended up staying around for two years.”

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Whitfield says his staff labored with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation fee to re-designate flamingos as “native” in 2018, though FWC instructed Local 10 News the pink birds had been at all times considered natives.

Could the flamingos be making a comeback in the wild?

“It looks like they are, and that’s really encouraging,” Whitfield mentioned. “It’s such an iconic bird for Florida. I think everyone would like to see them return it’s just a question of how we do that.”