8/3/2023 0 Comments Flamingo florida![]() ![]() ![]() "In the late 1800s, collecting wild bird eggs was a weird but somewhat popular hobby," Whitfield says. Whitfield found four eggs in museum collections that were labeled as having been collected in Florida. The researchers also used 21st century databases and digitizing projects to look for 19th century museum specimens - not only of adult flamingos but also flamingo eggs, to find out whether the birds once nested in Florida. " 'Why are we even talking about this?' " "When Steven brought us all together, the first words out of my mouth were, 'You know those are just escapees,' " Lorenz remembers. The director of research for Audubon Florida, Lorenz usually studies roseate spoonbills. Whitfield pulled together a team of people who research Florida's wading birds to ask the question: Does Florida have flamingos? That was enough to prove that at least some of the flamingos showing up here were not escapees. "So that's when we started digging into the question of, are they really nonnative?"įinally, the zoo got permission to release Conchy - there had been two sightings in the Everglades of flamingos with leg bands they got as chicks in Mexico, one in 2002 and one in 2012. ![]() "The state told us that we couldn't release nonnative species," Whitfield says. But there was a problem with the zoo's plan. But the third - the bird that eventually acquired the name Conchy - was stubborn.Īnimals Flamingos In The Men's Room: How Zoos And Aquariums Handle Hurricanes Two of the visiting flamingos took the hint. (That would be bad news for the bird, too.) Otherwise, the bird could get sucked into the engine and crash a $70 million jet. Big birds like herons and egrets sometimes show up on the airfield, and the Navy scares them away with fireworks or shotgun blasts. They were in wild places, acting very wild," Frezza says.Ī few years ago, a group of three flamingos showed up at the Navy airfield on Boca Chica Key, about 5 miles from Key West. "And I believed that until I started personally observing them and their behavior and then also observed the birds at Hialeah and started forming my own opinion that - no way. That's what Frezza's colleagues at Audubon's Everglades Science Center told him about what he had seen. Those are flamingos.' "Įnvironment Once Parched, Florida's Everglades Finds Its Flow Againįor decades, Florida's official position has been that flamingos may occasionally wander through from Mexico, Cuba or the Bahamas - but most of the birds spotted in the state are escapees from domestic flocks, like the famous one at the Hialeah Racetrack. "And just on the horizon was this huge line of pink," Frezza says. The boat was running at idle speed through the shallow water. Pete Frezza, a researcher at Audubon of Florida, was out with a colleague doing some research in Mud Lake, an interior mangrove area in the Everglades where it is common to see egrets, herons and bright-pink roseate spoonbills. Florida in fact has flamingos - real birds, not the plastic kind. Now, a team of South Florida researchers is making the case that the conventional wisdom of almost a century is wrong. But their striking feathers were prized decorations for ladies' hats, and they were hunted out of existence for the plume trade in the 1800s.Īt least, scientists thought the flamingos had been wiped out. The long-legged pink birds were once common in Florida. Is there anything more Floridian than a flamingo?įlamingo iconography is everywhere in the state: decorating front lawns, swizzling cocktails, lighting up motel signs. But their striking feathers were prized decorations for ladies' hats, and they were thought to have been hunted out of existence for the plume trade in the 1800s. Flamingos at Jungle Island, a zoological theme park, in Miami in 2017. ![]()
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