Flamingo branding is everywhere in Florida, from cocktail straws and tourist t-shirts to hotel names and the Florida Lottery logo. But the real-life pink birds have been largely missing from the Sunshine State since the early 1900s, when hunters nearly drove them to extinction in the quest for their fashionable—and highly profitable—plumage. Now, however, flamingos seem to be returning to Florida.
Birders recorded 101 wild American flamingo sightings across the state in February, according to recently released from Audubon Florida. That count included more than 50 in Florida Bay, 18 in the Pine Island area and 14 at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Conservationists believe many of these birds were carried into the state on the winds of in August 2023.
(The storm blew flamingos to other surprising places, too, including .) Flamingos have touched down in Florida after storms in the past, but they usually don’t stick around for long. This time, birders and wildlife biologists are that the lanky, salmon-colored creatures are there to stay.
“I actually suspect that 100 flamingos is the floor of this new population, and there could be more that were not counted during the one-week survey,” says , director of research for Audubon Florida, in a . “We are continually monitoring for breeding flamingos.” Flamingos were once abundant in Florida, living in huge colonies of more than 1,000 individuals in the Everglades and the Florida Keys in the 1800s.
But then, in t.
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