Just over six months ago Hurricane Michael, now officially reclassified as a category 5 storm, plowed north across the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the Florida Panhandle. While doing so, it dropped a flamingo off at St Marks National Wildlife Refuge, south of Tallahassee. The bird has become arguably the refuge’s most famous and documented organism, although it has stiff competition from the vermilion flycatcher that winters in the same spot next to the road every year. Last time I was in the visitor’s center there were greeting cards with flamingo photos. I imagine t-shirts aren’t far behind.
I’ve seen the flamingo twice. Once was a couple of weeks after it was originally discovered. We had failed to see it on an earlier visit we made to the refuge and figured it had left the area by our next trip. However there was a steady stream of ‘hikers’ coming down the path along the dike beside Stony Bayou 1 and we learned that the flamingo was a 15-20 minute walk away.
The second time was yesterday. After our first sighting the flamingo had started spending the night on Stony Bayou 2 which is a longer walk from the road and then wandering more widely during the day. We had made an unsuccessful attempt to find it again with an out of town guest and over the last couple of months we kind of forgot about it. Yesterday was a cool day in late April by north Florida standards (high of 72) so we decided to take a hike. The last time we had been at St Marks we had seen strikingly few birds and now it was even later in the season so we weren’t expecting much wildlife.
We started walking at 6 PM, it was sunny and breezy and barn swallows and red-winged blackbirds were abundant. The flamingo had been seen earlier that day in the area where we started walking but when we didn’t come across it in the first 15 minutes we assumed it was long gone. We saw more birds than we were expecting, including quite a few blue-winged teal and black-necked stilts and a single sora. We walked to the end of Stony Bayou 1 and then headed up the side of Stony Bayou 2, intending to go a short distance and then turn around. When we go to the turn around point I saw something tall and thin barely visible in the open water far ahead. ‘Maybe it’s the flamingo’ I said to myself. ‘Nah’ I responded to myself ‘But I’ll check just to be sure’. And sure enough that is what it was. We walked further up. Even at the closest approach it was too far for photography.
It was really cool to watch it feed in the evening light. Dipping its beak into the shallow water, dragging horizontally and then raising it again. It also used its feet to stir up the sediment. Not wanting to be walking back in the dark we didn’t linger for long and headed back. When we were almost back we encountered a guy with binoculars who asked us if we had seen the flamingo. We said yes but that it was a substantial distance away and we didn’t think he could get there before dark. He said he would jog. When we got back to our car there was a car with New Jersey plates with a woman waiting inside.
Our flamingo is an American Flamingo, one of the six species of these unusual birds. Although flamingos superficially resemble long-legged wading birds such as herons, storks, and ibises they are not closely related to them. It appears that the closest relatives of flamingos are grebes and that grebes and flamingos are not closely related to other aquatic birds. Flamingos are filter feeders, they filter algae and other microscopic organisms from the water. Their unusual beak is an adaptation to filtering. In addition to the filtration structures inside the beak itself is essentially upside down! The bird is holding its head upside down as it feeds and the structure of the beak with its reversed size and mobility of the upper and lower parts is an adaptation to feeding with the head inverted. The flamingo’s tongue is unusually fat and is associated with the upper part of the beak rather than the lower to aid in moving water over the filtering plates. Unfortunately flamingo tongues were considered a delicacy by the ancient Romans.
Flamingos live it fairly specialized environments. They like to feed in shallow water without vegetation and are primarily found around alkaline lakes or saline lagoons. Flamingos are colonial breeders but may wander widely when not breeding. The six species are all members of a single family (Phoenicopteridae) and three genera. The American Flamingo and the the Greater Flamingo (genus Phoenicopterus) are the two largest species and both species are primarily associated with coastal areas. The American Flamingo is found in the greater Caribbean area (coastal northern South America north to the Yucatan, Cuba, and the Bahamas) as well as the Galapagos Islands and the Greater Flamingo is found in Africa, Southern Europe and southwest to south central Asia. The American Flamingo is the pinkest species and the Greater is the largest species. The Chilean flamingo is in the same genus. It occurs widely in southern South America in both coastal and inland habitats.
The Lesser Flamingo is native to Africa and a small region of India. It is a specialist on living in highly alkaline lakes and can occur in enormous colonies. It is the only member of the genus Phoeniconaias and is the world’s most abundant (and smallest) flamingo. The remaining two flamingo species are in the genus Phoenicoparrus. They are the James flamingo and the Andean flamingo. Both are found in high altitude wetlands in the Andes.