One of the largest flocks of flamingos in a decade was recently spotted in the Everglades by avian ecologist and restoration scientist Mark Cook.
Cook said he stumbled upon a group of 125 American flamingos while conducting a wading bird survey along the Florida Bay coastline last week. The flock is believed to be the largest one spotted in South Florida since 2014, when a group of 147 flamingos was observed in the northern part of the Everglades.
Cook said he continued his survey after taking pictures of the group.
“Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible not to spook a large group of flamingos from a helicopter and they rapidly took flight,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
READ MORE: A flamingo was blown from Mexico to Florida during Idalia. He found his way back home
A week prior to his bird wading survey in the Florida Bay, the scientist had spotted a group of 30 something flamingos in the northern Everglades that he believes likely to have joined the bigger flock, he wrote.
Flamingos were uncommon sightings in South Florida until recently, since the native flamingo population was largely wiped out by hunters in the 18th century. After Hurricane Idalia hit the state in 2023, the wind scattered flamingos from nesting grounds in Mexico through Florida and as far up as Lake Michigan beach, Wisconsin.
“Flamingos are incredibly fast flyers and can travel large distances in a relatively short amount of time, so it wouldn’t be surprising for them to move throughout South Florida and even among the local Caribbean islands on a regular basis,” Cook wrote.
Cook oversees the annual South Florida wading bird surveys for the South Florida Water Management District. It's been going on for nearly 30 years.
Whether or not flamingos are nesting in Florida and reclaiming historic territory has been a matter of debate. In 2018, scientists unearthed evidence and last year Audubon Florida launched a count to help confirm the matter. But state wildlife officials say native flamingos were wiped out by plume traders and consider any sighted today as migrants from nonnative flocks or descendants of escaped captive birds.
Better monitoring flamingos to confirm if they are remaining year round and nesting in the state could lead to better protecting them.
Over the years, there have been banding efforts by researchers to track the travel patterns across breeding populations found in the Caribbean and Yucatan Peninsula.
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