Pink Flamingos Return to South Florida via Hurricanes

Florida’s oceans slip between turquoise and emerald, its sunsets streak yellow and orange, and its politics shift from blue to purple to red. But pink is Florida’s favorite color.

From the cheesy, plastic pink flamingo lawn ornaments and Elvis’ sleek, Pink Flamingo Cadillac in the 1950s, to ‘Miami Vice pink’ and the emblem on Florida’s lottery tickets in the 1980s, pink flamingo-inspired kitsch is an enduring legacy of the Sunshine State.

Even when the real thing had vanished.

Pink flamingos were hunted to the brink of extinction in Florida for the then-fashionable plume trade up north a century ago. A few pink flamingos remained in Florida tucked away inside the environs of the Everglades, rarely seen, while the bulk of the remaining birds migrated to Cuba, Mexico, and the Yucatan Peninsula.

Pink flamingos return to South Florida

READ MORE: Is it time to make the flamingo Florida’s state bird?

The population of pink flamingos outside of America rebounded over time into the tens of thousands. Now, hundreds of thousands are estimated in colonies throughout the greater Caribbean.

Several hundred of those were blown off-course by Hurricane Idalia last year, and to a lesser extent by Hurricane Ian in 2022, either landing or crash-landing throughout South Florida.

And they’ve stayed. That includes nearly two dozen pink flamingos now at home in Pine Island.

 Pink flamingos taking shelter in a bathroom during Hurricane Floyd in 1999

“This event is unprecedented,” said Jerry Lorenz, who tracks the pink flamingos for Florida Audubon. “We’re talking more than 100 flamingos here. Will they stay? Will they leave? We want to know.”

Caught up in the hurricanes flying between Cuba and the Yucatan, pink flamingos were blown off-course or carried all over: Florida, Texas, Louisiana — some even to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

As Hurricane Floyd approached Florida in 1999 a Miami-area zoo shepherded their pink flamingos into the safest place on the grounds - the concrete-walled public bathrooms where they all survived

Southwest Florida’s passionate bird-watching community grew concerned when their favorite species failed to reappear in the weeks following Hurricane Ian in September 2022, wondering if a worse fate had befallen them.

The fear was the 150-mph winds of such a huge storm had simply blown birds of all types to the ground, killing or maiming them on a species-wide scale. And that happened to some.

“Initially, we noticed some of the numbers were down for our seabirds,” Audrey Albrecht, a shorebird biologist with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, said about a month after Hurricane Ian’s devastation. “But what we’ve discovered is that they’re just actually in different places.”

The abilities that shorebirds have developed to survive hurricanes over millions of years are extraordinary, or they wouldn’t exist.

Ornithologists don’t know how birds can tell when a big blow is coming. Perhaps it’s due to the changes in barometric pressure, or storm clouds causing darkness during daylight hours.

Whatever the trigger, many birds sense the impending doom and move into literal flight or fight mode: they either fly away or find somewhere to assume crash positions.

A few hardy species like brown pelicans and whimbrels are strong enough to take on hurricane-speed winds. Some flew right through Hurricane Ian’s 150-mph swirling winds and its pelting sideways rain and lived to squawk about it.

Flamingos aren’t that hardy but are special due to their coloring, which is pink due to their diet rich in beta-carotene, a red-orange pigment found in blue-green algae, brine fly larvae, and brine shrimp.

If the birds ate other things they would be dull gray.

Whether regular pink, garden pink, or closer to crimson glory, the resurgence of the bright flamingos in Florida is seen as a positive sign of adaptation to changing environmental conditions, including the increased water flows due to the ongoing Everglades restoration.

Erika Zambello, a spokeswoman for Audubon Florida, said birds are a key species that let humans know if their habitats are healthy. If pink flamingos remain in Florida it’s a positive indicator that they once again have enough food and intact wetlands to survive.

“It’s hard to talk about the Everglades in 2024 without talking about flamingos,” Zambello said. “We were excited to see that some of the Hurricane Idalia flamingos seem to have stuck around.”

In so doing, that tells us that efforts made to restore the River of Grass are working.

Pink flamingos return to South Florida