Rare flamingo sightings have been reported across Northern states after Idalia. After more than a century of their absence, experts hope the birds will resettle in Florida.
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00:00 It was the perfect storm, an odd storm that hit the exact right or wrong, maybe for the
00:05 case of the birds.
00:06 If someone were to tell you they saw flamingos in the wild in states like Ohio or Pennsylvania,
00:11 you'd probably assume they had a pink kink in their thing.
00:14 But after Hurricane Adelia rolled through the southeast in August, flamingo fever is
00:18 spiking.
00:19 We've had large numbers of reports from birds in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia,
00:25 Tennessee.
00:26 Most of them ended up in Florida.
00:28 Flamingos from the Caribbean, including the Yucatan, where Adelia lingered before moving
00:32 into the Gulf of Mexico and Florida, were chased north by the storm.
00:36 At that point in time, these flamingos have just fledged, and these family groups are
00:40 known to fly across and split up and feed between Cuba and Veracruz.
00:46 So I think these hundreds of flamingos that got transplanted to the U.S. were between
00:50 the two landmasses.
00:51 The last time flamingos were commonly seen in Florida was more than a century ago.
00:56 The birds were hunted to extinction as part of the feather trade to decorate women's hats.
01:03 Most of our wading birds here in Florida were pretty much hunted to extirpation, including
01:07 flamingos.
01:08 Sightings were very rare, even in Florida, but after Adelia, avid bird watchers had a
01:13 leg up.
01:14 So I was still completely shocked when I picked up five juvenile flamingos flying at me.
01:18 It took me a while even to figure out what they were.
01:20 If folks in Florida were surprised to see these birds, imagine the reaction when they
01:23 started showing up in the northern states.
01:26 But experts say this will only be temporary.
01:28 They'll probably start moving south.
01:29 If they haven't already, we keep hoping that maybe they'll stay here in Florida and restart
01:34 that resident population again.
01:35 A lot of the biologists are real excited as well to think that, hey, we might be back
01:39 in business with flamingos.
01:41 For AccuWeather, I'm meteorologist Tony Laubach.
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