Flamingos have been popping up in surprising places since Hurricane Idalia blew through parts of the US southeast three weeks ago.
In the following days, dozens of sightings were reported from Texas to Florida, as far north as Pennsylvania and most states in between. And though flamingos can be found in parts of Florida, it's safe to say they don't frequently hang out farther north in states such as Kentucky, Tennessee and North and South Carolina.
Ohio was the northernmost point for the flamingos as of September 06, that is until a pair of flamingos were sighted in southern Pennsylvania's Franklin County on Thursday.
The birds likely got caught up in Hurricane Idalia, according to Nate Swick, the American Birding Association's digital communications manager. That's a "fairly common phenomenon" for birds, but not for flamingos, he said.
Though American flamingos (Scientific name: Phoenicopterus ruber) are native to the US state of Florida, the birds were hunted to near-extinction at the beginning of the 1900s and make up a mere 1% of the global flamingo population, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. That's why Swick and other bird enthusiasts were shocked to see flamingos hanging out on the Florida panhandle as well.
However, there is a sizable population of American flamingos on the Yucatan Peninsula, which separates the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, Swick said. Encompassing some 76,300 square miles (197,600 square km), it includes the Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán and, in the south, large parts of Belize and Guatemala.
Photos of the flamingos found in Florida have tags linked to breeding populations in the Yucatan, Swick said. "So, we do know those birds mostly came from the Yucatan Peninsula. And they, you know, they got caught up in the storm and just kind of went with it".
In terms of how the flamingos navigated a major storm, Swick said there's no definitive explanation. He said they could have gotten caught in the storm and flown with the wind, or perhaps had been in the eye of Idalia and moved with it until the storm broke apart.
What likely happened, Swick explained, is that the birds were either in Yucatan or on their way to Cuba when the storm hit them. The flamingos went with the winds instead of fighting them, as the eastern portion of the storm drove the birds up the western side of Florida.
But flamingos are big, strong birds, more than capable of making their way back home, Swick said, like they did in 2019. There were flamingo sightings in Tennessee and Missouri when Hurricane Barry came out of the Gulf of Mexico and drenched the deep south. And the birds eventually did return to their homes.
