Nothing screams Florida like pink flamingos. But how many of you have ever seen a wild flamingo in Florida? I’m guessing it’s very few. That’s because American Flamingos have been a rarity in Florida for over a hundred years.

Back in the 1800s, tens of thousands of American Flamingos wintered along the Southern Florida coast and there was even a small breeding population. We don’t know for sure why they would choose to overwinter here, rather than in other parts of the Caribbean and Central America where they still breed. But we do know why they stopped spending time here — probably because of over-collection for the feather and egg trade.

Since that time, sightings of Flamingos have been sporadic and usually are tracked to escapees from imported groups of birds — especially from the flock at the Hialeah Park race track in Miami. Every once in a while, I read about fly-overs in Brevard County. But most of the time, the pink birds flying over are the much more common Roseate Spoonbill.

There are occasional, confirmed wild birds that make an appearance in Florida. Most notably birds that were tagged in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and showed up in the Everglades in 2002 and 2012. But, honestly, I never thought I would see a wild flamingo in Florida unless I got very, very lucky.

Well those odds changed a few years back when a large group of these distinctive birds were found in a Stormwater Treatment Area (STA2) west of Boca Raton. In 2014, that group swelled to 147 birds and then dropped down to eight in 2015. Ornithologists were thrilled but baffled. Why were these birds showing up now and why in this inland area almost 100 miles from where they used to live? Birders were equally enthusiastic about the find and clamored for an opportunity to see the birds.

So the South Florida Water Management District, that built STA2 to remove excess phosphorus from the water system, partnered with the Audubon Society of the Everglades to offer guided tours in a controlled fashion that wouldn’t disturb the birds. They are typically offered in March and April but this year the trips ran into May because the flamingos showed up late. Steve, a new staff member at the Zoo, had gone on the trip one Saturday and gotten skunked. But we heard reports that the flamingos had been trickling in all week, so I had high hopes when I joined him for another trip on May 14.

We were given directions to a spot in the middle of nowhere, parked on the side of a service road and carpooled along the gravel roads to the site where the birds have gathering. Normally, these trips take place in the afternoon, but I was glad that our trip took place in the morning (for reasons I’ll explain in a bit), because it was already hot and buggy by the time we found them. And find them we did, when the trip leader spotted them across a big expanse of open water surrounded by the marsh.

At first we saw a few birds in the distance — a group of four here, another six there, but before we were done we would count 20 birds in all. They were only slightly visible with the naked eye, were clearly flamingos through the binoculars but looked best through a spotting scope.

I was pretty happy about seeing them at all, but as the morning progressed, they flew closer to the road. Now I don’t think I need to paint a picture of what a standing flamingo looks like to anyone. We have all seen them in zoos, or cast in plastic in your neighbor’s front yard, or printed on your Florida Lottery ticket. But seeing them fly is something else altogether.

They look like a five-foot long, fluorescent pink, flying driver (as in golf club). They are beautiful, graceful and odd all at the same time — like a running giraffe. So even if you are not a birder wanting to add a new one to your list — they are so worth seeing in the wild. And here’s the other cool thing — we still don’t know where these flamingos are coming from. It’s still possible they are a splinter group from the Hialeah flock or migrants from the close-by Bahamas or even far-away Yucatan.

Luckily, our colleagues at Zoo Miami are trying to solve the mystery. They are working on getting a GPS transmitter on one of these birds so we can learn where they go. They were hoping to catch one the afternoon of our trip (thus moving us to the morning). But so far they have not been successful in catching one. Most of me wants them to succeed, so we can get answers about their origins and do a better job protecting them. But a little part of me loves the idea of some secret flamingo breeding ground that is never revealed to the world.

Keith Winsten is Executive Director of Brevard Zoo. Contact him at (321) 254-9453 ext. 223