Greetings all! Not much to give on the update front. My ankle has been a big disappointment and we are considering simply declaring Excommunicado from the family – no Thanksgiving gathering for you! Been working on it for over a month now and it is refusing to comply to a level I demand. Broke down and went to the Ortho to get some glamour shots to ensure there were no serious reasons for all the whining it was doing. After noting all the historical trauma he could see surrounding it, he noted no fractures. Diagnosis, severe high ankle sprain caused by the second incident during the race. At least 4 to 5 more weeks of recovery..for a normal patient. I was waiting for the doctor to ask the ankle if it felt safe at home. Doubled the rehab and started with 4 mile walks this week. Barring any legitimate complaints, should be on the run in a week – two tops.
Beyond that, it has been an interesting week here stateside as we carried out the keystone of our republic to elect our representatives. I’ll leave assessments on the actual outcomes for individual reflection, but there are a few ancillary things that were loud and clear from my perspective. Lamestream media is effectively dead. Clearly the propaganda machine has little to no influence over a majority of the population. Yours truly has been railing against their hyperbole for years. In that same vein, partisan pollsters and fact checkers deserve a headstone in our haunted cemetery to celebrate their occupation demise. Lastly, entertainers and our self-righteous elites have lost their flock. I am sure there will be further peripheral fallout as America comes to terms with the outcomes, some good, some bad, some red, some white, some blue and all the colors between…as in PINK!
Hit the jump to learn about a feathered friend that hasn’t compromised its celebrity status from the recent election.
I am excited to bring you a couple of firsts on the blog today starting with a new birding location. Let me clarify that, a new birding location to Intrigued, those in the Panhandle-ish area of Florida are likely well aware of this wildlife gem. Need to give Linda full credit for this find. We were looking for places to explore on our pass through northern Florida back in April 2023 (I know, I know but to my credit, I am now over halfway through processing the pictures from that trip). The plan was to make a very wide detour on our way to Dauphin Island for the spring migration.
Gainesville was the farthest extent of the trip before we turned back to follow the coastline back to Dauphin Island. From the previous posts you already know how productive the Gainesville stop was with the highlight being the Snail Kites (link here and here). Linda noticed there was quite a lot of eBird activity for a place called St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (link here), conveniently located in St. Marks, FL.
According to their website, St. Marks NWR was established in 1931 as a wintering habitat for migrating birds and considered one of the founding locations in the national refuge system. A visit to St. Marks places you in the midst of 86,000 acres that encompass 43 miles along the Gulf Coast. St. Marks is a daily visit refuge as it lacks any camping facilities. Linda found an RV park that put us in close proximity to this park as well as another site we visited called Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park (link here). I’ll cover Wakulla Springs in a future post, but as a teaser they have Manatees and probably best known as the location they filmed the Creature from the Black Lagoon (link here).
Back to St. Marks. There is a fee to get into this refuge. Pedestrians are charged $1, vehicles $6 with an option for a $25 annual pass. Not outrageous by any means and based on what we saw there, an incredibly low IpS (Investment per Species) factor – our primary evaluation criteria here at Intrigued. That IpS value goes down even lower when you include the bonus reduction adjustments for +1s (1/2x for lifers, 1/4x for annual +1s). This particular visit led to the pink lifer you have been looking at.
Quick setup. Admittedly I had done zero research before we loaded up the car and headed over. I prefer complete confidence in Linda versus any insinuations of laziness on my part hehehe. Noting this only to point out I was going in absolutely cold – no target birds, no expectations, a rare stress free excursion into the field. Note to Intrigued staff, this carefree and careless approach to birding must be requested in writing and approved by management before going into the field. There is no lollygagging on our team ha (link here).
Paid our fee and feverishly tore open the refuge map provided by a very nice volunteer at the entrance. “Wow, this place is big!” There were several pull-offs along the single road that ran to the lighthouse at the far end of the refuge. Decided to go all the way out and then slowly make our way back. One of those fortunate decisions when you look back at it.
There was a large body of water off to our left as we neared the lighthouse. Needless to say, I was scanning the waters looking for anything with feathers. Focus was primarily on the near bank/water with occasional glances further out to process as much as I could as Linda continued to the destination. Too startled to use our agreed upon “birdalertword” for emergency stoppage required, I blurted out “What is that!?!”. There might have been an expletive in there for good measure. Linda followed my gaze and assessed it as a Roseate Spoonbill. For the record, that happens to be Linda’s favorite bird so if it is tall, has wings and a bill it usually gets classified as a Spoon. At least this time the color palette was similar.
I was not convinced of Linda’s ID or mine for that matter. Sometimes hope can taint an proper ID and my hasty thought seemed a stretch to far. This warranted more scrutiny and jumped out of the car to get a better look with The Beast. Future mental recall, next time inform Linda first so she can get the car stopped. Maybe that was one of the historic traumas the doctor was noticing ha.
Quickly brought the big glass on the bright pink spot standing far out in the water. It was taking everything The Beast had to give me additional detail – as you can see from the earlier shots in this post, 400mm was woefully inadequate. Should have grabbed the tele before ejecting myself from the car. Linda had to continue to the parking lot due to the limited shoulder. Found a nearby tree to help stabilize the glass. Snap, chimp, digital zoom, snap, chimp, digital zoom…repeat until fairly confident I was looking at an American Flamingo. How could this be, I was not in a zoo or other captive containment facility. Up to this point I had relied on Cornell’s website to form my understanding that the Flamingo was not a resident of the states beyond a few migrants that would show up from time to time on the southern most Florida coast.
Maybe the corporate media propaganda machine had infected the official birding sites. Since this sighting, I have done additional research and noticed that eBird’s sightings map has quite a few scattered across the southeastern portions of the US. I keep forgetting that there is an option to see this same sightings map directly from the Cornell site (go to maps and hit the Sightings Map button directly to the right of the Range Map button near the top of the page).
So caught up in the moment, I didn’t notice a couple that had made their way up to where I was standing. Based on the camera they were carrying they were probably having a hard time getting any detail out that far. “What is that?” Great minds think alike ha. “I believe it is an American Flamingo.” “Here!?!” Deja vu. I took a few more shots in hopes of getting something respectable in the tin and then made the trek back to Linda. “I can confirm that it is an American Flamingo!” “Here!?!” Everybody do the Time Warp (link here).
Unfortunately, our brightly colored bird picked a spot that was equally distant from all convenient access points. There was a path that led out from the parking lot and appeared to circle said body of water. For some stupid reason forgot to bring the tele again as I left Linda to tend to the dogs while I headed out for a better look. That didn’t prove out to be a better vantage point, but met a nice couple on the way back. They asked if I had seen Pinky. “You mean the Flaming out there (pointing back the way I had just come from)?” “Yes, that’s Pinky”. Hmmm interesting, it appears to have an official name – granted not the most original.
Turns out this couple was down from Toronto specifically to see this resident celebrity (link here). Even told a funny story about how they were being questioned by customs on the way down here as to their nature of their trip – “To see Pinky of course”. They provided the customs agent the whole story regarding St. Mark’s famous resident. I can just imagine how that played out …”is Pinky a local drug dealer?” ha.
They happily repeated the information for my enjoyment and education. Pinky wound up at St. Marks thanks to being blown off course during Hurricane Michael back in 2018. Each year after that it would return (alone) every winter with the rest of the migrating birds to the area. There was a disturbance in the force (read Hurricane Idalia) that brought 6 or a “flamboyance” of new American Flamingos to the area back in September 2023 (link here). About 5 months since our sighting.
It is unclear if Pinky decided to join this new flamboyance. Noting that the Rock Star link provided above was written in August of that year gives some clue that it at least stayed another month. I cannot find any articles or videos of Pinky past this date. Did a quick look on eBird and there has not been any reports of an American Flamingo recently. If anybody has any additional information on Pinky please provide us details in the comments. He (as well as other friends in the Florida area) has been on our minds since the last two hurricanes crashed through the region.
Okay, now time to provide you some background on the American Flamingo species as is tradition, especially for the new lifers. Adult Flamingos look similar with the exception of the hue variation which I’ll get to in just a second. No idea if Pinky is a he or she, someone would need to look under the hood heheheh. The juveniles, however, are quite a bit different. I was completely unaware of this distinction before researching for this post (and seeing images of the new flamboyance that flew into the area). Confirming with Cornell, juvis do not display the orange/pink hues of their elders, rather a “monochromatic” feathering of whites, greys, blacks and browns.
Flamingos are highly colonized and feed by using their tongues and rather odd looking bills to filter out food such as Brine, crustaceans and related invertebrates. It is the Brine and a few other dietary elements that produce the richness of their colorful hues. Unlike the Roseate Spoonbills whose coloring is divorced from their diet, the higher levels of carotenoids consumed leads to more beautiful coloring. Pinky seems to be doing quite alright in this category.
UPDATE 11/11/2024: I need to thank Sam (link here) for pointing out a misunderstanding related to the Spoonbill coloring. They do indeed get the intensity of their rosy hues from their diet! Consistent with Sam’s expertise and several birding sites, their color variations are due to their varying levels of consumed carotenoids and not simply based on their maturity as previous thought. Appreciate the assist Sam – always learning and growing.
I doubt I will ever forget my first encounter with Pinky. It definitely stands right up there with the likes of my first Whooping Crane, Bat Falcon, Burrowing Owl and Elegant Trogon meetings which hold top spots in my birding highlights.
Hope you enjoyed learning about this Florida rock star. I wish it well wherever it may be. Time to put a bow on this. We are up at Mayo for Linda’s annual heart valve checks and need come up to speed on her appointments. Take care everyone. Here’s a bonus video we took of the resident Flamingos at the Texas Aquarium in Corpus Christi – hopefully it will bring a smile.
Wildlife Intrigued 
That flamingo was a wonderful model. Beautiful photos. I hope you can whip your ankle into shape. I hear you on the whipping the lamestream media, pollsters, celebrities, and elites got from this election. I don’t watch TV, and I was still bombarded with political mud from all sides.
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I think it was more of a fact that Pinky had zero interest in my presence vs putting forth any modeling effort ha. This ankle is really pissing me off if you couldn’t tell. I’ve had my fill of injuries over the years and some have rightfully earned the need to take a bit of time to recover, but this damn smug ankle thinks it deserves over a month (so far) which is ludicrous. It is starting to hold weight now, but mornings are extremely painful at the moment. I try to avoid TV as much as possible, but I do look at the daily news summaries online, but the constant popups on websites, crap in the mail and don’t get me started about the anonymous mass texts they blast out to everyone all frustrate the hell out of me as they are full of direct lies and propaganda these days. Hoping they get the message now and realize they’ve overplayed their influence. Hope you made it through your heavy snow without getting injured.
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I had been unsubscribed from all the political emails I never subscribed to in the first place. And then WHAM! The floodgates opened. So freaking annoying. The losers are still blaming everyone but themselves for their losses. They are so clueless. Persistent injuries are such a pain, both figuratively and literally. I hope you get that asinine ankle of yours accountable for its actions. Tell it that identity politics is done with, so quit identifying with the losers. It doesn’t feel their pain.
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I used to diligently unsubscribe from junk emails until a friend reminded me I was basically just confirming that it was a legitimate email address they could send more stuff to. Now I just fire up a new email trash filter with whatever new method they used to find me. On that note, I have to say WP has done something to improve the amount of spam comments I used to get – that is way down these days with only one or two getting through that I added comment filters for. I am definitely enjoying the infighting that is going on in the media circles – it was you/them not us and they didn’t listen to our lies or we didn’t get to censor their alternative view arguments are sweet sounds as they try to figure out why they no longer have any influence on the masses. Guessing someone removed the mirrors in those buildings a long time ago. I just showed the ankle your comment and pointed out that as proof that I wasn’t the only one that thought it was being a baby.
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True on the unsubscribes. One of the few changes WP has made is spam filtering. I’ve gone from hundreds a day to a few a week. Often, JYP is among the few. She has a way of getting tossed in spam jail.
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Somehow I keep getting in spam jail on other sites – I’ll add a comment on a site and it won’t appear – assume it is put in the “to be approved” list on their side.
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Spam happens.
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Ha, I like that, although I will say every time Linda sees a real SPAM (the food) commercial she about vomits. Some very bad memories growing up apparently.
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I’m sure Linda had bad experiences with it growing up. Can one have good experiences with Spam?
I never had Spam growing up. My dad banned it from our kitchen table because Spam was their rations in England during WWII. I tasted it at a friend’s house, and it was horrible.
I was surprised when I came across a Spam aisle in a grocery store I was not familiar with how many varieties of Spam there were on the shelves. It’s like a whole subculture that’s way outside my life experience.
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I was young, impressionable and hungry during the SPAM hay day (if you can call it that). We would visit my grandparents on Sunday’s after church and grandma would always be frying it up on the gas stove and serve it between two HEAVILY buttered white pieces of bread. I tell Linda that I enjoyed it, she makes faces that would drive the demon clowns out of our woods. Oddly enough, my parents would never serve it to us any other time, maybe it had to do with Dad’s rations during the Korean War…hmm, never thought of that before. Someone has to be buying it based on the stock on grocery shelves. I can safely say I will not get a chance to recall those lunches at my grandparents while Linda is around. Based on the universal comments I get back whenever SPAM comes up, I am thinking I’m not missing anything ha.
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Grandma had the magic touch.
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Yep! … may also be because I was young and my taste buds had not fully developed yet ha.
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What a diva!
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Ha, you are absolutely correct Luisella – out there strutting around, showing off for its fan club – what has become of the birding world hehehe. Appreciate you coming by and have a wonderful rest of your week.
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I can imagine the shock of seeing that when you had no idea it was present! We have had the odd Greater Flamingo appear in the UK but the birding ‘authorities’ dismissed them as ‘escapes’, why? I have no idea. They winter in Southern Europe, fly big distances and we have had more outrageous rarities turn up but been welcomed with open arms, perhaps it’s the look.
As for elections. We had one ourselves not many months ago (feels like a lifetime). All I will say is be very, very careful what you wish for, it may comeback and bite you on the……..
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Shocked would be an understatement B.! Odd that they will not validate your Greater appearances – especially as they are noted for willingness to travel long distances for a good dinner. Trust me, I am very, very aware of being bitten by results. Regardless of the winners, what I absolutely cannot stand is the hyperbole and fear that corporate media outlets unleash on their Lemmings. The end of this, existential threat to that, unwarranted comparisons to this psychopath and all the followers of him/her are some form of derogatory cretin. I won’t even go into government bodies engaged in big tech censorship. It is polarizing our country just for click counts and it disgusts me. I can say it is self-evident now that these propaganda outlets (and celebrity elites) have met their influence end and it is glorious. Take care B. and say hello to the rest of your family (including the newly engaged).
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This is so cool, thanks for all this information. We are actually heading there in a couple of weeks. Same place. I just happened to find it on the map. I think I am following you đ ha. I sure hope to see a flamingo. I finally saw my spoonbills last week and the storks. Cool birds.
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Glad you liked the post Sandra! St. Marks is a great place to visit, hope it turns out as productive for you as it was us (you will be there in a different season so not sure of all the comings and goings on the bird front). I highly recommend spending a lot of time at the Lighthouse (end of the road). Good views of the Gulf and there were lots of birds both in the Gulf and in the large Tower Pond that sits next to it. If you go along the beach past the Lighthouse it was full of Fiddler Crabs and the Pelicans were feeding with the Dolphins in close to the shore. We enjoyed the Levee Trail there as well. Definitely stop at the Headquarters (guessing one or two miles short of the lighthouse). They have a couple of very nice ponds there – one a short walk away and another that is bordered by the Tower Pond Trail which I really liked. Again, not sure what this season brings, but the Wilson’s Plovers is one of their specialties and they were hanging out in the Stony Bayou Pools near the entrance – tough to pick out on the flats, but look for they plump little birds with the blunted bills. Fingers crossed the Pinky will be there. Congrats on the Spoon and the Stork checks. I figured you would like the pretty spoons, the Storks are not the prettiest ha. Note, I missed the Stork this year. Take care Sandra and safe travels. We head to Texas around Christmas.
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Safe travels to you. đ
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What a fantastic find! And then to learn that Pinky is a recognized and revered return visitor to this park is very cool – I hope he/she (or some family members) return soon.
I was curious about your comment that, while Flamingo color comes from diet, Spoonie color does not. All About Birds says “Roseate Spoonbills get their pink coloration from the foods they eat. Crustaceans and other aquatic invertebrates contain pigments called carotenoids that help turn their feathers pink.” Might be something to look into.
I’m adding your recommendation for the Florida locations to my list, thanks!
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Nice catch Sam!! Not that I doubted you in the least, but I did verify on several birding sites including the one you referenced and I can say without hesitation I was completely wrong! My previous understanding is that the Spoon coloring was simply a product of maturity, but noting their similar diets it makes perfect sense. Muchas Gracias for the assist. I have updated the post to reflect the newly gained knowledge. Definitely keep St. Marks on the list whenever you are near there. When we were there in early April there were Eared Grebes, Oystercatchers, Whimbrels and Dolphins at the Lighthouse along with a nesting Great Horned Owl about a mile or two short in the evergreens at the edge of the road and some really nice adds at the headquarters pond/trail which is before that (Gull-Billed Tern and the bathrooms are there too). We ended up going back the next day to give a thorough scanning of the flats at the Stony Bayou Pool (nearer the entrance). Took me a bit of time, but finally got that Wilson’s Plover that is one of their specialties there. Be sure and take the trail at the headquarters pond (Tower Pond Trail) and the one by the lighthouse (Levee Trail). There is a lot there I still need to explore. Take care.
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I would be happy with the kind of photos you were able to obtain, Brian, despite the distance. My only encounters with this bird thus far have been in zoos, but I have not had the privilege to hear their vocalizations, which came as a bit of a surprise. Thank you for the stills and video.
I think Pinky should be renamed. Orangey seems more appropriate. (S)he must have enjoyed many carotenoid-rich foods!
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You are too kind Tanja, but glad you enjoyed the stills and video that were decent enough to let people see. I have to say, in a group these “Flaming Go”s are hilarious. I had never experienced their spastic (read neurotic) head movements and calls before our trip to the Corpus Christi Aquarium (where the video was taken). I concur on the appropriate name should be something close to Orangey as this one had definitely progressed from those lighter/pink phases I always see in pictures, I guess when you have the whole 17k of acreage to yourself you don’t have to share those carotenoid honey holes! Appreciate you coming by Tanja – I suspect you are getting your fair share of snow at the moment. My brother Ron is out near Denver right now and has been sending me various shots of the white mountainsides. Old Man Winter has returned…time for us to to head south to find the Heat Miser hehehe. Take care Tanja.
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We have had some snow in southern Colorado but most of it has melted already. I think Denver and the northern part of the state had more.
I hope you can escape and find the heat–and your hoped-for birds!
Happy travels, happy birding,
Tanja
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Thanks Tanja. Our snow cover has since disappeared, but our quick burst of heat these last couple of days will give way to the single digits later in the week. I guess there is a one advantage of still recovering from injuries as I don’t have to layer up and burn the lungs with those temps (although I am officially getting the crazies ha). 75 in SPI at the moment!!!!
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SPI???
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Sorry, that stands for South Padre Island…our home away from home…just a few more weeks away!
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Duh. I should know by now! đ
Enjoy your trip!
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Sorry, I should be more careful on the acronym and abbreviation front. My past employer made it an art form and we used to try and make entire sentences out of them during our presentations – like the broadcasts in Good Morning America. You would think Brad and I had developed our own language if you heard the two of us together.
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Great plumage color! The pale mid-section and darker tips made for one handsome bird.
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It is definitely getting its fill of Brine and other betacarotene vehicles – a stark contrast to the white and sooty coats of their juvi years. I do wish it had been a bit closer to the banks so I would not have to crop so much. Guess I can’t complain as it is an absolute treat it happened to get lost there ha.
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