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Posted by Alex Harper on 17:43:07 09/21/08
I saw my first Greater Flmaingo yesterday afternoon in Navarre Beach, Santa Rosa County. There has been one in Destin and now Navarre since Gustav. The two birds are probably the same bird, however. Two also showed up on the Mississippi coast right after Gustav as well.
This must a wild bird. The plumage is right for a Caribbean bird, as in neither to dull or too fluorescent like captive birds (dull as in Hialeah birds or fluorescent like Busch Gardens birds). It fed by shuffling up the sediment, a typical feeding behavior of wild flamingos. The bird, although not skittish, kept its distance from us. I can elaborate, but when putting it all together, this bird as well the two over a hundred miles down the coast, are here because of Gustav. This is similar to a bird banded in the Yucatan that was found in Louisiana after Hurricane Rita a few years back.
After watching the flamingo for a while, I turned my attention to the shorebirds in the area. Killdeer, Black-bellied, Snowy, Piping, Wilson's, and Semipalmated Plovers, Least, Western, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Willet and Sanderlings. Then I told my girlfriend I was going to find a rare bird, and then I raised my binoculars up to a Baird's Sandpiper feeding at the flamingos feet.
This was my second Baird's in three weeks or so, and my third ever (my first was on the first TAS Ft DeSoto trip with Brian Rapoza).
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