At the start of the long Independence Day weekend, I decided to check in on the American Flamingos at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
I padded out on Friday morning from the Haulover Canal kayak launch area to Bird Island, and I was delighted to see there were five flamingos there. The number of flamingos has been fluctuating, and we’re almost at the time when they left Bird Island last year.
Interestingly, this wasn’t a very tight-knit flamboyance. Three of the flamingos were hanging out together, and the other two were off on their own adventures.
A 2020 report by Audubon noted that flamingos are very social, and smaller groups of the birds can form long-lasting friendships. But Audubon also said, “Paul Rose, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Exeter, who led this research, also found that several birds avoided flock members they didn’t get along with.”
“They have these really strong friendships and strong preferences for avoiding,” he said in the Audubon report.
Even if all the flamingos aren’t getting along, I’m glad they’re still hanging out at Merritt Island.
