DENNIS, MASS. (WHDH) - A lone flamingo was spotted at Chapin Beach in Dennis on Sunday.
People snapped photos and videos of the bird on Cape Cod, and some viewers online thought the images were photoshopped.
“There’s no real precedent for this. We don’t have an established pattern of what flamingoes do when they come to Massachusetts because they don’t come to Massachusetts,” said Mark Faherty, of Mass Audubon’s Cape Cod Wildlife Sanctuary.
Experts determined that it was a real bird.
“I think this is a legitimate wild bird. I think it may end up becoming the first accepted record of a wild flamingo, an American flamingo, here in Massachusetts,” Faherty said.
The Mass Avian Records Committee will determine if the bird is a wild flamingo or if it escaped from a zoo or private collection. Faherty said the flamingo likely came up to Massachusetts due to wild weather last summer.
“Way back in the fall, Hurricane Idalia brought a whole bunch of flamingoes. It just was carrying a payload of flamingoes as it came through the Carribbean, by the Yucatan peninsula, where there are big breeding colonies of these American flamingoes, up through Florida, and it just deposited flamingoes all the way from Florida and up to Ohio and Pennsylvania,” Faherty said.
He also said the flamingo likely came from the south, because it would not have been able to survive the New England winter. However, where the bird goes next remains a mystery.
“History has shown when flamingoes are displaced by a hurricane like that, they don’t really go back home,” Faherty said.
“It’s hard for a flamingo to hide,” he continued. “It’s a big, tall, pink bird that stands out in the open, so I suspect that somebody else will find it, wherever it ended up next, and the story will continue hopefully.”
Experts believe this was the same flamingo that was spotted on Long Island last week.
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