Lesser Flamingo Off Course?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 7th, 2009
Officials at the Jacksonville Zoo have informed the media that a lesser flamingo (Phoenicopterus minor), like the one above, spotted recently at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is not one of theirs.
“All of ours are accounted for,” zoo spokesman Gina Stiles said.
The origin of the refuge’s surprise visitor is “something of an enigma,” Stiles said.
The Sept. 30 sighting was the first account of a non-captive lesser flamingo in Florida. Besides a sighting about a week earlier in St. Augustine, which was not photographed, no other reports of the flamingo have surfaced.
Lesser flamingoes are natives of Asia and Africa but small captive flocks can be found at zoos across the United States. The three closest facilities, including Jacksonville, say they aren’t missing any birds.
Florida has one species of flamingo, the greater flamingo, which is seen occasionally in South Florida. However, novice birdwatchers at the refuge sometimes confuse its resident roseate spoonbills with flamingoes. Dinah Voyles Pulver
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About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
