I received the author's permission to post this:

MS Birders:

I received a phone call late this afternoon that someone had called our local TV station to report a pair of Flamingos on the beach in Pass Christian! My "Judy Toups Bird Doubting Ears" immediately went up. I had gotten some strange bird calls in the past, but this was the strangest. Roseate Spoonbills, maybe, but Flamingos? Really.

Highway 90 is closed due to sand and debris (including several sailboats) from Gustov, so I had to sneak across and down to the beach. I doubt a Flamingo emergency would have flown with the national guard. No one stopped me, and what did I find but a group of people and 2 dogs watching a beautiful pair of Flamingos walking the surf line. One was quite a bit taller than the other. The smaller one was quite a bit pinker than the larger one. They stayed close together and just casually strolled. I got as close as I could to examine their legs for bands, but neither one was banded. I got a number of pictures but am not sure how they will turn out as it was starting to get dark. As it turns out, someone from WFP or DMR saw them in Long Beach this morning, so they have been there all day. Hopefully, they will stay overnight so more people will get to see them.

I would like some opinions as to whether they are "countable". They let me get within about 50 feet of them. I would think if they were escapees, they would be banded. What are the previous records for MS? Also, is there sexual dimorphism in Flamingos?

Good birding.

Jan Dubuisson
Pass Christian


Gayla
Jackson, Mississippi
Canon S3 IS
Zone 7b; Heat Zone 9 (Ugh)

Tropical storms often displace birds and often over great distances. I wonder what species of Flamingo they were. You should get your photos to your state's bird records committee so they can review them. Obviously they could be escapees but that storm did pass through flamingo range and could well have displaced them into your area. Birds like Flamingos a very strong fliers.

I remember a friend telling me this story. He had arrived home from a day birding at Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge and on his arrival his wife asked:"did you see any flamingos?" His reply was:"as a matter of fact I did." No Flamingo species is on this state's bird list because no one has ever been sure of the origins of our birds.

Another birder in Jackson wrote:

"I saw five Magnificent Frigatebirds at about 10:15am this morning (September 3, 2008) in downtown Jackson. I glanced out my office windows on the 12th floor of the north side of the Sillers state office building as they were approaching, heading south.

Pretty good storm birds. I checked Birds of Mississippi, and the narrative described two other sightings north of the coast, one in Satartia and one in Utica, both in 1957. One of the sightings followed the passage of Hurricane Audrey, the other followed another tropical storm."

By the way, Jackson is 160 miles inland.



Gayla
Jackson, Mississippi
Canon S3 IS
Zone 7b; Heat Zone 9 (Ugh)

More birds that should be included in the bird record. That is way inland and a super office bird.

Wow, that is a great office bird. I work in suburbia in a the land of nothing but office buildings and landscaping. My best office bird was a dead Virginia Rail that had hit a window. I've also found dead Yellowthroat, Indigo Bunting, Nashville Warbler, and a few others. I've tried to get them to put non-reflective coating on the glass. I can't think of what my most interesting alive office bird is, nothing uncommon really.

I remember standing in the parking lot of an office I used to work at in Philadelphia. Thunderstorms had formed a great arch all the way across the country - powerful eastward moveing weather. Ahead of the leading storm came a large black swift riding on the unrushing wind. It looked for all the world like a Black Swift but could have been one of those tropical swifts. I just shook my head, got in the car and drove away. Some sightings are just too strange and I've always wondered...

Gayla, thanks for posting this. I clicked on birdingonthe.net and read all the posts. Recently, the Louisiana Bird Records Committee accepted a record of an American Flamingo that was banded as a flightless youngster on the Yucatan Peninsula. It was keeping company with a banded Greater Flamingo that had escaped from the Wichita, Kansas, zoo. This was a big story in Texas, where the two [in company with another American Flamingo] had been noted since right after Hurricane Katrina.

The Louisiana birds were photographed in late September 2007 in the town of Cameron, near the Texas border. They were never observed by birders, but the photographer is the daughter of a birder. In the images http://losbird.org/bulletin/flamingos.html, the bands are clearly readable.

The current Flamingos in Mississippi and Florida probably originated in Cuba, where there supposedly are several thousand resident on the northeastern coast. Though there is a lot of good ornithological work being done in Cuba, I don't know if any Flamingos are being banded. I worked on an ornithological survey in Cuba in February and I observed between 50 and 60 at a salina near the Bay of Pigs.

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Nancy L Newfield
Casa Colibrí­
Metairie, Louisiana USA
USDA Zone 9

WOW very cool!

My most unsual bird at work in this office park I guess would be a Turkey LOL, I have seen her many times she's been around for a few years now, since she was a poulte (sp)

DuckWatcher
No California -- Zone 9b
Olympus SP-560 UZ