Flamingos in flight over Florida Bay as seen from a helicopter, June 27, 2025. Courtesy, Mark Ian Cook Photography
While this time of year we usually look up to the sky for fireworks, one wildlife photographer on an aerial survey late last month saw a different pop of color – a flock of more than 100 pink flamingos flying over Florida Bay in the Keys – the largest sighting in more than a decade! Often associated with picturesque Florida and its postcards, the flamingo has been a rare sighting in the Sunshine State since the early 1900s when native populations, once numbering in the thousands, were wiped out by hunters. In fact, Mark Ian Cook, the aforementioned photographer, and his pilot, James Davies, initially mistook the group of birds for their much more common doppelgänger, the Roseate Spoonbill, before realizing what a truly amazing situation they had found themselves in.
More flamingos in flight over Florida Bay, June 27, 2025. Courtesy, Mark Ian Cook Photography
“[Davies] pointed out a large group of Roseate Spoonbills in the distance, which isn’t an unexpected sight in this area. Except on closer inspection we realized they weren’t spoonbills, they were a group of 115 flamingos,” wrote Cook on his recent Facebook post, who also remarked it was the largest group seen since a flock of 147 back in 2014. Cook jumped on the opportunity and started taking pictures of the flock before the moment faded. “After taking a few images for science, and giving a group of fishermen in a flats boat some incredible views as the birds circled around their boat, we left the birds in peace to continue our survey.”
Flamingos in the waters of Florida Bay, June 27, 2025. Courtesy, Mark Ian Cook Photography
Flamingos were an incredibly rare sighting in Florida prior to 2023, when Hurricane Idalia blew in groups of them from Mexico. While some flew right back across the Gulf, many decided they liked the Florida weather and stayed stateside. A large flock currently resides at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, and many more of the pink birds are thought to be in tow, according to experts like Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida. “(We’re) increasingly seeing flocks of them in the Everglades in particular, Florida Bay, and in the water conservation areas,” Wraithmell told the Orlando Sentinel. “We already know that there is some established movement between the breeding areas in the Yucatan and Cuba and South Florida in the winter.”
And while Florida hasn’t had documented flamingo nesting since the late 1800s or early 1900s, we can plan to see more pink along our waterways and coasts through these warmest months of the year. Even though many things about Florida are changing, we can still look to the sky and water’s edge to see snapshots like postcards of the paradise we call home.
Up next, the new report on the health of Florida’s property insurance market, the new hurricane models, the change in hurricane-predicting satellite data, the latest on the Surfside condo tower collapse probe, plus the 17 reasons your Florida claim wasn’t paid!
LMA Newsletter of 7-14-25
