I can’t say it often enough: Birds have wings! That’s the joy of birding. An unexpected bird can show up in the most unlikely locations, all thanks to the power of flight.

On occasion, Mother Nature lends a hand, too, as in the case with displaced American flamingos that have been found in at least 10 U.S. states, including Tennessee and North Carolina, in recent weeks. These refugees from the storm have found themselves achieving celebrity status as birders from across the country have flocked to find them after rare bird alerts popped up in several states.

“This has definitely been a flamingo week in the eastern United States,” Tom McNeil posted on his Facebook page. “Following the passage of Hurricane Idalia, displaced American flamingos have been located in ten or more states!”

On Sunday, Sept. 3, McNeil and his wife, Cathy, made a round-trip trek of 670 miles to see 11 American flamingos that had been found in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The birds had been discovered on Sept 2.

“If I had not already been in North Carolina, I would have probably chosen to go see the five birds that had been found in Wayne County, Tennessee, on the same day,” McNeil wrote on Facebook.

“Lucky for us, one of the Tennessee birds stayed until Sept. 6 and we were able to go see it,” McNeil said.

The McNeils left their home in Carter County, Tennessee, at 3 a.m. and made the 830-mile round-trip drive to visit with a young flamingo for a few minutes.

That’s a lot of miles, but the McNeils enjoy chasing after rare or unexpected birds. Cathy McNeil even got a photo of the young flamingo.

It’s not even their first dash to the Outer Banks this year. Back on July 28, the couple traveled there to add a Pacific golden-plover to their life lists. “We were successful!” McNeil noted in a Facebook post.

He added some other interesting details.

“This is the fifth year that this bird has made a late July appearance in the Cape Point region of Hatteras Island,” he wrote. “It is thought to be the same bird. Luckily we were able to chase it this year.”

To add to the luck, this year the bird spent a lot of time in the Cape Point Campground.

“We were able to get it from the air-conditioned comfort of the car,” McNeil wrote. “No sand-marching required!”

Once again, it bears repeating: Birds have wings!

The first storm-driven flamingos were spotted in Ohio. Afterwards, these birds showed up in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Kentucky and even as far north as Pennsylvania.

National Public Radio even put the birds on air, so to speak, in a feature by Dustin Jones posted to the NPR website on Sept. 7. In that article, Nate Swick, digital communications manager for the American Birding Association, addressed the flamingo fallout.

As for the flamingos, these refugees from Hurricane Idalia will have to do their best to straggle home.

Swick noted that flamingos are big, strong birds, more than capable of making their way back home, just as they did in 2019 following Hurricane Barry when that storm hit the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico and drove a handful of flamingos to western Tennessee and Missouri.

Swick said that the consensus is that the flamingos swept up by Hurricane Idalia were likely birds from the Yucatan Peninsula, which separates the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

Despite their name, American flamingos are not birds one is ever likely to find in the continental United States with the possible exception of Florida. Also known as the Caribbean flamingo, this bird lives in and around brackish water and saltwater environments, including marshes, estuaries and coastlines. Based on the range of this species, Caribbean flamingo is a more accurate name.

The species did once live wild in the Sunshine State, but the Florida population was hunted into extermination by the early 1900s. Most Florida American flamingos today are captive birds that have managed to escape from zoos and aviaries. A few are probably wandering individuals from the Caribbean.

There are six flamingo species found worldwide, but the American (Caribbean) flamingo is the only species native to North America. The other species are greater flamingo, lesser flamingo, Chilean flamingo, James’s flamingo and Andean flamingo.

Another famous flamingo vagrant by the name of Pink Floyd haunted the Great Salt Lake in Utah from 1988 to 2005. Pink Floyd was a captive Chilean flamingo living at the Tracy Aviary in downtown Salt Lake City who escaped and found that he was content to live life in the wild for 17 years.

I visited Tracy Aviary during a visit to Salt Lake City in 2008, a few years after the last sighting of Pink Floyd. Although the captive birds in Pink Floyd’s flock had their wing feathers clipped on a regular basis, Pink Floyd apparently avoided these sessions.

I think he had his escape in mind all along. The Great Salt Lake, teeming with brine shrimp, a favorite food of flamingos, beckoned him to spread his wings and fly to freedom. In the process, he became a local legend. Although he’s probably gone – it has been close to 20 years since the last sighting – keep in mind Chilean flamingos can live 40 to 50 years. If Pink Floyd is still living the life of a free bird, he might only be in his late 30s.

Once again, and everyone keep this in mind: Birds have wings! They can and do show up in the most unlikely places. Keep your eyes open.