Flamingos? On the Mississippi Coast?
Yep. The big, funny-looking pink birds are visiting, with credit given to the spate of hurricanes. One spotter said the flamingos look like "pink missiles" in the air.
Mississippi's first recorded sightings of the greater flamingo continue to send the curious to the beach in search of birds, which stand at least 4 feet tall with a wingspan beyond 6 feet. They are usually in warmer tropical climates but biologists believe these flew here ahead of the storms.
The first known Coast sighting was in Pascagoula the day Tropical Storm Fay didn't hit. The second sighting was two days after Gustav. The most recent weekend sightings in Waveland, however, are of only one bird.
The flamingo story begins Aug. 24 when the family of Pascagoulan Pete Floyd was gathered on their deck, which overlooks the Sound.
"My son said, 'Dad, look at those flamingos,' and, disbelieving, we all turned to look," said Floyd, a naturalist/artist. "They were flying east above Beach Boulevard."
Floyd, who'd seen flamingos in Florida as a boy, was certain that's what these were, but he faced skeptics who thought he mistook them for roseate spoonbills, also pink.
Read the complete story, with photographs, at Biloxi sunherald.com