Pink Flamingo

Flamingos are actually pink, or, rather, they come in shades of pink depending on which 30-million-year-old group is being studied. They can be found primarily in the tropics, but some flamingos range as far north as Europe. This interesting bird has become a symbol of tropical climates, and many of them have been imported to parks and theme parks in the United States.

Pink flamingos, as they are generally called, fly at very high altitudes when they migrate. Some scientists believe that this is an effort to avoid predatory eagles. Incidentally, they migrate primarily at night. In general, a flamingo is fairly tall bird, whose height allows it to walk on its webbed feet into much deeper water than many other birds. They are pack birds and can often be found in clusters floating on the water. Many of their colonies include up to 10,000 birds.

Funny Pink Flamingos

In the 1950s, an art student named Featherstone (no pun intended) was hired to redesign a duck sculpture. Later he was asked to create a plastic flamingo. He designed it from pictures, beginning the process with a plaster cast. Some time in 1957, plastic pink flamingos went on the market. Soon they were popping up on suburban lawns everywhere from Florida to Maine.

As pink flamingo aficionados well know, the pink flamingo fell into oblivion for several decades. With the advent of a 1980s television series, Miami Vice, however, the pink flamingo came back into the forefront of southern culture. Just a few years later, the State of Florida adopted the pink flamingo as its bird of choice to represent the Florida Lottery, and the curved-beak pink giant seems to have won a home for life.