The Mystery of Florida’s Flamingos

Two months ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, Anna Yu, a park ranger in western Florida, heard a rumor from a local birder: for the first time in years, somebody had spotted a flamingo near Fort De Soto Park, where she works. When Yu returned to the park, which encompasses more than a thousand acres of islands, she cleared debris and took stock of what did and didn’t flood. In her three years as a park ranger, she’d seen storms collect weird things in their wake, but she’d never seen a flamingo. Then her radio crackled with the voice of another ranger. “A flamingo just flew over North Beach,” he said.