Pink flamingos spotted at Port Washington beach

Some rare tropical visitors to Wisconsin have been spotted on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Five pink flamingos were drawing crowds of curious onlookers on the beach in Port Washington Friday.

Ryan Brady is a conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He said American Flamingos have been spotted across a dozen states like Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania over the last month.

Brady said it’s the first known record of sighting a wild American Flamingo in Wisconsin.

“This year there’s been an outbreak of sightings in the eastern US ever since Hurricane Idalia moved through back in August,” Brady said.

It’s not the first rare bird sighting this year. In July, the roseate spoonbill was spotted hanging out in Green Bay. Prior to this summer, the flamboyant bird with a football-shaped pink body was last sighted in the state 178 years ago.

“That one was not displaced by a storm,” Brady said. “That one was kind of a large-scale dispersal.”

He said another group of birds traditionally limited to Florida called limpkins, which are a heron-like bird, have been spotted in recent years. He said about 10 of those birds have been seen in the state.

As for the flamingos, Brady said hundreds of the birds were likely pushed off course by the hurricane. They’re typically found in the Bahamas or Cuba and sometimes Florida.

“I don’t think we’re going to see these flamingos setting up shop and hanging out for the year or anything like that,” Brady said. “But, hopefully, they can kind of start wandering away southward and get back to where they’re supposed to be.”