Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend on August 31, 2023 scattering American Flamingos across the state in unprecedented numbers in dozens of unexpected places. Little did we know that this was just the beginning.

It was certainly reasonable to think that, now 3 weeks after Hurricane Idalia’s passage through the southeast United States, that the flamingo situation might be beginning to ebb. But that is definitively not the case, as lost birds continue to turn up at new and increasingly absurd outposts in what is becoming one of the most unpredictable avian phenomenons in memory.