Local News

The Cape flamingo is back

Enthusiasts flocked to the Dennis beaches to take a look.

Mary Jo Foti captured a photo of the American flamingo off the coast of Chapin Beach in Dennis on Monday. Courtesy of Mary Jo Foti

By Beth Treffeisen

July 17, 2024

Previously:

Was that a flamingo on Cape Cod? Yes, bird watchers say.

The flamingo has returned to Cape Cod.

On Monday, birders and flamingo enthusiasts flocked to Chapin Beach in Dennis to spot an American flamingo.

Birders also spotted a flamingo at Chapin Beach on June 2.

Mark Faherty, science coordinator for the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, told the Cape Cod Times that he believed the flamingo seen at Chapin on Monday was the same bird seen earlier this summer.

Faherty told the Times that he also sighted the flamingo on Monday after walking a considerable distance out on the Chapin Beach flats, even wading through a waist-deep channel at one point.

Mary Jo Foti, the trips coordinator for Cape Cod Bird Club, was conducting a shorebird survey at Chapin Beach for Manomet Conservation Sciences on Monday morning when she waded out to an open flat and watched as groups of terns, gulls, and shorebirds swelled.

“I turned around to scan the northern edge of the flat and the American flamingo had simply materialized,” she wrote by email to Boston.com. “I never even saw it fly in. I think my heart stopped for a beat.”

The flamingo continued to move farther out with the receding tide. Still, fortunately, Foti was able to rally several birders and non-birders alike to get there before it “disappeared into the shimmer.”

People also sighted the flamingo at the end of the day at Bass Hole boardwalk near Grays Beach in Yarmouth Port.

Faherty previously told Boston.com that he believes the bird was displaced after Hurricane Idalia landed in Florida in the summer of 2023. Following the category three hurricane, flamingos were displaced across the U.S., some as far north as Pennsylvania.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the American flamingo habitat expands throughout the Caribbean and along Florida’s coast.

Even if you missed the flamingo, the fall migration of shorebirds is just beginning, wrote Foti.

“The next couple of months will be pretty epic,” Foti wrote.

She advises that the “next time you see someone carting a scope and looking a little out of place, ask about what they’re seeing, and you may notice birds you never even knew were there.”