Watch: After 17 years and 1100 km, flamingo named Pink Floyd resurfaces in US
Story highlights
In 2005, the bird, which was nicknamed Pink Floyd by Texas officials, fled the Sedgwick County Zoo when keepers failed to clip its wings, a New York Times report said. The survival of the flamingo in the wild was highly unlikely. Another flamingo, No 347, had also fled. It hasn’t been seen yet. No 492 was spotted by a fishing guide David Foreman this month
An African flamingo, who is numbered 492, has been living the life of a fugitive. Well, not literally. Around 17 years ago, the bird had made a daring escape from a zoo in the US state of Kansas and now it has resurfaced in Texas, which is around 700 miles (1,100 kilometres) to the south.
In 2005, the bird, which was nicknamed Pink Floyd by Texas officials, fled the Sedgwick County Zoo when keepers failed to clip its wings, a New York Times report said.
The survival of the flamingo in the wild was highly unlikely. Another flamingo, No 347, had also fled. It hasn’t been seen yet. No 492 was spotted by a fishing guide David Foreman this month.
Pink Floyd has returned from the dark side of the moon.
— TX Parks & Wildlife (@TPWDnews) March 28, 2022
The flamingo escaped from a Kansas zoo in 2005 and is often spotted on the #TexasCoast.
📷David Foreman@TPWDfish pic.twitter.com/cjrevByDhm
Foreman, who was out for fishing with a friend in Port Lavaca on Texas’s Gulf coast, told the Guardian, “I was expecting to see a bunch of white pelicans from the east coast, coming down here for the wintertime.”
Watch | A story of hope: Rare Sumatran rhino born in Indonesia
Instead, what he saw looked like “a poof-ball sitting on a leg”. Soon the bird began “running back and forth. I kind of got the impression that it was just trying to get away from us without having to actually fly off.”
After catching the bird on video, Foreman posted it online. “That’s when people started telling me, ‘Oh, that’s probably that escaped flamingo,’” he said.
Then, Foreman tagged the Texas parks and wildlife department, which confirmed it on Twitter.
(With inputs from agencies)
