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Flamingos appear on Florida lottery tickets, T-shirts in tourist shops and a two-story sculpture named Phoebe at Tampa International Airport. Restaurants, salons and elementary schools across the state bear the name. The state bird, however, is the Northern mockingbird — and it has held that designation for 99 years. A coalition of legislators, scientists, business owners, artists and Florida literati now aims to change that, proposing the American flamingo as the state’s official bird.
“It’s the only issue that everyone in Florida can agree on,” said Dave Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist who lives in Miami and recently joined the flamingo campaign. “Except the forces of Big Mockingbird.”
Republican Rep. Jim Mooney, whose district includes the Florida Keys and much of Everglades National Park, has twice introduced House bills seeking official status for the flamingo. “Nobody thinks of Florida and thinks of the mockingbird,” Mooney said, adding that the mockingbird is the official bird of several other states. “Flamingos say Florida — they’re on our lottery ticket.”
In this past legislative session, Mooney added the scrub jay as proposed state songbird to broaden support for the measure, citing the bird’s threatened status and disappearing habitat. The gambit carried risk: some legislators worry that officially recognizing the scrub jay could empower environmentalists to push for greater habitat protection.
The flamingo campaign has long been led by Marion Hammer, the former president of the National Rifle Association. The retired lobbyist has bashed the scrub jay for years while supporting the mockingbird and, more recently, the flamingo. “The mockingbird is a well-established, independent, prolific bird that doesn’t need government protection or our tax dollars to survive,” Hammer wrote in a 2023 Tallahassee Democrat guest column. Scrub jays, she wrote, are “evil little birds that steal other birds’ eggs and kill the babies of other birds.”
The case for the flamingo’s return to Florida rests on a dramatic reversal in the species’ fortunes. American flamingos were hunted nearly to extinction by 1900 by an international plume trade that valued their feathers higher per ounce than gold. For decades afterward, sightings were rare, and the state classified the species extirpated, maintaining that any flamingos spotted in the wild were escapees from zoos or sanctuaries. That historical classification bolstered opponents of the flamingo bid.
Then the birds began reappearing in greater numbers. In 2012, a group of flamingos — known as a flamboyance — surfaced in western Palm Beach County. A young flamingo scientists named Conchy arrived in Key West in 2015. Hurricane Idalia then blew hundreds more from the Yucatán to Florida in 2023, including an exhausted bird that landed near St. Pete Beach and was named Peaches. Many settled in the Everglades.
“If someone lost 142 flamingos, they would notice,” said Jerry Lorenz, retired research director at Audubon Florida, pushing back on the claim that returning birds were escapees.
Scientists concluded from DNA research that the flamingos are wild, said researchers associated with the movement, and are settling in the state largely because of the Everglades’ restoration. The birds, which weigh about 5 pounds, form social groups and can live at least 50 years. “The storm made them realize they can take advantage of this continent,” Lorenz said.
The scientists created the nonprofit Florida Flamingo Working Group, which successfully petitioned the state to declare the flamingo indigenous. The group is now campaigning for state-bird status.
Some advocates contend the mockingbird’s official standing is itself questionable. “This is Florida’s oldest fake news,” said Kris Cole, a retired high-school teacher who helped his students in Seminole County promote the scrub jay for decades. Cole said the mockingbird does not appear in any Florida statute.
Zoo Miami — home to 37 flamingos and zero mockingbirds — joined the cause. “It’s my life mission,” said Ron Magill, an ambassador for the Zoo Miami Foundation after 46 years at the zoo. “This is a no-brainer for the state of Florida.”
The bill reached the House floor in February. On the day of the vote, pink-clad supporters filled the chamber. “Let’s make flamingos great again,” said Republican Rep. Chip LaMarca, a co-sponsor.
The measure passed 112-1. When lawmakers spotted the lone “nay” vote — cast by Republican Rep. Alex Andrade, whose panhandle district is home to mockingbirds — loud boos filled the chamber. Andrade had previously proposed a compromise amendment adding the pelican as a co-official state bird. “I hear their sweet songs most mornings,” Andrade said of the mockingbirds in his district. Mooney declined the amendment, responding: “No, respectfully no.”
Republican Rep. Monique Miller, representing the Space Coast, objected not to the flamingo but to the scrub jay. “I don’t want to say anything about the scrub jay — I’m sure it tastes delicious with barbecue sauce,” Miller said. “But it’s been commandeered by the left to violate property rights.”
Despite the overwhelming House vote, the bill died in a Senate committee. Mooney said he was unfazed, comparing the fight to a previous successful effort to make the strawberry shortcake the official state dessert. “I almost lost an election because of the crazy Key lime pie people,” he said. He plans to reintroduce the state bird bill next year.