Vol. 22 // This bird looks like it walked out of a Jimmy Buffet song 🏖️

We were working on our ceramics this weekend. (via @happybird_777)

Found in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Florida in the United States

Hear Their Song

Flamingos have a special place in American culture: they’re associated with island breezes, lapping shores, and summer celebrations. They look like they walked out of a Jimmy Buffet song.

Flamingos originally migrated from Jamaica to the area that is now the Florida Everglades until about 1900. However, most of today’s wild American flamingoes are suspected to have escaped from captivity, like this hero still thriving in Texas 17 years after it escaped from a Kansas zoo. (They can fly!)

These gangly waders get their pink coloring from their main food source: brine shrimp. Though they are white and brown for the first few years of their lives, the pigmentation of the shrimp eventually metabolizes in rosy shades on their feathers.

Fun fact: A group of flamingos is called a flamboyant.

Give a Hoot

Birding bits you should know about this week

🦉 Look
Owlet cam
Keep watch over a Great Gray Owl's nest on this closeup livecam.

🐦 Learn
The Birder
Spend 12 minutes birding with ornithologist Dr. J. Drew Lanham, author of the memoir The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature.

🥲 Let it go
How to deal with birding FOMO
Have you ever “dipped” on a rare bird? We’ve all been there, man.

Still want to show Dad a little extra love? Use code FORDAD to save $10 on any Carton -- including FREE shipping! Choose from three custom blends of our very own Flying Colors bird seed — all made with 100% USDA certified organic ingredients and hand-mixed with love in New York's Hudson Valley.

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Your Shot

An amazing bird photo taken by one of our community members. Submit yours to hello@flyingcolors.co to be considered for an upcoming edition!

The red flamingo flew up from the South,

From the land all withered and parched with drouth.

He gleamed on the sky like a flaming brand

Blown from a burning prairie land.

He waded deep through the dark morass,

In the samphire beds, and the cool dank grass.

– “The Flamingo” by Sarah D. Clarke

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Flying Colors makes premium organic wild bird food, offering ethically sourced, toxin-free seeds and nuts of the highest quality to nourish wild birds of all types and inspire birders of all ages. Each specialty blend and single origin creation is rigorously sourced & researched, and every jar is produced with love & packaged by hand in small batches in New York's Hudson Valley and tested in our own backyards.