First-ever American flamingo to visit New York spotted in East Hampton pond
It’s one of the most celebrated visitors to hit The Hamptons in years.
An American flamingo in all its pink glory was seen this week in the posh waters of East Hampton’s Georgica Pond — the first time the elegant creature has been spotted in New York, one expert told The Post.
Cathy Blinken first laid eyes on the not-so-fowl animal Friday afternoon, while working remotely at her mother-in-law’s home.
“I was just taking a look out onto the pond and the flamingo was directly in front of me,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Wait a second, that looks like a strange-looking swan.’ As soon as it lifted up its neck, I knew instantly it was a lost flamingo.”
Blinken, whose husband happens to be the first cousin of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, proceeded to call the East Hampton Star so they could photograph it because she couldn’t snap a good picture.
The bird, native to the West Indies, northern South America and the Yucatán Peninsula, was still there Saturday afternoon “just hanging out.”
“I have a telescope on him and I’m watching him all day,” she said. “He kind of flies and he does a couple of bank turns and he comes back. He’s so sweet.”
Hundreds of bird lovers have been flocking to get a glimpse.
“He’s very well visited. I woke up at like 6 o’clock this morning and there were people already out there observing the flamingo and just being very respectful,” she said.
There’s never been a record of an American flamingo in New York state, said ecologist Jose Ramirez-Garofalo, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University and director of the Freshkills Biological Station on Staten Island.
Hurricane Idalia, which slammed the southeastern US in August, could have helped ferry the feathered beast up north, he said.
“The hurricane essentially brought a whole bunch of flamingos across the United States,” Ramirez-Garofalo told The Post. “It was pretty unprecedented. … There’s not many records of them this far north.”
After the hurricane, the flamingos “overwintered” in the Southeast, so “this bird is probably one of those that overwintered somewhere in the United States,” he predicted.
It makes sense the bird has remained on the pond, he said.
“This bird is probably tired. It’s looking for food. It can definitely stick around,” he said. “There’s plenty of food, the temperature is right. There is some precedence to having flamingos on the East Coast stick around for the entire summer season.”
Blinken hopes the creature will stay.
“Yesterday, there was a crazy sailboat guy trying to get a closeup and he kept shooing off the flamingo, who was trying to escape the boat,” she said.
“And I thought, ‘Oh God, don’t scare the flamingo away!'”
