Dear Flamingos: Thanks for coming to the Space Coast. Please don't ever leave

Yahoo

6 days ago

Our adventure started early on a Friday with two kayaks loaded in the back of my friend Connie Harvey's pickup truck.
We stowed towels, snacks, water, bug spray and sunscreen in the back seat and left Cocoa Village a little after 8 a.m. heading north to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Our goal was to find a pink-feathered swatch of paradise.
We were running late, but we felt better about our tardiness when fellow paddler Jonnie Swann called to say she was 10 minutes behind us.
We took a right in Titusville heading toward the Max Brewer Bridge as we followed the GPS directions given to us by Laurilee Thompson, who was leading our adventure. Our ETA for arriving at the kayak launch was 9:02 a.m., only two minutes after our requested arrival time.
Then, a text popped in.
'Bridge is up.'
This came from Ann Maloney. She and her husband, Colley Charpentier, were coming from Cocoa Beach, meeting our group at the Haulover Canal Kayak Launch.
Figuring that's the luck of the drawbridge, we kept driving. We were three minutes out when we simultaneously got another text from Ann — 'Bridge is still up' — and a call from Laurilee.
'Looks like the bridge is out of order,' Laurilee said.
Luckily, Laurilee isn't one to let a little thing like bridge mechanics get in the way of a nature expedition. She's arguably Brevard's most avid nature-lover; she did, after all, found the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, which celebrates its 27th year in January.
'Take a right just before the bridge and go to Bairs Cove,' she said. 'We can put in there.'
The only hitch? Laurilee was on the other side of the bridge. 'I'll have to drive around the long way, so I'll probably be there after Jonnie,' she said.
New plan in place, we unloaded our boats and Jonnie's and introduced ourselves to Tom and Lisa, Laurilee's brother and sister-in-law.
Now, we had a wait, but leave it to the Space Coast to step up with entertainment. We were mesmerized by an aggragation of manatees dipping, flashing their tails and coming up for water snorts as they frolicked in the cove.
More: I can think of so many things I love. I'll bet you can, too, and it's empowering | Leonard
By 10 a.m., we were in the water, floating north toward Bird Island on flat water, a gentle breeze at our backs, pelicans drifting on the air currents above us.
As we neared the island, careful to heed the signs asking boaters to maintain a respectful distance from the rookery, we saw mature and immature pelicans, roseate spoonbills, anhingas, ibises and several types of herons. Bird sounds filled the air and Florida's avian beauty filled the landscape.
No disrespect to those amazing creatures, but we were in search of something else.
'Look at those pink dots in front of us,' Colley said, pointing to the left of a smaller island straight ahead.
Were those pylons? Orange cones? It was hard to tell. I held a pair of borrowed binoculars to my eyes and tried to focus. The distance and the gentle rocking of my kayak made that effort futile.
'Do you want to turn back, or keep paddling?' Laurilee asked.
'We've come this far. Let's keep going,' I said.
As we slowly moved forward, the pink dots rose from the water like leaves being whipped up in a fall wind gust.
So the dots were birds! But now they were flying away. Sigh.
Luckily, the disruption was temporary. After a few moments in the air, the dots settled back on a sandbar near the small island. We kept paddling.
Finally, 14 flamingos took shape, gangly legs, black-tipped beaks and wings, pipe-cleaner necks and blushing plumage. We'd found our flamboyance.
We sat awed in our bobbing kayaks, near enough to observe, but far enough so as not to startle them, watching as they preened and played and swished their beaks through the shallow water. I felt tears sting my eyes.
Flamingos were plentiful Florida natives until the early 1900s, when hunters killed them to give fashionable ladies pink flourishes in their hats.
This group arrived almost two years ago after Hurricane Idalia flushed them out of their home, probably in Mexico or the Bahamas. Most bird experts expected them to fly south again. Instead, they decided to stay.
We'd all seen flamingos in zoos, but this was different — special.
We were quiet and so focused on the shrimp-colored birds, we didn't notice the weather shifting. A rising wind churned the water, making the trip back more of a challenging paddle than a float out.
None of us cared. We were buoyed by the miracle of nature, that something as destructive as a hurricane could deposit something so rare and beautiful into our midst.
'We live in paradise,' Laurilee said, as we turned toward Bairs Cove.
Yes, we do. I hope those big pink birds think so, too — and that they stay forever.
Suzy Fleming Leonard is a retired journalist who spent 25 years as a writer, editor and columnist at FLORIDA TODAY. Reach her at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Little things, like big pink birds, make Brevard special | Suzy Leonard
Solve the daily Crossword