Kansas Zoo Eagerly Awaits Summer Sightings of Flamingo Who Escaped 20 Years Ago and Joined a Wild Flock

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2 days ago

Flamingo fans are hopeful to get a glimpse of an escaped zoo bird now known as "Pink Floyd"
The African flamingo escaped from the Sedgwick County Zoo during a storm in June 2005
Multiple sightings of the bird thriving in the wild have been confirmed throughout the years, including a sighting in Texas in 2023An African flamingo that escaped a Kansas zoo twenty years ago is still keeping wildlife aficionados on their toes.
"Pink Floyd," also identified as flamingo No. 492 because of the numbered band around its leg, escaped from the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita on a dark and stormy night in June 2005, the Associated Press previously reported.
No. 492 and another African flamingo were two of 39 born in Africa, then shipped to the Kansas zoo in 2004.
According to the outlet, employees didn't have a chance to clip the birds' wings, which made it easy for them to fly away. Blood testing also hadn't been done, so their sexes are unknown.
While Pink Floyd has been seen numerous times since escaping into the wild two decades ago, Kansas news station KAKE TV reports that as of Wednesday, May 28, 2025, the other escaped flamingo has not been seen since June 2005.
Pink Floyd often appears with other wild flamingos in the summer and spring, and was last seen in May 2023 on the Texas coast, the local news station said, noting that the area is a place the bird is known to frequent.
"Flamingo No. 492 spotted for the sixth year in a row on the Texas Gulf Coast, 18 years after it escaped a Kansas zoo! Members of our Audubon Texas team were participating in the Texas Annual Waterbird Surveys and spotted this escape artist," Audubon Texas captioned a May 23, 2023, Facebook post.
The organization shared two photos, one of the majestic bird standing alone during the day in what appeared to be a marshy area, and another of the African flamingo stretching its wings.
A yellow "492" band can be spotted on its leg in both images.
On May 22, 2024, a Corpus Christi-based Texas photographer named Dan Thornton claimed to have seen the bird.
"This flamingo escaped from a zoo in Kansas in 2005 and has been named Pink Floyd. He has been in the coastal bend for several months. These photos were taken in Port Aransas," he wrote on a blog post, along with several of his shots of a flamingo.
However, despite the photos, Thornton's encounter was never confirmed as a Pink Floyd sighting because his photos show the bird wading through water, blocking the view of the yellow band used to identify the famous flamingo.
AP News reported that flamingo No. 492 had also been seen in Wisconsin and Louisiana, in addition to Texas, and that officials from Sedgwick County Zoo have no plans to recapture Pink Floyd.
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"There really isn't an easy way to recapture the bird. It would only disturb wildlife where it's been found and possibly could do more damage to the bird than just leaving him alone," zoo spokeswoman Christan Baumer said in 2007.
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