MIAMI—Tourist shops across Florida hawk T-shirts, hats and beach bags emblazoned with the flamingo. A two-story flamingo sculpture named Phoebe welcomes visitors at Tampa International Airport. Flamingo is the name of a magazine about the state.
You can send your children to a Flamingo elementary school, buy groceries at a Flamingo supermarket, get your hair cut at the Stinky Flamingo Salon or enjoy adult entertainment at the Brass Flamingo strip club.
The state bird? Naturally, it’s the Northern mockingbird.
But not for long, if a coalition of legislators, scientists, business owners, artists and Florida literati has its way. They aim to unseat the mockingbird, which has held the top perch for 99 years, and crown the American flamingo state bird.
“It’s the only issue that everyone in Florida can agree on,” said Dave Barry, the author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who lives in Miami and recently joined Team Flamingo. “Except the forces of Big Mockingbird.”
Flamingophiles argue the rosy-feathered beauty is iconic, unique to the state, and making a surprising comeback thanks to conservation efforts and hurricanes that blew the birds back into local waters.
Jim Mooney has been promoting the birds for years. The Republican state representative’s district includes the Florida Keys and much of Everglades National Park, where flamingo numbers are rising.
“Nobody thinks of Florida and thinks of the mockingbird,” Mooney said, adding that it’s the official bird of several other states. “Flamingos say Florida—they’re on our lottery ticket.”
Mooney has twice introduced House bills trying to win official status for the bird, including adding the scrub jay as the state songbird in this past legislative session to broaden support. The scrub jay’s habitat is being removed, he said. “I wanted to bring awareness.”
It was a risky gambit. Some legislators worry recognizing the threatened scrub jay could empower environmentalists to protect more habitat.
Team mockingbird pounced.
The group has long been led by Marion Hammer, the former president of the National Rifle Association. The retired lobbyist has supported the mockingbird—and bashed the scrub jay—for decades.
“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.”
Flamingos had been hunted almost to extinction by 1900, thanks to an international plume trade that valued their feathers higher per ounce than gold. In recent decades, sightings were rare and Florida classified them extirpated, insisting that any spotted in nature were escapees from zoos or sanctuaries. This boosted the anti-flamingo lobby’s argument.
Then, seemingly suddenly, the gangly birds began appearing in greater numbers all over the state. In 2012, a group of flamingos—known as a flamboyance—surfaced in Western Palm Beach County. They couldn’t all be fugitives, right?
“If someone lost 142 flamingos, they would notice,” said Jerry Lorenz, a retired research director at Audubon Florida.
A young flamingo, named Conchy by scientists who caught and banded it, arrived in Key West in 2015. Hurricane Idalia blew hundreds more from the Yucatán in 2023, including an exhausted bird, soon named Peaches, that landed off St. Pete Beach. Many settled in the Everglades.
Scientists concluded from DNA research that the flamingos are wild—and settling there largely because of the Everglades’s restoration.
“The storm made them realize they can take advantage of this continent,” Lorenz said of the birds, which weigh about 5 pounds, form friend groups and can live at least 50 years.
The scientists created the nonprofit Florida Flamingo Working Group, which successfully petitioned the state to declare the flamingo indigenous. Now it is campaigning for state-bird status.
Some contend the mockingbird isn’t even official.
“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 it doesn’t show up in any Florida statutes.
Zoo Miami—home to 37 flamingos and zero mockingbirds—also 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.”
Last September, Rep. Mooney, of the Keys, introduced his bill in support of the flamingo and the scrub jay.
He faced resistance.
“It doesn’t sound like either of these two birds that you want to represent the entire state are found in my neck of the woods,” Republican Rep. Alex Andrade testified in committee.
The mockingbird, however, is easily spotted in his panhandle district. “I hear their sweet songs most mornings,” Andrade said, then proposed a compromise. “Would you consider an amendment to add the pelican as a co-official state bird?”
“No, respectfully no,” Mooney said.
Rep. Monique Miller, a Republican representing the Space Coast district, took issue with the scrub jay, not the flamingo. “I don’t want to say anything about the scrub jay—I’m sure it tastes delicious with barbecue sauce,” she said in an interview. “But it’s been commandeered by the left to violate property rights.”
The bill made it to the House floor in February. On the day of the vote, pink-clad supporters made speeches. “Let’s make flamingos great again,” said Republican Rep. Chip LaMarca, a co-sponsor.
The vote passed 112-1. When legislators saw one lone “nay,” from Andrade, loud boos filled the chamber. The bill then moved to the Senate, where it died in committee.
Mooney says he was unfazed. A few years ago he supported colleagues in a similarly contentious bid 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 introduce the state bird bill again next year.
Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at Elizabeth.Bernstein@wsj.com
