However, flamingos were hunted in large numbers for their plumes, skin, and meat, and the native population was nearly wiped out by 1900.
In recent times, scientists have been studying flamingo eggs held in museums, which suggest that flamingos were nesting in Florida in the late 19th century and occurred naturally in large flocks of 500-1,000 birds. “The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away…” A century later, in 1965, the book illustrations inspired a Royal Doulton character jug of the Ugly Duchess with a flamingo handle by sculptor Max Henk. Lewis Carroll was inspired by the exoticism and otherworldliness of the flamingo for his curious game, which was perfectly depicted in the illustrations of John Tenniel. While the idea of a pet flamingo is strange, even more, bizarre is the mad croquet game in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where live flamingos were used as mallets and curled up hedgehog as balls. He left with a live specimen, which he named Aurora, and she became a beloved house pet, dining on boiled rice and mushy bread. Instead, he headed to the Bahamas to see an immense flock honking hoarsely. The illustration of a foraging flamingo for Audubon’s Birds of America is now iconic.īy the 1881 edition of The Birds of Eastern North America, Charles Johnson Maynard noted that flamingos were rare in the Florida Keys and he had never seen one there himself. He wrote later of his first Flamingo sighting “Ah! reader, could you but know the emotions that then agitated my breast!”. At last, he spotted a flock in flight with outstretched wings, elongated necks and legs tucked behind them.
However, John James Audubon struggled to find them during an 1832 expedition through the islets of South East Florida.
Fortunately, they can be enjoyed through the eyes of Boehm porcelain artists in the Flights of Fancy exhibition, which previews on November 9.ĭuring the 1800s, naturalists reported dense clusters of American flamingos in the sunshine state. The elegant pink birds are everywhere in advertising, in place names, and even on the logo for the state lottery - but few residents see them in the wild.
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