From our position anchored in Abraham’s Bay in Mayaguana, Bahamas we looked over toward town. From the distance we could see the Red Mangrove trees along the shoreline, but the roots of the trees looked unusually red. A quick look with binoculars confirmed our first sighting of an honest to goodness flock of wild flamingos.

Today’s project was to get on shore, and get better pictures of the birds, but before we did that, we took some time to hike around the island. Our plan was to hike to the north beach. Unfortunately, on an island with 4 roads, I missed our turnoff. So we ended up half way across the island before we decided we were tired enough to head back.

If we were choosing a name for this island today, it would have to be some version of “Butterfly Island.” A large variety of colorful butterflies were everywhere along the road. These pictures were all taken within a 3 minute walk…

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This island has a significantly smaller population of small lizards compared to other nearby islands, probably because of the large population of kestrels.

After our travels across the island, we were back the the settlement of Abraham’s Bay and we set out across the mangrove flats to get closer to the flock of large pink birds. There were obstacles, like the 10 foot wide web built across the trail by this large–and strange looking–spider.

I learned a couple of things about flamingos. First, is that they are very skittish birds. A human within 100 yards of so sets them off to nervous “chattering” among themselves and they start to move away.

The other thing I learned, is that there is a very wide color variation within a single flock of birds. Yes, there are certainly many that are the garish salmon-pink of a tacky plastic lawn ornament, but many others are gray, or white, or the barest hint of pale pink.