Into the Wild

On a cold, sunny Saturday morning in mid January, I stood out on the ravine overlooking the Bay, scanning the rafts of ducks, geese, and shorebirds, for any sign of anomaly. Over the years, I'd performed this ritual many times, always to no avail. As a frequent visitor to Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont, I'd been seeing reports of the Chilean Flamingo since as far back at 2017. He'd undoubtedly escaped from a zoo or some other equally atrocious institute of captivity and managed to find his way to the nearest salt marshes.

Rogue flamingos turning up in the states are not entirely unheard of. Most famously, there was the story of Pink Floyd, who escaped from an aviary and overwintered on the Great Salt Lake in Utah for almost twenty years, but similar stories abound.

As someone who exclusively photographs native birds and animals in the wild, I would normally scoff at such a sighting. But something about this poor creature drew me in. And on this particularly bitter cold morning, I finally spotted him, glowing pink like Selenium way out on the Bay. In fact, he was so far out, I almost didn't bother. I knew it would take hours of walking in direct sunlight to reach him and the levees were a muddy mess from king tides and all the recent rainfall. But I could not let the opportunity pass. To be continued...