GAINESVILLE \u2013 Florida\u2019s House voted late Wednesday to establish the American flamingo as the new state bird, a step toward knocking the mockingbird off its perch after nearly a century. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether the Senate will go along with the plan.<\/p>\n
The House voted 112-1 to approve the\u00a0bill. The Legislature has considered changing the state bird for at least five years. Some lawmakers wore pink clothing during the vote, including Rep. Lindsay Cross, D-St. Petersburg, who called it a \u201cvery Florida bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawmakers couldn\u2019t help themselves from slinging puns, asking about the bill\u2019s pecking order and noting that supporters had been \u201cwading\u201d for the vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlorida is one of the most unique places in the country,\u201d said Rep. James \u2018Jim\u2019 Mooney, R-Key Largo. \u201cOur ecosystems are extremely diverse. All of a sudden we have flamingos back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0bill\u00a0in the Senate has to pass through two more committees before it faces a full Senate vote. Those hearings haven\u2019t yet been scheduled.<\/p>\n
Standing 5 feet tall and weighing in at around-the-same in pounds, the American flamingo made its great return almost three years ago, when Hurricane Idalia blew hundreds of them to the one of the only places that could handle their oddity: Florida, already home to swamp puppies and \u201cthe Florida man.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past two sessions, a bill by Mooney ruffled the feathers of those who argued the mockingbird should remain Florida\u2019s icon. This time around, he said, there wasn\u2019t as strong opposition. It\u2019s the furthest Mooney\u2019s attempt has flown in the House. If it lands, the Florida scrub jay will be the state songbird alongside it.<\/p>\n
Some legislators have raised concerns about the flamingo only representing a small part of the state because its range doesn\u2019t extend much beyond South Florida, although a growing group of birds has been spending time at Merritt Island.<\/p>\n
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/020226-Flamingo-Bill-KM-05.jpg\")
A Florida Lottery stand displays their logo in a Pilot Travel Center in Waldo, Fla. on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. The flamingo has been a key component of the Florida Lottery’s branding since 1988. Legistators are considering the flamingo to replace the mockingbird as Florida’s state bird for the third year in a row. (Kaley Mantz\/Fresh Take Florida)<\/p>\n
Rep. Robert Alexander \u2018Alex\u2019 Andrade, R-Pensacola posted on X that Florida\u2019s state bird should be the pelican. He asked Mooney at a House hearing in December if he would consider making the pelican a co-official state bird and later mentioned a possible amendment to make the pelican the fishing bird. Andrade was the sole House member to vote no.<\/p>\n
Though flamingos don\u2019t flock to the Panhandle, their plume is in every grocery store and Publix in the state. The mascot of the Florida Lottery, smirking and blush pink, watches ticket-buyers like a hawk with each scratch-off.<\/p>\n
Retro postcards feature flamingos sunbathing alongside tourists and preening like Miami influencers. They stand one-legged and plasticky in lawns statewide, and one 21-footer in polyester named Phoebe greets visitors at the central terminal in the Tampa International Airport.<\/p>\n
Across the three committees who have heard the bill in the House and the Senate so far, there has only been one vote against. Rep. Monique Miller, R-Brevard, voiced concerns that elevating the status of the scrub jay alongside the flamingo would slow development across the state due to protections. She said she would have supported the flamingo alone. Mooney said he was more concerned about environmental degradation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to stop building,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m trying to make people hear we have precious items in front of us that are bigger than just a bird.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legislators have also questioned whether the big pink birds were native to the state. A new study from the University of Central Florida used genetics to show they are.<\/p>\n
Over 10 years, scientists analyzed specimens across the bird\u2019s range in Florida, the Caribbean and northern South America. The results supported the idea that flamingos are native to Florida.<\/p>\n
_<\/p>\n
This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at zherukhamarta@ufl.edu.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GAINESVILLE \u2013 Florida\u2019s House voted late Wednesday to establish the American flamingo as the new state bird, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[315,1563,28,114,115,139,141,140,99,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-152960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-brevard-county","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-orlando","14":"tag-orlando-headlines","15":"tag-orlando-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}