The Kiskunság National Park in Hungary has reported the rare sighting of two pink flamingos on its reserve.
The rare event occurred on Jan. 6 at Dunatetétel, where a young and old member of the species were spotted in the shallow water.
Hungarians are used to only seeing this type of flamingo in nature documentaries or zoos; indeed this sighting is just the sixteenth case in Hungary dating back to the 1910s.
The most recent sighting prior was at the Fehér Lake in Szeged, southern Hungary in 2018 where a single young pink flamingo was spotted. Before that in 2017, there were two sighted at the nearby Csaj Lake in Szömörkény.
The species nests in many parts of southern Europe, although it has special habitat needs. It is an ubiquitous species in Africa, but it is also present in regions of the Middle East and India.
The characteristic beaked, neck-legged wader usually sticks to coastal saltwater habitats and is particularly rare in the interior of the continent. The shallow saline lakes of the Hungarian Great Plain are somewhat reminiscent of the salt lakes and coastal lagoons where flamingos occur regularly. Their food is small crabs, saltworms, mosquito larvae and algae that are filtered out of the soft mud using their special beak.
