Anegada is allegedly home to some Roseate Flamingos and what follows is our attempt at finding them. Read on...

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If you look at a map of Anegada,



you might notice that almost half of it is home to some rather large salt ponds, four of them: Red Pond, Bumber Well, Budrock Pond with the largest named Flamingo Pond!

"You know what that means" I asked Dave rather excitedly?

"Yes dear, I know" he replied concernedly, "the dreaded mosquitos or no-seeums, or any of that type of creepy-crawly bites insect sort."

"No hun, it means we might see some flamingos! Real flamingos" I exclaimed !

And by that I meant we might have a chance of seeing them in the wild and not behind cages or walls of wire mesh leaving them barely enough room to walk around in, but instead wading and waddling about on their home turf of salt ponds. You know?

What exactly is a salt pond? One of the billboards we read called it a coastal wetland. It's usually brackish looking, consists of fresh and salt water and home to salt-pond type of sea life, which the Flamingos like to eat. Their preferred food is shrimp and the reason why they are pink!



Anegada's salt ponds were declared a Ramsar Site on May 10, 1999.

And if you, like me, had no idea what Ramsar is, here's a quick cut and paste from their website:

"The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, called the Ramsar Convention, is the intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources.

The Convention was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971 and came into force in 1975. Since then, almost 90% of UN member states, from all the world's geographic regions, have acceded to become "Contracting Parties".

"Anyways" says Dave and I, simultaneously... "we're on the hunt for Flamingos".

Flamingos used to live here by the thousands. As always, with the introduction of humans, the flamingos were hunted, both for food and their plumage, until extinct.

They were reintroduced to Anegada in 1992 and have since been making a slow comeback.

And if you stop for a moment to know that flamingos reach sexual maturity somewhere between the ages of 3 to 6 years, lay ONLY one OR two eggs a year... well it would generally take a long time to congregate a flamboyance. Which is what a group of flamingos is called.

"Good morning" said Keith, as we walked past the Anegada Reef Hotel, "Are you looking for a car to tour de island?"

As it happens we were, and once the cash and keys were exchanged, we placed our backpacks and snorkel gear in the backseat, turned left at the roundabout,



and started off on our Adventure !!



I did mention Anegada was flat, didn't I, and known as the "drowned island"? What could be called a road was definitely made for jeeps, which we had, and ours creaked and groaned and rumbled its way along the bumpiness of a sand-etched road, moving aside for oncoming traffic.



"Let's go right" I suggested to Dave, "Stop, now, and we can walk into one of the salt ponds and we might see flamingos!!"



His response, as always "Yes, dear"

We parked the car on the sand dune, and tiptoed our way in, along the hushed quiet of nothingness,



eventually emerging at what looks like a large shallow pond.



"Look, over there" he said, pointing, and we took some gazillion photos of would-be, want-to-be potential flamingoes.

"They don't look very pink to me" I muttered, but then it was a hot, hazy type of day, threatening rain but not quite, and all the while making us squint off into the distance and nothing was quite the colour it should be if the skies were blue and Flamingos were pink.

This was the closest the camera could zoom, the least blurry, and quite the best shot of... our flamingos.



Flamingos live in mud and straw nests built on the ground, so it could have been, almost was, a potential home.

We turned around and headed back. Outwards, and onwards, and I had my gaze downwards, perhaps looking for flamingo-tracks. They were so elusive I didn't see any, however did see this growing in a mazeful type of way,



and some, hmm, bovine poop.



We continued along, until I squeaked

"Hey look, up there..."
"It's not pink!"
"But it's a bird..."



And a gorgeous one at that !!

We stopped at a few touristy hot-spots, Cow Wreck Bay, quaint and quiet in the early morning,



and there was no sign of anything pink here, except these,



and still too early for arrival beers or lunch, so we kept on going, thinking we would be back in the afternoon for some of the above.

"Besides, we have some Flamingos to find..."
"Yes, dear" he said, "But first we should get some gas 'cause i'm not sure Keith's gas gage works".



Keith did mention that we might have a good chance of seeing flamingos by the bridge, and we got out and walked inland, trying to follow the paths that lead to nowhere,



and as hard as we looked out over the wetlands, and saw some of these,



the long and large expanse lead to nothing pink,



except this.



Loblolly Beach held some treasures of its own, but again, the only thing even resembling a flamingo, was this cute pink plastic likeness.



When the rumblings in our tummies got too loud to ignore, and Dave confirmed that it was way past lunchtime and he was starving to death, we returned to our favourite spot, Cow Wreck Bay, for an afternoon of food and snorkelling.

The hosts were excellent, the tourists loud and obnoxious and rude, and we saw the biggest ever Spotted Eagle Ray swim alongside us in the shallow three foot waters.

Do you know what else we found here?



We drove around The Island some more, saw the originators of Bovine Poop,



and noted the high rise BVI off in the distance,



and toured the Settlement where everyone lives.

We found another entrance to one of the salt ponds, that had us walking inland and exploring some more,



with no evidence of pink to be seen anywhere, and then driving around getting lost for a road or five, before we somehow ended up on the main stretch of sand, and with relief we noted some familiar landmarks that passed us by that confirmed our location.

We stopped once again at The Bridge, where...

"Look Dave..." I pointed,
"Yes, get some photos..quick !!

And off in the distance what did we see?? A small narrow line of pink blurry pinkness, that could or could not be...



but really are, FLAMINGOS !!

Flamingos definitely be here. We had ourselves a veritable Flamingo Flamboyance.

FUN !!