Port Wentworth man spots flamingo near neighborhood

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. (WSAV) – A Port Wentworth man says he spotted a flamingo in a pond behind his neighborhood.

Shawn Keith moved to south Georgia from Tampa, Fla., more than a year ago and says he's used to seeing exotic animals like flamingos. But on Friday, May 24, he was shocked to see Port Wentworth's most unusual resident while out cycling for his birthday.

“My wife spotted it first, looked back and said, 'Wow! It looks like a flamingo, and I know there are roseate spoonbills, they get confused a lot,” Keith said. “Since we're from Florida, a flamingo isn't surprising, so I kind of forgot where I was – Georgia. I looked back and confirmed it was a flamingo.

The next day, Keith returned to the pond to check on the bird.

“It looks like it was in the same body of water,” he said. “He was wading, but it looked like he was feeding because his head would go under the water, and you wouldn't see it for a few seconds, and then it would pop up. But our presence did not shake our presence.

He said he kept coming back to find the bird in the same place, at the same time, every day since.

“It’s at dusk that you see it. I go there in the morning when I’m not on shift and he was there several times,” Keith said.

He even gave the flamingo a name: Shae.

“We were kind of looking for unisex names because we had no way of knowing if it was male or female, so we named him Shae,” Keith said.

Keith says he hasn't seen Shae since Memorial Day weekend, but just seeing the bird once was sentimental.

“I had recently lost my grandmother last year and she lived in Florida her whole life, so I thought she was kind of honoring her with her presence,” Keith said.

He tells News 3 he will continue to return to the pond to check on Shae and see if the bird is still there every day for the foreseeable future.