The left photo shows a flamingo that American ornithologist Robert Porter Allen reported was hunted off the coast of Cuba in 1951. The right image from a 1956 report by American ornithologist Robert Porter Allen showed current and recent nesting sites around the Caribbean at the time. (Images: ROBERT PORTER ALLEN)

In a 1956 research report published by the National Audubon Society in the United States, American ornithologist Robert Porter Allen documented the earliest mentions of the flamingo in human history. Images found on cave walls in Spain, he wrote, might have been created by Neolithic man more than 5,000 years ago. Flamingo species have been found from the Mediterranean to the Andes mountains in Chile, according to the report, which is titled “The Flamingos: Their Life, History and Survival; With Special Reference to the American or West Indian Flamingo.”