Mysterious flamingo coloured pigeons invade Bristol and Manchester

Enigmatic electric pink pigeons have been sighted around the UK this week, bewildering bird experts and members of the public.

Victoria Ellis, 40, heard from her son and her husband about the birds and she didn’t believe them. But then she saw them with her own eyes, leaving her baffled. She told the Bristol Post:

“My son saw them a few days ago and I thought it must have been a trick of the light. I didn’t take him seriously. Then my husband said he had seen them.”

“I dismissed them until I saw them and I was amazed.”

Rumours have since circulated that the birds have been hand painted by a man in the city. But Mrs Ellis, who has a zoology degree, believes they could be a rare breed.

Photo: MEN

This might explain why the same electric pink pigeons have been seen as far north as Manchester. Wes Charnock, 33, was walking through Stockport town centre with his children to buy sausage rolls, when he encountered one of the mystery birds.

He told Metro: “It seemed really tame. It didn’t walk away from us like most pigeons do, it was happy to stand a few feet away.”

“It did seem tired, so I thought it might have been in a race but I’ve never seen a pigeon dyed pink before.”

If the pigeons have not been painted there is only a slim chance they are naturally pink.

There is a species of pink pigeon known as the Columba Mayeri, native to Mauritius. But they are extremely rare and nearly became extinct in 1991, when only ten individual members of the species remained, although numbers have since increased.

Bird expert Tony Whitehead of Royal Society of the Protection of Birds said it was unlikely that they were wild birds.

He said: “Possibly two thing have happened. Either they have been deliberately dyed for a wedding or a christening or they have been dyed by a pigeon fancier to let people know they are his. They chances are they are not wild.”