It must be true love — for eachother and the Stockade — that made a pair of romantic flamingos brave the snowbanks around Lawrence in order to make their much-anticipated annual Valentine Visitation to the Schenectady Stockade. (Click here for last year’s coverage of the event with links to more materials about this Stockade tradition.)
Our Stockade Flamingo Angels guided this pair to Lawrence Circle right at sunset tonight (Sunday, February 13), leaving about a dozen members of their flamingo colony roosting safe and warm in a Stockade refuge. Thanks again to our anonymous merry-makers, the keepers of this fanciful Stockade tradition.
Here are photos taken this evening in slideshow format. Below them is a gallery with each picture. I’m planning to be up around sunrise to snap a few more shots and maybe catch a romantic neighborhood couple or two strolling by.
. . . 
update (Noon, Valentine’s Day 2011): It was too cloudy for sunrise pictures this morning, but by 11 A.M. the sun and the flamingos cooperated for a daytime photo shoot, which has been incorporated into the slideshow and gallery below.
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- You can click on each of the photos in the Gallery below for a larger version and scroll over it for a description.
- 6 P.M. update: After a 55° day (or was it the pink liqueur?), our flamingo pair are leaning a bit:
Hey David-
Thanks for the chat in the library Thursday night and thanks for these photos. The snowmen and the flamingos warm our hearts in this cold weather and your pictures (taken while braving the cold) bring that warmth home to us while we sit home in our warm Stockade homes!
-Susannah
By: Susannah on February 14, 2011
at 1:13 am
Many thanks, Susannah. I hope the warmth of Valentine’s Day lasts ’til Spring.
By: David Giacalone on February 14, 2011
at 7:19 am
Beautilful Pictures. Very warming and careful.
By: Helen Witts on February 14, 2011
at 7:31 pm
Thanks, Helen. I was not as careful as I should have been at my age — climbing those snowbanks for a better angle — but it was worth the risk.
By: David Giacalone on February 14, 2011
at 8:23 pm