Michaeline Moloney a researcher, author, and member of the IUCN Flamingo Specialist Group, currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

In 2008 she began a six-year study on Sir Richard Branson's private Necker Island when forty-four introduced Caribbean flamingos formed the foundation of what would become a flourishing colony. After a long history in the Virgin Islands, humans killed off native breeding flamingos by the mid 1960’s. There have been other successful efforts to reestablish this vanished species, however, Sir Richard has gone above and beyond to ensure the flamingos a happy home once again.

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Sir Richard’s Necker flamingos aren’t a tame hotel attraction. The salt ponds are a living cauldron of flora and fauna over sucking clay, plumbed to provide a healthy setting year round. Flamingos are free to come and go; their behavior viewed from a near distance. They remain wild and natural considering they share habitat with us. That reveals a lot about how they communicate, interact and make decisions.

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​Every three to four weeks Michaeline would sit along the open shores of Necker’s two salt ponds. She has photographed and documented her observations of these individuals, expanding families, and clans beautifully into Flamingos of Necker Island: Sir Richard Branson's Brilliant Birds.