Flamingos of Bogoria | National Geographic

flamingos flock to Kenya’s Lake Bogoria
the chemistry of the lake is harsh but
here the lesser flamingos primary food
can grow
and in some ways they are a litmus test
a measure of the Lakes health nearby
Springs provide a constant supply of
fresh water
in these fresh running streams the
flamingo’s drink having dined a caustic
waters in the way they bathed and cream
to wash away the glorious minerals which
could turn their feathers to stone and
drown them forever
by some estimates more than a million
flamingos flock to the border this year
the flamingos keep coming massive in
huge flocks like a spreading paint play
Liguria is being pushed past the
breaking point
the flamingos swarm over the lake like
eating machines the caustic waters breed
a blue-green algae called spirulina for
the lesser flamingos it is the staff of
life
the powerful tongue pumps water like a
piston the beak is a highly efficient
filter so efficient perhaps that they
may be over grazing the waters or worse
the flamingos spend hour after hour on
the lake eating and defecating stuck in
a potentially lethal cycle for more than
a million Birds bow goriias waters may
well be turning from a nourishing soup
into a poisonous sewer hundreds of birds
fall ill each day by January nearly
50,000 birds are dead one of the single
largest die offs ever recorded
everywhere the birds turn they face
death and so they fly
they leave the darkened waters of
Liguria by the hundreds of thousands the
flamingos settled to the south on the
waters of Lake Nakuru
another of the rifts alkaline lakes here
at Nakuru they have found a place with
food and the new harmony at least for
now
turn to feed the flamingos frown changes
into a patient smile timeless almost
serene