Flamingo Nesting Season Lake Natron — Tanzania
Lake Natron in the northern Tanzanian Rift Valley is one of Earth's most caustic environments — a soda lake at pH 10.5 whose surface temperature reaches 60°C and whose water is saturated with sodium carbonate — and the only regular breeding site for the lesser flamingo in the world, with up to 2.5 million birds nesting on the lake's soda flat islands each year. The flamingo colonies turn the lake surface pink from the air, visible from satellite, and the caustic water that kills almost every other organism is precisely the condition that protects flamingo eggs from predation on the open mudflats. At dawn, with the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano rising above the lake's southern shore in the pink flamingo-coloured light, Lake Natron is one of East Africa's most extraordinary landscapes — one accessible only with considerable effort that entirely justifies the journey.
About this spectacle
Lake Natron is a place of savage beauty — a vast soda flat shimmering in caustic heat, its surface streaked pink and crimson by the massed bodies of up to 2.5 million lesser flamingos nesting on isolated mudflat islands. The lake's pH of 10.5 and surface temperatures reaching 60°C keep virtually every predator at bay, and the flamingos exploit this lethal moat with spectacular success. At dawn, arriving light catches the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano rising to the south while the lake glows with the pink of countless wings in motion — flocks lifting and settling in slow, roiling waves. The air fills with a constant low murmur of calls, the sharp mineral smell of sodium carbonate rising from the flats, and the visual rhythm of birds wading in shallow, rust-red brine. The scale is difficult to absorb: the colony is visible from orbit. Getting here demands real effort — rough roads, heat, remoteness — but the experience of standing at the edge of one of Earth's most hostile and paradoxically life-filled places is unlike anything else in East Africa.
When to go
Jun — Nov
Getting there
Nearest airport: JRO. Nearest city: Arusha.
Booking options
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