Firebird
Some believe that the lesser flamingo, with its exotic, flame-coloured plumage, could be the origin of the fabled phoenix.
But even now, 3,000 years on, little is known of this elegant, long-legged bird which gathers in enormous flocks on the inland lakes of east Africa, feasts on an algae that turns its wing-feathers crimson and whose breeding has been almost unrecorded. This film goes to Tanzania's Lake Natron, the hottest, shallowest and most remote soda lake in the Rift Valley, where flamingos nest right at its centre. It is narrated by Josette Simon.
"No one has ever managed to visit the colony and we know why," say producers
Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett.
" It's impossibly hot, the sinking mud is like bottomless quick-sand, and you'rea long way from help if things go wrong. But that's why the flamingos feel safe here."
Executive producer John Sparks
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