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The birds swish their “upside down” beaks back and forth through the water, siphoning it through special filters that allow them to capture the algae. Impervious to the burning water, they come en masse to Lake Natron to eat the rich Spirulina. Photo: Flickr User: Steve Garvie (cc 2.0) First, it is the source soda ash, a key component in glass manufacturing. Lake Natron offers two things of interest. Almost as alkaline as ammonia, and as scalding as a cup of coffee, the waters of Lake Natron will blister skin, burn nostrils, blind eyes, and poison nearly any animal tempted to drink its water. Lake Natron is a shallow saline body of water that burns with alkalinity born of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano’s unique soda ash that has rained into its waters over the last 350,000 years.
Lake natron birds update#
Why am I suddenly reporting on Lake Natron? Because this is an important update to a post about Lake Natron that I wrote back in 2013. The number of chicks increased by over 600% from 120,000 in 2018 to 995,000 in 2019,” says Emmanuel Mgimwa, BirdLife’s Manager of the Lake Natron Ecotourism Project*. “This year, we counted over 1,750,000 adult birds compared to 760,000 last year, which is an increase of 130%. This week, BirdLife, the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) and the Engaresero Eramatare Community Development Initiative (EECDI), reported on the results of the lesser flamingo survey conducted in February 2019 at Tanzania’s Lake Natron.