Flamingo

Lake Manyara National Park holds large shoreline feeding flocks and is the most accessible site on the northern circuit. Arusha National Park's Momella Lakes and the Magadi soda lake inside the Ngorongoro Crater also hold flamingos year round. Legend Expeditions includes these sites on northern circuit itineraries.

Lesser flamingos are present at Tanzania's alkaline lakes year round, but numbers shift with water levels and algal blooms. The dry season generally offers the best viewing conditions and easiest access. Lake Manyara is most reliable from June through October when water levels concentrate the birds near visible shorelines.

Flamingo feathers are coloured by carotenoid pigments extracted from their diet of algae and tiny crustaceans. Lesser flamingos in Tanzania get their pink colour from the Spirulina algae they filter from soda lakes. A flamingo fed on a different diet would be white, because the colour is essentially edible chemistry processed through the liver.

Tanzania hosts both lesser and greater flamingos. The lesser flamingo is smaller, deeper pink, and filters algae; the greater flamingo is larger, paler, and feeds on small crustaceans and molluscs. You will often see mixed flocks of both species at Lake Manyara and the Momella Lakes in Arusha National Park.

Flamingos have specialised salt glands that excrete excess minerals through the nostrils, tough scaled legs that resist the caustic water, and an oily feather coating that prevents skin damage. They are one of the very few vertebrates that can feed and breed on high pH soda lakes. This is why their ecology is so tightly tied to Tanzania's specific alkaline lake system.

Tanzania hosts a large share of the East African lesser flamingo population, which numbers in the millions across the regional soda lakes. Lake Natron alone can host up to 2.5 million birds during breeding. Within the northern circuit parks you will routinely see flocks of thousands to tens of thousands.