Every year in August, the nomadic lesser flamingos of sub-Saharan Africa flock to the Great Rift Valley lakes of East Africa – primarily Kenya’s Lake Bogoria – to feed on immense blooms of microscopic blue-green algae (a cyanobacteria known as spirulina), before flying to Lake Natron in northern Tanzania to mate and nest around November. With flamingo numbers at each of these two lakes often topping two million, these moving seas of pink are a truly breathtaking sight to behold. Every October, the skies of Central Africa go dark as more than 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats make their annual pilgrimage from the Congo Basin to Kasanka National Park in Zambia to feed on the waterberries, mango, wild loquat, and red milkwood berries that appear in abundance at this time of year. During what is known as the largest mammalian migration on earth, the bats devour around 4.4lb (2km) of this fruity ambrosia each night, leaving the trees stripped bare of their succulent bounty by the time the nocturnal creatures depart towards the end of December.
SOURCE: LONELY PLANET
More Stories
Joshua Baraka is Ugandan Music’s Next Big Thing
Design for Human Rights
A Landmark Exhibition Celebrating the Global Impact of Modern and Contemporary African Fashions
Seven Striking Images by Africa’s New Creative Wave
Broken Chord, Sadler’s Wells Review – Sublime Music for the Tale of a South African Choir
Kinshasa’s Street Artists Raise Issues about Globalisation and Economic Plunder
Africa’s Leading Tourist Attraction 2023 Nominees
Lagosians will Proudly Tell You there’s No Party like a Lagos Party
If You Are Looking to Set Up an Office Remotely, South Africa has It All
Luxury Places to Stay in Zanzibar for a Memorable Vacation on the Island
Accelerating and Scaling Priority Infrastructure Development in Africa
Case Studies: Strategising for a New Era of African Trade