Rift Valley Lakes, Kenya

This scene is an original illustration set in Rift Valley Lakes, Kenya. It lies in equatorial latitudes, where the climate is hot semi-arid steppe.

A vast flock of flamingos stands in a curving band along shallow water, heads down and feeding. White crust flats edge the milky pink-tinted lake. Volcanic hills stand back from the shore, and the light is harsh and near-vertical.

Why do flamingos feed with their heads upside-down?

Flamingos feed head-down and upside-down, filtering microscopic algae through a bill built like a sieve — which is why they need shallow water rather than deep. The pink comes from that algae, passed into the feathers. A lake this alkaline, crusted with soda and hostile to nearly everything else, forms in a closed volcanic basin with no outlet to the sea.

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