Maybe a desert isn’t the obvious place to look for bird reflections, or indeed reflections of any kind. Deserts are dry, no? And the Atacama Desert in Chile is especially so. In fact, it’s the driest non-polar desert in the world, and has had no significant rainfall for 400 years. And yet, the shallow waters of its barren salt flats offer picture-perfect reflections of feeding flamingos.
-
-
Deserts take many forms, but to most of us the word conjures up rolling dunes as far as the eye can see. Such a desert is the Namib, home to the world’s highest dunes. Many of them surround the clay pan of Sossusvlei, and one of the best ways to appreciate the scale and sheer number of these dunes is from above, in a hot air balloon.
-
The landscape here is a series of horizontal stripes in blue, green, beige and brown. It creates a calm backdrop for the flamingos as they feed, their pale pink feathers reflected in the still pools of water.
-
I think it was in Syria that I first fell in love with the huge open skies of desert landscapes. I felt I could sit and look out of the bus window quite happily for hours ...
