200 On the trail of vanishing birds 



evaporation pan. As the wind drives the water slowly across its 

 broad shallows, the unhampered tropic sun does the rest. Although 

 the water that comes out of the holes is of a lesser salinity than 

 normal sea water, the various salts are gradually concentrated by 

 evaporation until, by the time the flow reaches the far end of 

 the lake, the salinity reading may be more than four times the 

 density of the sea. And it is no longer clear and green, but brownly 

 opaque and streaked with gypsum. One can scarcely imagine, on 

 first examination, that anything organic could live in such a devil's 

 brew, but creatures do live and find sustenance therein, and one 

 of these is the flamingo. In addition to the microscopic organic 

 foods that are provided by these saline waters, the nest mounds 

 are built around a cluster of ocean holes so that clear brackish 

 water is always available for bathing and drinking. On that first 

 morning, however, all this was still a mystery, and as the blazing 

 sun, copper-red and unhindered by cloud or mist, rose sullenly 

 above the flat horizon, I looked off across that wild expanse of 

 foam-flecked inland sea and felt a great wonder that this was the 

 place I had been searching for. 



Yeates, in his delightful account of the Camargue flamingo 

 colony of the Rhone delta, summarizes briefly the rather varied, 

 yet singularly identical, characteristics of flamingo breeding 

 grounds in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Although he was able to 

 leave his base in a comfortable French farmhouse and travel the 

 short distance to the nest mounds in carpet slippers, it may be 

 quite a different story elsewhere. In southern Spain, Johnston con- 

 tracted fever and Abel Chapman "lost a week through ague 

 brought on by constant splashing about in comparatively cold wa- 

 ter with a fierce sun always beating down on one's head." The 

 worst plight, however, was that of McCann's associate, Captain 

 Webster, in the Great Rann of Kutch in northwest India. He 

 returned from a day in the saddle with his face "red, swollen, 

 cracked and peeling in several places, his arms . . . not much bet- 

 ter... he was a picture of misery." To which McCann adds: 

 "Only those who have experienced the Rann can appreciate the 

 dreadfulness of the conditions at such a time." In all this literature 

 I had found only Yeates's carpet slippers to reassure me, and no 



