Jaimi Butler, of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College in Utah, said that on the shoreline of the northern arm of the Great Salt Lake, she has found birds that are «pickled»-so encrusted in salt you can pick them up and they will stay in the same position they were lying in.īutler added that healthy birds do frequent the lake, so the dead animals may be ones that succumbed due to sickness or other causes. Lake Natron is named for the mineral natron, or hydrated sodium carbonate, which was used in the making of mummies in ancient Egypt. «There is almost no calcium in the lake, although the inflowing fresh waters have calcium, which precipitates as it mixes with the high-pH alkaline waters of the lake.»Ī bat seems Halloween-ready in a 2012 portrait taken by Brandt. The animals probably aren’t truly calcified, but are coated with sodium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate, said Cerling, who has researched the chemistry of Africa’s Rift Valley lakes. So he believes the birds and bats were confused by the sky’s reflection in the lake and killed when they hit the water. However, Brandt said that many people in the region have seen birds crash-land into the water. Since there are few predators in the area, their bodies remain and become salt-encrusted when the lake’s water level drops. Thure Cerling, professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, said by email that the animals in Brandt’s photographs likely died of natural causes. Lake Natron’s unusually harsh composition comes from a unique neighboring volcano, Ol Doinyo, which spews alkali-rich natrocarbonatites that end up in Lake Natron via rainwater runoff. Lake Natron, During the hottest period, the intensity of sodium carbonate increases to a greater extent, making the lake viscid. And while the lake is known for being green, it can also change color to red, pink or gray depending on gasses released from underground. Many thanks to Linda for allowing me to excerpt from her book, Mucalinda: Self-Portraits + Self-Reflection. The lake gets its color from mineral byproducts of the spewing volcano, which rainwater picks up as it runs down the crater. Linda Troeller will teach 'Self-Portraiture and Poetry' with Maureen Alsop in Palm Springs, California, April 2-5, 2012. (Also see « Pictures: Best Wild Animal Photos of 2012 Announced.») Photo about travel, touristic, tanzanian, lengai, calm, safari, natron, tourist, african, doinyo, nature, region, volcano, active, gregory, angle, ground. Tenerife Photography Festival, Canary Islands, Spain. The photographs, taken between 20, appear in Brandt’s new book Across the Ravaged Land. A «calcified» swallow sings in stony silence along northern Tanzania‘s Lake Natron (map), which contains so much soda and salt that it would «strip the ink of my Kodak film boxes in a few seconds,» according to photographer Nick Brandt.īrandt unexpectedly found the dead animals that had washed up on the shore, preserved by the lake, and posed them as they had been in life.