Flamingo Natter

I was lucky enough to get close enough (well within 250 metres) to some of the thousands of Flamingos that spend the summer on the Laguna Colorada which they use as their nesting ground before heading north to Florida for the winter.
Much of the pink in the distance that you can see in the photo is actually more of this enormous flock.
The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau in South America and has been inexistance for C. 20 million years. It covers a 600 mile strip of land on the Pacific coast of South America, west of the Andes mountains. According to NASA, National Geographic and many other publications, this is the driest desert in the world.
The rain shadow on the leeward side of the Chilean Coast Range and the Andes, as well as a coastal inversion layer created by the cold offshore Humboldt Current keeps the desert 50 times drier than California's Death Valley.