Unusual Pictures: "Calcified" Birds, Bats Found at African Lake

Stony Swallow
Photograph courtesy Nick Brandt

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.

Brandt 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. The photographs, taken between 2010 and 2012, appear in Brandt's new bookAcross the Ravaged Land. (Also see "Pictures: Best Wild Animal Photos of 2012 Announced.")

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.
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