"In a world that is eager for beauty, the flamingo might be the symbol of the great wealth of color and incredible design with which Nature in her wisdom has provided us. Their red-coated flocksare a spectacle of vast and stirring wonder."

— Robert Porter Allen

THE EGYPTIANS BELIEVED IT WAS THE PHOENIX, born from the ashes of its own white hot funeral pyre. Christians may have taken their cross from its hypnotic flight and the composer Stravinski celebrated its beauty in his “Fire Bird Suite”. Park duck, part crane…complete enigma. Perched on one leg, it draws large crowds at Disneyworld who stare transfixed into its dark, unblinking eye. As much icon as bird, flamingoes thrive in the earth’s most inhospitable corners. From Kenya’s Lake Nakuru’s blistering alkali flats to the Caribbean’s searing beaches to Bolivia’s 14,000-foot--high Altiplano desert, Flamingoes are survivors. Their ability to flourish where other species perish has helped sustain a stable world population.

I have documented all six species of flamingo on five continents, with images and tales of flamingos sweeping across a cobalt blue Bahamian sky, nesting in the harsh delta region of France’s Camargue, performing courtship dances in Kenya, and even dodging the bolas of Chipayan hunters in the Altiplano region of southeastern Bolivia. As far as I know, I am one of only two people in the world to document on film every species of flamingo in the wild (the other is Roger Tory Peterson, who had offered to write an introduction to this proposed book).