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Frozen Flamingos

Robert Krulwich was reading Ian Frazier’s new travelogue, Travels in Siberia, and got interested in the flamingos that had landed there (and then gone to live in a nearby zoo). He pursued the story, talking to more than the Siberian locals.

Marita Davison, who studies flamingos at Cornell University, says she regularly sees Bolivian flamingos up in the Andes Mountains. And at that high up — 16,000 feet — the lakes freeze around their feet. She sent us this video of flamingos stuck in ice. There are two on the right trying to get free.

“It’s really an amazing sight to see,” she told us. “They’ll just wait for it to thaw and then go on [with] their business.”

This is just a small detour from Krulwich’s exploration of the mystery.