The year 2005 spelt disaster for the Laguna Fuente de Piedra in Malaga, the natural saline lake that is home to Europe's second largest breeding colony of Greater Flamingo as the lake received only 80mm of the required 400mm of winter rainfall since the October of the previous.

In April the situation was looking pretty grim when a member of the team that monitors the breeding birds told us that flocks of flamingos were arriving daily from Africa but then quickly moving on as the water level was no where near high enough to supply sufficient food for the birds who feed on small shrimp and algae which is found in the salt water of the lake

In 2004 over 15,000 pairs bred and the sight of these bird feeding and flying around the lake is phenomenal. By July 2005 the former lake was a sea of salt and not a Flamingo in sight. The birds that moved on were expected to go to either Doñana in Andalucia (which also has drought problems tat year), the Ebro delta in the north of Spain or even further north to the Camargue in France which has the largest breeding population in Europe.

It is a real blow for the team at the lake not only for the birds themselves but also as each year they are attracting more and more people to see the spectacular which brings much needed publicity and education about wildlife and the environment to locals in Andalucia.

Record numbers at the lake reached 18,000 pairs in 1991 but other years have also seen poor breeding number often due to low rain fall but sometimes due to too much water which makes it impossible for the flamingo to build their nests which are raised up on a mound of mud in the shallow water.