Crimson Wing: The Mystery of the Flamingos

(Matthew Aeberhard): Voice: Mariella Frostrup.

Running time: 75 minutes

Rating: 2/5(PG)

Lake Natron in northern Tanzania is a place not of this earth. That's part of the attraction here in this cutesy documentary: why do flamingos come here in their millions to breed? The sky is a blazing azure and the land a fiery red. Summer turns the lake into an inhospitable, giant salt bed where flamingos go in swarms to lay their eggs. This is the story of their life cycle. The birds feed on algae that turns them into pink candyflosses. They then gather in a giant huddle where they stomp about and croak at each other until they find a mate. A bit like Dublin on a Saturday night then.

It's narrated in lyrical, plum tones by Mariella Frostrup and we get great close-ups of hatching and freshly opened newborn eyes. Unlike March of the Penguins, the makers don't seek to anthropomorphise the birds. Though they do show their intelligence at work: an exodus of 100,000s of young birds marching in twos and threes looks like schoolchildren being marshalled from the sides by supervising adults. While nature is happily shown red in tooth and claw: baby flamingos are picked off by predators, while one doomed bird stumbles about with salt-encrusted shackles about its legs.

At 75 minutes, you wonder how anyone thought there was enough material here for a feature film. I could have happily watched it in half an hour on the telly.