Since there are few predators in the area, their bodies remain and become salt-encrusted when the lake's water level drops.However, Brandt said that many people in the region have seen birds crash-land into the water.

(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.Thure Cerling, professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, said by email that the animals in Brandt's photographs likely died of natural causes. The photographs, taken between 20, appear in Brandt's new book Across the Ravaged Land.

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.

Lake natron tanzania on map