Birridas: Australia's unique gypsum lakes where birds from Siberia fly for wintering

The place where Australia meets the Indian Ocean in the west has long been famous for its unique landscapes. Shark Bay, or Shark Bay, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and more than 120 thousand travelers visit it every year. This is a unique ecosystem where several species of sharks, dugongs, dolphins are found. And here are dozens of gypsum lakes, which locals call birridas.

Millennia ago, the sea level was higher, and the birridas were large salt lakes surrounded by sand dunes, rich in lime sulfite. Over tens of millennia, the water receded, the lakes gradually dried up, leaving a small footprint. Now in their place - salted cavities, powdered with gypsum. And some territories are literally studded with them: birridas of different diameters, from one hundred meters to 1 kilometer in circumference. Especially a lot of such salty troughs in the national park of François Peron: there are more than a hundred of them. Some of them have a connection with the ocean, and are constantly filled with water, others turn into bodies of water only during the rainy season or during strong tides. The water in them costs a long time, which attracts crabs and other invertebrates to lay eggs in them: they birridas literally swarming. Of course, this cannot but attract birds, for which time after the rainy season turns into a real feast of the abdomen: even birds from Siberia (for example, snipe birds) come here for the winter.

Birridas are especially magnificent from above: it is during the flight that you can evaluate the shape and quantity of these reservoirs.