>>64197257
In the hushed stillness of the steppe, just before dawn, the nest stirs.
Here, on the cold, iron plains of the Ukrainian heartland, a most extraordinary flock begins to awaken. Born in the shadows and cradled with care, the young Ukrainian Flamingos emerge cloaked from curios view, their grey plumage dull, lifeless - yet full of promise. They twitch, they hum and then... they rise.
With a thunderous chorus, the flock takes to the skies - sleek, slender, and unerringly graceful. Bound eastward, across valleys, rivers and borders, they glide with unshakable purpose. They seek not seeds nor brine shrimp… no marshland bedding. No. Their hunger is of a different kind.
To the east lie the fields of their feast - lands in which they descend in precise, blinding arcs. And it is here, in this crucible of time, that their feathers undergo a terrible metamorphosis, now burning a deep, harrowing red - stained not by pigments, but by purpose. By resolve.
Smoldering silence drapes over the eastern sky. This pack gorged and found rest. The next will follow. And the next after it.
