Natural Phenomenon: Lake fly plumes on Lake Malawi

One of the most amazing phenomenon in the natural world happens on Lake Malawi.

Imagine thousands and thousands of flies, all hatching at once in the middle of a huge, open expanse of freshwater...rising up from the lake in huge plumes, like smoke in the distance.

If you can't imagine what that would look like, here are a few pictures to show you this amazing natural sight:

The plumes attract birds and fish, who glut themselves on the insects as they are blown across the lake towards the shores.

Each plume is made up of millions of flies, and as you can see in the image on the right the lake fly make dense clouds that can be seen far on the horizon.

When the lake fly make landfall, this is the scene close to the shore as they swarm around trees and buildings.

Children go crazy over these lake fly and gather large handfulls of the insects to make into cakes, which they fry and eat!

An amazing event in nature and one which I would thoroughly recommend you see.