“The chase is all,’’ my mother used to say about men. I think of this in the prickly mangrove bush where I've been waiting, curled like a pretzel since dawn, as my subjects take off the second before my shutter clicks.

“Flamingos are tough,’’ says our guide, Colin Ingraham, a master of understatement. They pierce the sky in long, pink-and-black arrows, taking flight each time we come within a certain distance — always beyond the focal length of my lens.

Since childhood I’ve had a thing for flamingos. Yellowed notebooks show I doodled them in school. Africa being outside the budget, I’ve come to the ends of the Bahamian earth, with my sister Laurie and niece Erin, to photograph the pinup of birds.

When Nassau was just a fishing village, Great Inagua was the Bahamas’ first port of entry, on a world shipping lane, the Windward Passage. Closer to Cuba and Haiti than to Grand Bahama, it stands apart in every way. Henagua, the island’s earlier name, is thought to come from the Spanish “lleno’’ (full) and “agua’’ (water), suggesting Inagua was named for its freshwater stores. But it is also likely that the Spanish found salt here. From the Henagua Salt Pond Co. in 1848, to the Ericksons of Swampscott in 1936, to Morton Salt today, salt defines the 20-by-40-mile island. Salt creates jobs for its 1,200 residents and food for its West Indian flamingos — the largest colony in the Western Hemisphere.

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