Pro in focus

The award-winning nature photographer talks to Graeme Green about telling stories, inspiring people – and a flamingo named Bob

 Jasper Doest loves to spend time with his friend Bob. They never know what their days together will involve, whether it’s going for drives or taking swims in the ocean. “Bob is super-relaxed,” says Jasper. “He’s easy to hang out with. He accepts me for who I am, and I accept him for who he is, which is a good starting point for any relationship.” It’s an unusual relationship, though – largely because Bob is a bright pink flamingo.

“It’s an odd story, right? But I’d say Bob is family now,” Jasper explains. “He’s a Caribbean flamingo who lives on the Dutch island of Curaçao. In 2016, he crashed against a hotel on the island. My cousin Odette is a vet there, and tried to rehabilitate him, but he couldn’t be released into the wild because he had an injury to his left wing that never recovered.She noticed he was incredibly tame. She thinks he’d been living in captivity before, then escaped and got himself into trouble.”

Faced with the standard options of releasing Bob back into the wild, where he was unlikely to make it, or putting him down, Odette instead took him in and made Bob an ambassador for Fundashon Dier en Onderwijs Cariben (FDOC), an organisation that educates local people about the importance of protecting the island’s wildlife.