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A pair of Great Egrets mating, return annually to a rookery nestled just outside of downtown Dallas, Texas. Great egrets' nests are typically unstable platforms, made of stems, sticks, and twigs. Great egrets rear one brood of chicks a year. The female lays the eggs, after which both parents take part in the incubation for 23-24 days. An average egret clutch contains 3 to 4 eggs.
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Photo: Nicole Land
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The black caiman is an intimidating sight. To the many prey species it devours, this South American reptile is a swimming, walking terror. For all its ferocious mojo, the black caiman is defenseless against an unlikely foe: the horse fly. The flies suck blood from the soft tissue around the reptile’s eyes, which peek out of the water as it stalks its prey. Yet the black caiman “did not make any effort to evade the flies,” says photographer Karine Aigner, who witnessed the scene while boating through Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park.
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Photo: Karine Aigner
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Perched at an awe-inspiring altitude of 12,507 feet (3,812 meters) above sea level, Lake Titicaca is a geographical marvel. Straddling the border between Peru and Bolivia, this expansive body of water is often referred to as the “highest navigable lake in the world”. Covering approximately 3,232 square miles (8,372 sq/km), Lake Titicaca is immense. Its sheer size rivals that of some smaller countries, making it the largest lake in South America by volume and surface area. The lake’s waters plunge to a maximum depth of 922 feet (281 meters).
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Whale makes epic migration, astonishing scientists!
The whale pictured below, has made one of the longest and most unusual migrations ever recorded. It was seen in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017, then popped up several years later near Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean - a distance of at least 13,000 km. Experts think this epic journey might be down to climate change depleting food stocks or perhaps an odyssey to find a mate. Dr Kalashnikova said it was very likely the longest distance a humpback whale had ever been recorded travelling.
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Photo: Natalia Bostero-Acosta
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Yes, it looks like tree bark, appearing to be a broken off extension of what it’s sitting on! It’s a behaviour called “masquerading”, where it mimics the branch as a form of camouflage. It is one of the weirdest birds imaginable. It’s called a potoo. And you think it looks weird! That’s just the start. In folklore, its haunting calls are sometimes thought to be the cries of lost souls or wandering spirits. They look like they should be related to owls, but they are not. They are actually a cousin of the nightjar and frogmouths. In the old world, this family of birds is also called “goat suckers”, because of the mistaken belief that they sneak into the barn at night, and with their huge mouths they suck the teats of the goats, so their milk dries up! They dont... but its a good story.
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Photo: Brian Keating
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On one of his first trips to study wolves in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, biologist Claudio Sillero observed a highly unusual behavior: these local predators were deliberately licking the vibrant flowers of the red hot poker plant that grows in the country’s highlands. Relatively few mammals have been documented drinking nectar and this was the first reported case of a large carnivore doing so. Ethiopian wolves almost exclusively prey on small rodents — the nectar simply supplements their meat-based diet. The significant amount of pollen which accumulates on the wolves’ muzzles — and the fact that some individuals were seen visiting up to 30 different blooms in a single foray — could mean the wolves help pollinate the plant by transporting pollen from flower to flower. It’s the first possible case of a large carnivore acting as a pollinator. Endemic to Ethiopia’s Afroalpine meadows and living exclusively in a handful of isolated areas, just 454 adult Ethiopian wolves remain.
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Photo: Adrien Lesaffre
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The Kemp’s ridley (Lepidochelys kempii) has been hovering on the cusp of extinction for much of the past 50 years. It is the smallest species of sea turtle, topping out at two-and-a-half feet long and up to 45 kg (100 lbs). Like all sea turtles, Kemp’s ridleys hatch in the sand and make the perilous journey across the beach and into the sea. Scientists also know little about how long Kemp’s ridleys live, though estimates suggest a lifespan of at least 30 years. They are the only species of sea turtle that nest mostly during the day. They are also one of only two species that nest en masse (the other is the olive ridley), gathering offshore in large groups and clambering all at once onto the beach in what is called an arribada—Spanish for “arrival by sea.” It is in part because of this unusual behaviour that the Kemp’s ridleys are so gravely endangered. With nearly the entire population nesting primarily in one spot.
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The world's oldest known wild bird has laid an egg at the approximate age of 74, US biologists say. Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was filmed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge in the Pacific Ocean with her latest partner looking after the egg. Members of the species usually only live for 12-40 years, but Wisdom was tagged in 1956 when she was about five. Her last offspring hatched in 2021. She is thought to have had more than 30 chicks in her lifetime.
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Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service
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So we went for a little 2 hour hike at The Lewa Conservancy In Kenya recently. And for a little background info, when you hike in Africa... you are 'food'! So, of course, after about 30 minutes we come over a ridge and there is this guy staring at us. At this very moment, our armed hiking guide says to me... and I quote, "If he moves one inch towards you hit the ground, black rhinos rarely fake charge and I dont want to shoot you!" Great! So I decided to take a very quick picture and quietly poop my pants! Pretty rare animal, the fact a set of horns sells for about $85,000 US, you can see the issue.
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Photo: Bryan Smith
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Found only in the high mountains of southern Mexico, it’s the world’s 2nd smallest bird, weighing slightly less than a penny! Great Big Nature’s naturalist, Brian Keating, was just there, birding with Cornelio Ramos Gabriel, the region’s well-known bird guide. One has to ask, if this is the 2nd smallest bird, how small can the smallest possibly be? How about the Bee hummingbird of Cuba! It weighs about the same as a dime! To power their high energy metabolism, both species feed on nectar and small insects. Like many hummingbirds, they enter a state of torpor every night so they don’t starve to death during their nocturnal fasting period.
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Photos: Brian Keating
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You are looking at the rarest zebra species in the world. Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), also known as the imperial zebra, is the largest living wild equid and the most threatened of the three species of zebra, the other two being the plains zebra and the mountain zebra. Compared to other zebra species, Grévy's are the tallest; they have mule-like, larger ears, and have the tightest stripes of all zebras. They also differ from the other species in that they do not live in a harem, and maintain few long-lasting social bonds. Their population has declined from 15,000 to 2,000 since the 1970s.
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Photo: Bryan Smith
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