Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images
From a cat bath to peeping chicks and dozing pandas, get your cuteness fix with creatures great and small.
Seagulls fly over the skies of Rome in this slow-exposure photo taken on May 2.
Gerald Herbert / AP
Aviculturists at the Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans, wearing crane costumes, round up four endangered Mississippi sandhill cranes and transport them from their current habitat, to the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Gautier, Miss.
By the Associated Press:
GAUTIER -- Dressed in white canvas bags, their faces hidden behind a double layer of heavy black plastic mesh, the biologists turned avian foster parents spoke in hushed voices.
"We don't want to spook the cranes," whispered Megan Savoie, crane project director at the Audubon Species Survival Center. Full Story
Gerald Herbert / AP
Endangered Mississippi sandhill cranes stand in their temporary transitional habitat, to be later released into the wild.
Gerald Herbert / AP
Biologists measure the wing of an endangered Mississippi sandhill crane.
Gerald Herbert / AP
Aviculturist Meg Zuercher takes an endangered Mississippi sandhill crane out of its crate with the help of Scott Hereford, a senior wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to introduce it to a temporary transitional habitat.
More images of endangered species in PhotoBlog
Kumar A. Mahesh / AP
Pigeons sit on the roof of a vegetable shop in Hyderabad, India, Sept. 29.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Seagulls fly near Bass Rock where gannets nesting on the Firth of Forth on Monday, in Dunbar, Scotland.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Every January Atlantic gannets start returning to Bass Rock, with 150,000 or more making it the largest single rock gannet colony.
From afar, Bass Rock may appear to be blanketed with snow. In reality, the island in the Firth of Forth in Dunbar, Scotland, is covered by 150,000 Atlantic Gannets. The birds return to Bass Rock around January with the same mates, and most of them leave for the African west coast with new gannets by October. Learn more about Bass Rock and the gannets on the BBC.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Gannets nest on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth Monday, in Dunbar, Scotland.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Gannets nest on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth Monday, in Dunbar, Scotland.
Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
Gannets nest on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth on Monday, in Dunbar, Scotland.
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Franzi Zoger / AFP / Getty Images
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a perfect perch for these lories, or Rainbow Lorikeets, during a visit to Vogelpark Marlow in one of her electoral districts in northern Germany.
Ajit Solanki / AP
Seagulls fly at the Nal Sarovar bird sanctuary, about 47 miles from Ahmadabad, India, on Dec. 14. Consisting primarily of a huge lake and ambient marshes, Nal Sarovar is mainly inhabited by migratory birds in winter and spring.
Ajit Solanki / AP
An Indian woman carries a pot filled with water at the Nal Sarovar bird sanctuary in India on Dec. 14.
Related links:
See more photos of our winged friends in PhotoBlog.
Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters
A hunter releases his tamed golden eagle during an annual hunting competition outside Almaty, Kazakhstan Dec. 9, 2011.
Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters
A hunter with his tame golden eagle sits on a stage during an annual hunting competition outside Almaty, Kazakhstan on Dec. 9, 2011.
I would love to see these eagles in person. What beautiful creatures.
These hunters are continuing their country's ancient tradition that originated in using eagles to hunt for food. According to the BBC, the Kazakhstan government has been encouraging these eagle hunting competitions actually as a way to help the falcon population, which was facing extinction. The audience the golden eagles attract helps fund a falcon conservation center.
Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters
A tame golden eagle is seen during an annual hunting competition outside Almaty, Kazakhstan on Dec. 9.
A hunter releases his tame golden eagle during an annual hunting competition outside Almaty, Kazakhstan Dec. 9.
Nigel Roddis / Reuters
Birds entered for the 86th Budgerigar World Championship Event are displayed in cages at the Dome in Doncaster, northern England, on October 1. The two-day annual event has 2,321 entries in 740 classes.
Joel Saget / AFP - Getty Images
Gesse fly with a yellow hang-glider on June 30, 2011 at the Grand Park of Puy-du-Fou, in the west coast city of Les Epesses, France.
Reminds me of the film: Winged Migration. If you haven't seen it, rent it.
Janet McConaughey of AP reports from Cow Island Lake, La.: Cindy Ransonet stood tiptoed atop the small boat's cabin and pulled an osprey chick from the nest of a bald cypress tree.
Janet McConnaughey / AP
Tour guide Kim Voorhies of Lafayette, La., giving a day to rescuing osprey chicks in nests too close to floodwaters from the Morganza Spillway, hands a chick to licensed bird rehabilitator Cindy Ransonet of New Iberia, La., on March 17, 2011. Cow Island Lake in St. Martin Parish already was about seven feet above its usual level, and Voorhies said alligators had eaten chicks from lower nests. The water was still rising, and Voorhies' father, who got federal approval for the mission, said it would bring the nest into alligator reach at the crest. (AP Photo/Janet McConnaughey)
As parent ospreys circled overhead and shrieked, the licensed Louisiana wildlife volunteer lifted the chick gently from the messy, four-foot-wide nest of sticks and handed it to the boat's operator. Rehabilitator Donna Gee then banded it and placed the bird in a plastic portable kennel.
The rising waters unleashed in parts of Louisiana by the opening of the Morganza spillway, to protect New Orleans and Baton Rouge from Mississippi River flooding, has sent people and wildlife searching for higher ground while leaving birds such as the osprey chicks at risk.
Janet McConnaughey / AP
Cindy Ransonet hands an osprey chick to the driver of a boat that took Ransonet and another wildlife rescue volunteer to nests in danger from rising floodwaters in the Atchafalaya Basin on March 17. Although the nests were five to seven feet from the waters of Cow Island Lake at the time, the lake was expected to rise another four to seven feet, putting them in easy reach of alligators.
In recent days, bird rehabilitators have swooped in and rescued osprey chicks and eggs from this lake in the Atchafalaya Basin. A guide who usually shows them to tourists and photographers got federal approval, saying the nests would soon be under water or in reach of alligators.
The group hopes to return the chicks when the floodwaters recede, part of various efforts to rescue animals injured or threatened by the floods.
Janet McConnaughey / AP
An osprey chick too young even to sit up is weighed at the home of wildlife rehabilitator Donna Gee of Youngsville, La., on March 17. Gee and licensed rehabilitator CIndy Ransonet collected 13 chicks and three eggs March 13 and 17 from nests that they considered likely to be overtaken by floodwaters or to come within alligator reach when the nearby Atchafalaya River crests.
Read the full story and see more images of the floods in our slideshow.
Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images
Two red-tailed hawks and a crow are seen during a handing off ceremony of the first of six C-17 Globemaster III airlifters built for the United Arab Emirates Air Force and Air Defence at the Boeing final assembly facility at Long Beach Airport on May 10 in Long Beach, California.
Whilst covering the handoff ceremony for a Boeing airlifter in Long Beach, photographer Kevork Djansezian spotted a very different form of aerial combat taking place in the skies above.
UPDATE: In his caption, Djansezian identified the birds of prey as peregrine falcons, but readers contacted us to say that they are red-tailed hawks. We have now confirmed this with Getty Images and updated the caption above. Many thanks to our eagle-eyed readers fred-3455755 and uplandsandpiper.
A notorious South African jail where Nelson Mandela spent six years as an inmate is rehabilitating criminals by giving them the responsibility to rear parrots and other birds. The Correctional Bird Project at Cape Town's Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison tasks inmates to take care of chicks and young birds before they are sold as tame pets to bird lovers.
Stephane de Sakutin / AFP - Getty Images
A parrot sits on the hand of a prisoner participating in the "Correctional Bird Project" at the Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town, South Africa on March 18.
Stephane de Sakutin / AFP - Getty Images
Prisoners talk in a corridor at the Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town, near walls painted with murals of parrots.
According to photographer Stephane de Sakutin, the program fields constant requests from prisoners wanting to join and places are limited to around a dozen prisoners who undergo training and must adhere to a ban on gangsterism, smoking, swearing, and drugs. In return, the inmates are given privileges like single cells.
Stephane de Sakutin / AFP - Getty Images
A prisoner participating in the "Correctional Bird Project" talks to his Senegal parrot at the Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town.
Stephane de Sakutin / AFP - Getty Images
A prisoner participating in the "Correctional Bird Project" at the Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town feeds a parrot chick.
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