Angelika Warmuth / EPA
Swan keeper Olaf Niess and his helpers catch swans in Hamburg, Germany, on Nov 20. They are being moved to their ice-free winter home on the Eppendorf Muehlenteich lake.
Angelika Warmuth / EPA
Swan keeper Olaf Niess steers his boat with swans on the Innen Alster Lake in Hamburg, Germany, on Nov. 20. They are being moved to their ice-free winter home on the Eppendorf Muehlenteich lake.
Oswaldo Rivas / Reuters
An Olive Ridley turtle returns to the ocean after nesting at the La Flor Wildlife Refuge, about 93 miles south of Managua Nov. 15, 2012. According to the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) La Flor is one of seven beaches in Central America where more than 100,000 Olive Ridley turtles nest at each year.
Related slideshow: Animal Tracks
AFP - Getty Images
A rescued baby pangolin is released in the forest by government wildlife and conservation officer in Karo district located in North Sumatra province on July 31, after Indonesian police intercepted 85 endangered pangolins, most of them alive despite being stuffed into sacks by suspected smugglers. The animals, also known as scaly anteaters and prized mostly in China and Vietnam as food and medicine, were crammed into 14 sacks when they were seized at a bus station in the city of Medan in North Sumatra province on July 28, said Yoris Marzuki, chief detective of the local police.
AFP - Getty Images
Seized pangolins are held in plastic crates in Medan city on July 31. Indonesian police have intercepted 85 endangered pangolins, most of them alive despite being stuffed into sacks by suspected smugglers, an official said on July 31.
AFP - Getty Images
A rescued pangolin is released in the forest by government wildlife and conservation officers in Karo district located in North Sumatra province on July 31, after Indonesian police intercepted 85 endangered pangolins, most of them alive despite being stuffed into sacks by suspected smugglers. The animals, also known as scaly anteaters and prized mostly in China and Vietnam as food and medicine, were crammed into 14 sacks when they were seized at a bus station in the city of Medan in North Sumatra province on July 28, 2012, said Yoris Marzuki, chief detective of the local police.
See even more images of rescued pangolins here in the NBCNews.com PhotoBlog.
Phil Moore / AFP - Getty Images
Patrick Karabaranga, a warden at the Virunga National Park, sits with an orphaned mountain gorilla in the gorilla sanctuary in the park headquarters at Rumangabo in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Tuesday. The Virunga park is home to some 210 mountain gorillas, approximately a quarter of the world's population. The four orphans that live in the sanctuary are the only mountain gorillas in the world not living in the wild, having been brought here after their parents were killed by poachers or as a result of traffickers trying to smuggle them out of the park. "They play a critical part in the survival of the species" says Emmanuel De Merode, Director for Virunga National Park. He adds that the ICCN does not currently have access to the gorilla sector of the park due to the M23 rebellion.
Phil Moore / AFP-Getty Images
A Virunga National Park ranger from the Congolese Wildlife Authority (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, ICCN) stands at an observation post at Rumangabo at the edge of the Virunga Park in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday. The ICCN is responsible for patrolling the national park, which is home to approximately 210 mountain gorillas, around a quarter of the world's remaining population. M23 rebels now occupy Rumangabo and several other locations within Africa's oldest national park, which is also affected by other armed groups.
Phil Moore / AFP - Getty Images
A bloodhound and his handlers from the Congolese Wildlife Authority (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, ICCN), along with ICCN park rangers, take part in a training exercise at an airstrip in Katale in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
See more recent coverage in PhotoBlog of the rebel advances in Congo, and another post about bloodhounds used to track elephant poachers in Virunga National Park.
Keith Bedford / Reuters
Seized illegal ivory elephant charms are displayed as New York's District Attorney Cyrus Vance speaks during a news conference to announce the guilty pleas of two ivory dealers and their business for selling illegal elephant ivory, in New York on Thursday. Over $2 million worth of illegal elephant ivory was seized in the course of the investigation.
Keith Bedford / Reuters
Members of the media photograph seized illegal ivory items during New York's District Attorney Cyrus Vance's news conference.
WBOY-TV reports that this is the largest illegal ivory seizure in recent New York state history.
Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
Long-tailed mayflies (Palingenia longicauda) fly over the surface of the Tisza river near Tiszainoka, 84 miles southeast of Budapest on Wednesday. Millions of these short-lived mayflies engage in a frantic rush to mate and reproduce before they perish in just a few hours during "Tiszaviragzas" or Tisza blooming season from late spring to early summer every year.
Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
Long-tailed mayflies (Palingenia longicauda) mate on the surface of the Tisza river near Tiszainoka.
Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
Long-tailed mayflies (Palingenia longicauda) mate on the surface of the Tisza river near Tiszainoka.
Villagers in India lower a ladder into a reservoir filled with green slime to help a fallen leopard escape. TODAY.com's Dara Brown reports.
You probably wouldn't look too happy either if you'd fallen into that stuff!
A wild leopard that fell into a slime-covered water tank at an Indian tea estate was rescued by wildlife officials who lowered a ladder into the tank.
Diptendu Dutta / AFP - Getty Images
A wild leopard reacts after it fell into a water reservoir tank at a tea estate in Sangatram, some 30 kms from Siliguri, in West Bengal, India on May 28, 2012.
Clinging on to the ladder the leopard made a sharp exit, no doubt making a vow to watch its step in future.
Diptendu Dutta / AFP - Getty Images
An official from the Sukna Forest rescue team at the Mahananda Wildlife sanctuary assesses the situation.
Diptendu Dutta / AFP - Getty Images
The leopard escapes by climbing up a ladder put in place by the wildlife sanctuary team.
Prakash Mathema / AFP - Getty Images
A monkey and a bull beat the summer heat on the banks of the Bagamti river in Kathmandu on May 25.
Richard Ellis / Getty Images
Volunteers from the South Carolina Aquarium release a rehabilitated Loggerhead Sea Turtles on Friday in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. The turtle was one of two that were rescued and nursed back to health by the sea turtle hospital at the aquarium.
Richard Ellis / Getty Images
Volunteers from the South Carolina Aquarium release a rehabilitated Loggerhead Sea Turtle.
Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images
A woman looks at an elk standing on a lawn at a residential area in eastern Moscow, May 16. An elk family of bull, cow and calf wandered into a residential area in the eastern part of the Russian capital, close to Losiny Ostrov (Elk Island) National Park, Russian media reported.
Apparently the elk that live in nearby Losiny Ostrov National Park have been roaming beyond the park's borders and coming into close contact with Moscow residents. It looks like this woman had a very close encounter with one of them.
[note: if you live in North America, you likely know the Eurasian elk as a moose].
Tim Laman/National Geographic
A male club-winged manakin in the Milpe Bird Sanctuary, with his characteristic red thatch, has just attracted a female with his sound and now hopes to seal the deal.
National Geographic
It turns out that the late Michael Jackson wasn't the only one who can moonwalk: Photographer Tim Laman captured a manakin (it's a tropical bird, not a life-size doll) busting a remarkably similar move for the May edition of National Geographic magazine.
Like a beauty queen from a movie scene, a manakin in action is a spectacular song-and-dance number in the middle of a tropical forest. About half of the 40 known species make music by moving their body parts. And in the flush of courtship, males execute maneuvers with names like the dart, the about-face, the upright, and the backward slide (which looks just like the moonwalk Michael Jackson popularized with the hit "Billie Jean").
In 1871, naturalist Charles Darwin sized up the manakin like this: “The diversity of the sounds … and the diversity of the means for producing such sounds, are highly remarkable. We thus gain a high idea of their importance for sexual purposes.” Just remember, male manakins: "Be careful of what you do, and don't go around breaking young girl's hearts."
Deep in the cloud forest of South America a tiny bird, the club-winged manakin, sings with its wings. As part of their courtship, males execute maneuvers with names like the dart, the about-face, the upright, and the backward slide (which looks exactly like a Michael Jackson moonwalk). See more in the May iPad edition of National Geographic magazine: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/digitaleditions.html
Tim Laman/National Geographic
The blue-crowned manakin doesn't produce any wing sounds.
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Gerald Herbert / AP
Nesting pelicans fly on Cat Island in Barataria Bay in Plaquemines Parish, La., on April 11, 2012. The island has eroded greatly since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill two years ago.
Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert says he will never forget what he saw on his first visit to Cat Island, just over a month after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of April 20, 2010:
Noisy brown pelicans were flying around and swimming in the water, which was carrying waves of newly arrived thick crude. The oil was collecting on the shoreline. Some birds were too coated to fly, looking distressed.
On the lush island rookery, filled with thick mangrove, off-white pelican eggs were smeared with oil from birds sitting on top of them in nests.
I took photographs, documenting the first pelican rookeries affected by the spill. There was a pit in my stomach; I thought this colony may well be doomed.
Gerald Herbert / AP
A pelican sits on the last remaining mangrove remnant on what used to be a small island, as it erodes into the bay next to Cat Island on April 11, 2012.
Herbert decided he had to return to the islands off the coast of Louisiana. A year ago, PhotoBlog published a series of his photographs that showed a dramatically changed ecosystem where land was eroding and vegetation was dead or dying.
Video: Prosecutors preparing criminal charges in BP spill
The photographer made a third visit to Cat Island last week, with the disaster now two years distant but its consequences plain to see. "The deterioration was shocking," he writes:
The island had eroded and was much smaller. What was once mangrove so thick only a bird could enter was now black stumps sticking out of the sand. There were fewer pelicans, and they were nesting on bare earth, exposed to the next storm surge.
As I looked out across the water, I got a sick feeling. I thought this may all be gone soon, only a GPS coordinate in the Gulf and a story about what natural beauty was once here.
Gerald Herbert / AP
Pelicans are seen flying over mangrove isolated in the water near the heavily eroded shoreline of Cat Island on April 11, 2012.
Gerald Herbert / AP
The last remnant of what was a small island near Cat Island is seen as it is eroded by the surf on April 11, 2012.
Marine biologist and University of South Florida Prof. Steve Murawksi talk about the two year anniversary of the BP oil spill.
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