National Geographic @natgeo

natgeo Photo by Aaron Huey @argonautphoto / Winter in Kabul, Afghanistan. A government building near the former presidential palace at Darulaman, destroyed in fighting between Rabbani and the Hazaras in the early 1990s. Follow @argonautphoto for a month-long series of stories and images from #Afghanistan , starting today, with his first encounter with the #Taliban

natgeo Photos by @timlaman / You’ve probably heard the expression “like water off a duck’s back.” Here's where that idiom comes from. This spectacled eider’s feathers are so waterproof that the water doesn’t wet it at all—it just beads up and rolls off, as seen in these sequential frames. The spectacled eider is a near threatened species that breeds on the coasts of Alaska and Siberia. I photographed this male recently at the Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy ( @ripley_ducks ) in Connecticut, a nonprofit breeding facility focused on maintaining genetic diversity of rare and endangered species, and an education center for the next generation of conservationists. #eider #ducks #birds #birdphotography #threatenedspecies

natgeo Photos by Ivan Kashinsky @ivankphoto / “We know the struggle. We understand what a blessing it is to have the DACA* program. So you bet we are working really hard to accomplish our dreams and become better people and be able to help others.” – Ana Zamora Ana Zamora came to the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, when she was five. She is an administrative assistant at the Los Angeles' White Memorial Hospital in the diabetes department. She is also a senior at Cal State LA and a leader at her local church. Ana at age four (courtesy of Ana Zamora); Ana stands by the hospital where she works, in Boyle Heights; academic medals hang on the wall in Ana's home in Boyle Heights; Ana (in white) jams with her band, G-sus, at the pastor's house, where they practice and record songs, to be uploaded to the internet for members of the church to see online. *Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) protects some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation. President Trump’s attempt to end DACA was blocked by the Supreme Court last year. President Biden signed an executive order to preserve the program. This project was created by  @kchete77  and  @ivankphoto  with the support of the  @insidenatgeo  Covid-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists. Check out Nat Geo's link in bio for more on this story.

natgeo Photos by @babaktafreshi / The last rays of the setting moon were shining on the cliffs in Zion National Park in Utah as the night sky was becoming darker every minute. A thin layer of high clouds, scattering starlight, diffused bright stars in the constellation Orion and revealed more of their striking colors in this 10-second-exposure photograph. Swipe for a wider angle image. Orion, the hunter, is the most prominent celestial figure in the Northern Hemisphere's winter nights. Marking a shoulder of Orion is bright star Betelgeuse. This red giant is a thousand times larger in diameter than the sun, at the very end of its life, waiting to stun the galaxy with its supernova explosion. At about 600 light-years away, we are at a safe distance from this closest supernova candidate. When that happens, anytime in the next several thousand years, it may outshine the full moon in the Earth’s sky. Text from my recent book "The World at Night." Explore from the Earth to the universe @babaktafreshi and @twanight . #orion #zionnationalpark #nightsky #betelgeuse

natgeo Photo by @michaelchristopherbrown / Last month marked the ten-year anniversary of the Libyan revolution and the First Civil War, a 2011 conflict fought among Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, then leader of Libya, and Libyan militias seeking to replace him. During the Arab Spring and immediately after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, protests began in Benghazi, on February 15, 2011, which led to clashes where government forces fired into crowds. The fighting spanned most of 2011, largely ending with the death of Gaddafi, in late October. However, fighting is ongoing among the militias, many supported by foreign interests, in what's called the Second Civil War. I spent seven months in Libya in 2011, photographing those events, culminating in the book Libyan Sugar. In this image, taken during the first days of fighting, revolutionaries head toward the front line, near the town of Bin Jawad, which was then occupied by government forces. Some of these Libya photographs were seen in the National Geographic magazine story “Young, Angry, and Wired,” published in July 2011. Follow @michaelchristopherbrown for more human stories from around the world. Check out Nat Geo's link in bio for more on this story.

natgeo Video by @joelsartore / This adorable critter is a five-toed jerboa @moscow_zoo_official . The jumping rodent has hind limbs that are nearly four times as long as its front limbs, measuring up to ten centimeters in length. Using these long, powerful legs to travel, the jerboa can cover up to three meters in a single bound. To see more of this unique rodent, follow me @joelsartore . #jerboa #rodent #bigfoot #PhotoArk #savetogether

natgeo Photo by @lynseyaddario / Amina, 14, left, bakes bread with other Afghan girls. Four years ago, she fled with her family from Ghazi Province to a village outside Kandahar because of ongoing fighting and insecurity, February 2020. Amina's uncle and cousin were assassinated by the Taliban, because the cousin's brother was a police officer and they were targeted for working with the government. Amina's family moved to get away from the violence, and to enable Amina to attend a Save the Children school. But her mother never recovered from losing family members in Ghazni, and she died from apparent high blood pressure, said to be linked to the stress, two months after leaving. Girls and young women in conflict are uniquely impacted by the horrors of war, facing the increased threat of sexual violence, a risk of early marriage, and the denial of their basic human rights, including access to healthcare and education. This post is in honor of the strength and resilience of women and girls around the world. #LynseyAddario #Afghanistan

natgeo Photo by @katieorlinsky / Blue Kennels on the Herbert Glacier near Juneau, Alaska. In the summertime, professional dog mushers bring their sled dogs to live on glaciers, where they can enjoy snow and cool weather year-round, and tourists visit the kennels by helicopter to go on a sled dog ride with champion canine athletes. Most glacier sled dog operations were shuttered this past summer due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, many glaciers like the Herbert are rapidly receding as a result of climate change, another challenge for maintaining sled dog camps in the summertime.

natgeo Photos by Danielle Villasana @davillasana / Huge fires recently ravaged large swathes of the world’s biggest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Home to thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled violence and persecution in Myanmar, the fire displaced nearly 50,000 refugees and destroyed more than 10,000 shelters as well as other crucial facilities. The International Organization for Migration’s Director General António Vitorino said the “disaster is a terrible setback that exacerbates the humanitarian needs of refugees in Cox’s Bazar.” Killing several people and injuring hundreds, the fire’s cause remains unknown with hundreds still missing. Having documented the harrowing stories of Rohingya refugees in 2017, my heart goes out to this community. Follow me @davillasana for more stories focusing on human rights, gender, health, and migration around the globe.

natgeo Photos by @carltonward / A female Florida panther makes her way through a fence, crossing from a cattle ranch east of Naples onto Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. This more than 50-square-km nature preserve alone is far too small to support even one adult male panther, which needs up to 500 square kilometers (200 sq mi) to roam. But conserving adjacent agricultural lands can keep it connected to larger conservation lands. The Florida Wildlife Corridor is a statewide network of public and private lands that panthers and other wildlife need to survive. More than half of the corridor is protected public preserves. The balance is mostly working lands—ranches, farms, and forests. Cattle ranches, like Buck Island Ranch (second photo), make up most of the corridor that still lacks protection in the southern Florida. Facing constant pressure from development for housing, many ranchers are seeking funding for conservation easements to help them stay on the land. “On the Endangered Species Act, do you see ‘cowboy’ or ‘rancher’ written on it? No, but we benefit from the protections afforded the panther,” says Elton Langford, a rancher who lives to the west, near Arcadia. The @PathofthePanther project is supported by the National Geographic Society, working to inspire the protection of the Florida Wildlife Corridor @insidenatgeo @archboldstation @corkscrewswamp From "Return of the Panther," by @douglas_main in the April issue of National Geographic. Check out Nat Geo's link in bio for more on this story.

natgeo Photo and video by @stephenwilkes / This Day to Night image is part of a series I created while documenting bird migration for National Geographic. In 2017 I traveled to the Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska to photograph the sandhill cranes at this stop, which marks the halfway point of their migratory journey. I spent 36 hours in the blind that's being built in image three. The sight and sound of these cranes taking off at sunrise and coming back to roost at sunset was one of the most spectacular displays in nature I’ve ever witnessed. In the Day to Night series, cityscapes and landscapes are portrayed from a fixed camera angle, capturing fleeting moments of humanity and nature as light passes in front of the lens over the course of a full day. A select group of these images are blended into a single composite. To see more from my travels near and far, follow me  @stephenwilkes

natgeo Photo by David Chancellor @chancellordavid / Leopard hunting at the hippo pool, Mpala Research Centre, Laikipia, Kenya. There is a great stillness in a leopard, and yet immense power and motion. It appears almost liquid in form as it moves through landscapes that offer little cover, but the leopard is never really visible. I watched it under moonlight sit like a sphinx on a rock still warm from the day’s heat, surveying the landscape for its prey. Then, in a perfect snakelike fashion, it moved down from the rock toward an unsuspecting hare—and vanished. There was no doubt what the outcome would be now. The next time I caught sight of it, it was within a few meters of the hare, and absolutely stationary. Unless you had the necessary code, it simply appeared to be invisible again to all but those who knew it was there. Even the hare, one of nature’s most cautious species, had no idea that it was being stalked. The grass parted; the hare barely moved, and the leopard had taken its prey. Extraordinarily, nothing changed; no birds called, no alarms sounded from other wildlife, nothing … not even the sound of the silent assassin, carrying off its prey. To see more follow me @chancellordavid . #mpalaresearchcentre #cat #leopard #africa #kenya @natgeo