Browse Items (1062 total)

Racing to pack on pounds before winter grips the reserve, a brown bear hunts for fruit in a blueberry patch reddened by September’s chill. Brown Bear feeding on blueberries, Uzon Caldera, Kronotsky Zapovednik, Kamchatka, Russia-MM7646

Born when a volcanic cone collapsed some 40,000 years ago, the Uzon Caldera continues to steam in places where magma heats the groundwater to a sizzle. No more than eight miles wide, the rock-rimmed crucible holds at least 500 geothermal features,…

A skittering bird and a lumbering brown bear left prints in the mud at a hot spring in Uzon Caldera. Among the largest of their family worldwide, brown bears can grow to over 1,200 pounds. More than 700 thrive in the reserve. Brown Bear prints at…

As summer’s exuberance fades, sunset colors steal across tundra dimpled with ponds in Uzon Caldera. Tourists may visit this basin and the nearby Valley of Geysers on a few carefully planned paths—the only public access to the 2.8-million-acre…

Story on Kronotsky Nature Reserve, Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia for National Geographic. Celebrating the wonders of the natural world. Part of National Geographic series of Landscapes around the world. In the remote far east of Russia, the land still…

Caption: Standing on the sea floor, a diver is approached by a right whale the size of a city bus. Over 15-meters in length and weighing 70 tons, this whale had most likely never seen a human before and was highly curious.

Caption: Eye to eye with the third largest animal to ever live on planet Earth. The roughened skin over this whale's eye is covered with tiny crustaceans called whale lice.

Polar bear tracks, remain after strong Arctic winds blow all of the lose snow away. The bear was following a ridge in search of seals. Without sea ice, polar bears will disappear.

An elephant scratches its head on a wall at an abandoned housing development in Bang Bua Thong, Thailand. Many of the elephants are covered in white concrete residue from scratching themselves on the walls of the unfinished homes. The project was…

A thicket of tentacles belonging to the magnificent anemone, provides cover for a transparent shrimp the size of a grain of rice. The sea anemone, anchored to the reef, ignores shrimp, bu nabs small fish and other passersby.