Nature

When a honeybee finds a useful patch of flowers, it may return to the hive and perform a waggle dance.

Among Earth's resilient animals are tardigrades, often called water bears.

A shallow tropical coral reef looks like a colorful rocky garden, but living animals build it.

Sunlight reaches only the upper layers of the ocean.

Spider silk combines strength with an ability to stretch.

Near dawn, many birds begin to sing.

North American river otters often appear playful.

In northern autumn, many migrating geese travel south in flocks.

Many tree roots form partnerships with fungi.

Each autumn, many monarch butterflies from eastern North America travel south to wintering forests in central Mexico.

Many insect-eating bats can hunt in darkness by listening to echoes.

In summer, many leaves are green.

The Arctic tern is a small seabird with one of the longest known migrations.

The saguaro is the tall cactus of the Sonoran Desert, in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

Beavers can change a stream by building a dam from branches, mud and stones.

Many forest trees form close associations with fungi around their roots.

Many salmon leave freshwater as young fish and spend part of their lives at sea.

A lichen can look like a crust, a leaf or a tiny branching shrub.

Fire can help some trees reproduce, though its effects depend on the forest and the severity of the burn.

A glacier forms where snow builds up over many years.

A bird that has been stung by a wasp may avoid another insect with similar yellow and black markings.

You may see a line of ants travelling between food and their nest.

The wood frog can survive cold winters beneath leaves on the forest floor.

Water often rolls off a duck's back in small drops.

A pale patch on a stone may look like one simple plant, but it can be a lichen: a close partnership between different organisms.

Flying fish do not fly by flapping their fins like birds.

The Namib Desert receives little rain, but fog sometimes drifts inland from the Atlantic Ocean.

The slime mold Physarum polycephalum, which can spread across damp wood, has no brain or central planner.

Mangrove trees can grow in muddy ground flooded by tides.

An albatross can travel over open ocean for long periods with little flapping.

A wombat burrow is more than a hole deep enough to hide an animal.

Elephants produce many sounds, including low rumbles.

Mantis shrimp have unusually complex eyes.

Many owls hunt by listening for faint sounds, such as a mouse rustling in grass.

Most visitors leave the courtyard garden when the library closes, but a second shift begins among the plants.

In a managed park, a fallen trunk can look like unfinished work.

Moss does not know which way is north.

In a mature woodland, a nesting hole may serve more than one family.

A blue mussel lives where moving water can pull hard.

A dung beetle that has shaped a ball of food needs to leave a crowded pile quickly.

To a swimmer at the surface, a coral reef may appear first as color and shape.

King penguins gather in large, noisy colonies on subantarctic islands.

A winter field looks sealed after deep snow, but the boundary between ground and snow can remain a habitat.

On a warm evening, a field cricket's chirp may seem to rise from the grass.

An acorn woodpecker may return to a trunk dotted with hundreds of small holes.

On a rocky Pacific shore, mussels can crowd together so tightly that little bare stone remains.

An American pika is a small relative of rabbits that lives among cool, rocky slopes.

A tidal marsh occupies the shifting edge between land and water.

A dandelion seed hangs beneath a white crown of fine hairs.

As evening cools, a moonflower opens a pale, trumpet-shaped bloom.

A horseshoe crab pushes across a tidal flat beneath a domed shell.

Some pitcher plants grow where soil provides little usable nitrogen.

A narwhal's tusk is a tooth, usually a male’s left upper canine, that grows outward in a long spiral.

An emperor penguin facing Antarctic winter can lose heat quickly.

Kelp rises from rocky seafloor, but kelp is not a land plant.