Nature

Mikkel Eye is an Architectural Designer who posts pictures of trees to his site, Meye.dk.

Mikkel explains: "All the trees are available as high quality PNG’s with transparent background. The trees are free to use for anyone who wants to add plantings to their visualizations, sections, and diagrams within the fields of landscape architecture, architecture, or urban planning. However, your project should be in focus. The trees of Meye are not to be used as free standing pictures or for advertisements."

You can filter by Species and Season. Niche-y, but for those in need: great resource well done.

Emergence Magazine presents Shifting Landscapes, a documentary series, directed by Emmy- and Peabody-nominated filmmakers Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, exploring the power of art and story to orient us amid the darkness of our time.

Following a musician, a poet, a writer, and a filmmaker who are each embracing the alchemical power of story to connect and transform us, this series opens ways of being that hold both catastrophe and love as our landscapes change and disappear.

I've only watched the first of the 4-film series, but it was well done and I'll hopefully get to the rest this week.

The full series is here: Shifting Landscapes.

The always hilarious ZeFrank is back with another video in his True Facts series, this one focusing on Rays — The Sombreros of the Sea.

More Ze on his channel. He's almost at the twenty year mark of posting videos.

The Mushroom Color Atlas is a resource and reference for everyone curious about mushrooms and the beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms. 

Donna Kalil has plunged into canals in the dead of night, straddled two-hundred-pound serpents, and been bitten more times than she can count—all in the name of killing a thing she loves and playing a game she can’t win.

Fantastic piece in Garden & Gun on Donna Kalil, a professional, full-time Python hunter. Don't like to read? Here's a short video. But you should read the article. How could you not with a pull-quote like the one above.

Via Metafilter

Tremendous footage of Monarch butterflies captures by hummingbird drones.

Gorgeous work from Phyllis Shafer.

"I believe that a kind of transcendental essence lies at the heart of all natural forms and objects."

Many more on Shafer's website.

I somehow missed this sweet video a couple months ago. One swan was injured and removed from Bluffer's Park. When Toronto Wildlife Center returned the swan to the park, this happened:

Winners of the 2024 Big Picture Nature Photography Contest have been chosen.

My favorite is one of the runners-up, but I'm biased as I recognize the heron, Glinlid, whom I met in the Dominican in 2019:

Check out all the 2024 winners on the Big Picture site.

Winners from years going back to 2014 are also viewable.