In Costa Rica's Tenorio Volcano National Park, this Collared Aracari waits out the near-daily seasonal rains.

Song Sparrows take singing so seriously that researchers use them to study human language. One of North America's most common birds, they are a reminder that there is beauty in the ordinary.

A Great Blue Heron wades in the shadow of cypress trees and Spanish moss in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, with morning light glowing beyond.

In Zimbabwe, the Lilac-breasted Roller is prized across Africa for a color palette rivaled by few others, its forked tail marking it fully grown.

This African Jacana, whose disproportionately large feet let it walk across floating lily pads, comes in to land along Botswana's Chobe River.

Spotted from a kayak just as the sun was rising, this Great Egret was landing through fog in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, its feathers catching the day's first light.

A Great Egret in breeding plumage grooms at its evening roost, framed by the branches of an evergreen.

A Little Blue Heron works the top of a weathered snag along a roadside wetland in Belize, stepping carefully back and forth in search of a foothold.

In Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, the Cape Starling is a gregarious, constantly moving bird. This one, alone in the early morning light, seemed to have found its post.

In Tanzania's northern Serengeti, a spotted hyena holds its ground against a mob of white-backed vultures, hooded vultures, and marabou storks competing for the same meal.

Cape Buffalo, like this one in Kenya's Masai Mara, are famously short-tempered, yet tolerate the Yellow-billed Oxpecker riding along, picking ticks and cleaning wounds.

In Antarctica's white expanse, foraging trips can carry a Gentoo penguin far from its noisy colony and out into the open water, here alone on a raft of pack ice.