Eight Rare Natural Outdoor beauty.

Enjoy the natural world as it exists, the elements as mountains, trees, animals, or rivers that gives us unbelievable scene. The following are example of nature at it's best in pictures.

Majestic rock pillars in Scotland
The Ancient Greeks and Romans weren’t the only ones who excelled at imposing architecture. Nature herself puts on quite a show for travellers visiting Scotland’s scenic Cliffs of Staffa (pictured), where columnar basalt rises majestically over the North Sea. This hard, dense, dark volcanic rock can be found around the world, including the famous Giant’s Causeway in Ireland and Devils Tower in the US state of Wyoming. It forms when thick, hot lava flows cool rapidly, creating contractions that fracture the lava into columns that appear to be manmade.
(UIG/Getty Images)

Double rainbows at Niagara Falls
We’ve all seen rainbows, those dazzling arches of colour that form when sunlight is reflected inside water droplets suspended in the air. What’s rarer – and dare we say, doubly dazzling – are double rainbows, like this one spanning the Niagara River against the backdrop of Niagara Falls. Double rainbows form when sunlight is reflected twice inside water droplets rather than once, due to the angle at which light enters the raindrop and is refracted. The colours of the second rainbow are inverted, with red inside and violet outside. Interestingly, double rainbows aren’t so rare – many times the second rainbow is simply too dim for most eyes to perceive. The best time to catch this phenomenon is when the air is filled with mist – either shortly after a rainfall or near a waterfall – in the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is lower in the sky. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty)

Illuminated Icelandic skies
Some of the best light shows on Earth are hundreds of miles from the world’s light-flooded cities. The brightly coloured Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, occurs near the magnetic north pole. A complex reaction causes charged particles in the atmosphere to collide, releasing brilliant streaks of light to dance across a starlit sky.
Travellers can most often see the show between late September and late March (when skies are darker longer) in countries such as Greenland and Iceland (pictured), as well as northern Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Alaska. According to scientists, excellent solar activity has made 2013 the best year in a decade to see the Northern Lights, with solar activity peaking in December. (Jonina G Oskarsdottir/Barcroft Media/Getty)

Volcanic lightning in Chile
What happens when you take two striking natural phenomena – volcanoes and lightning – and put them together? One of nature’s most dangerously spectacular shows. Volcanic lightning – which strikes in the middle of or shortly after a volcanic eruption – occurs when debris from an eruption reacts with charges in the atmosphere. Though rare, volcanic lightning has been reported during the 2011 eruption of southern Chile’s Puyehue volcano (pictured), Alaska’s Mount Augustine in 2006, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 and Japan’s Sakurajima in 2013. The event is notoriously difficult to anticipate, so seeing one is a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. (Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty)

Superstorms in the US Great Plains
While most travellers would run the other way at the sight of a supercell, some intrepid storm chasers sometimes travel the United States in pursuit of dangerous superstorms. Supercells like the one pictured, which raged across Montana in December 2010, are rotating updrafts of wind within thunderstorms that can produce large hail, high-speed winds, heavy rain, dangerous lightning and even tornadoes. They are typically found in the US Great Plains, including such states as Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. (Sean Heavey/Barcroft Media/Getty)

Udder-like clouds in Arizona
Forget skyscrapers – for nature-loving travellers, the sky really is the limit and an evening sky thick with cotton candy-like clouds trumps cold steel any day. Mammatus clouds are sagging pouch-like formations that typically hang on the underside of cumulonimbus clouds, looking like their Latin namesake (mamma meaning "udder" or "breast"). Meteorologists still don’t know exactly what causes these smoke-like puffs to form, but they are typically harbingers of severe thunderstorms, such as these pictured in Arizona’s Saguaro National Park in 2008. (Universal Images Group/Getty)

Sydney’s scarlet-stained waters
Think this looks like a scene from the movie Jaws, where blood-thirsty sharks ravage the waters off populated beaches? Think again. That scarlet stain is a red tide, or algal bloom, pictured here in Sydney in 2012. This visually arresting phenomena occurs when algae – which contains red pigments – accumulates rapidly in coastal waters due to warm ocean temperatures, low salinity, calm seas and periods of rain followed by sunny days. Some red tides, including this one at Clovelly Beach, can be harmful because they deplete oxygen in the water and produce toxins. During such events, travellers should check for beach advisories and heed resulting closures. (William West/AFP/Getty)

A froth of fog in the Grand Canyon
Few attractions lure travellers like Mother Nature. With stunning rock formations and spectacular light shows galore, the world’s exceptional natural phenomena can rival even the most impressive manmade attractions
The Grand Canyon – a striking vision on any day – drew even more interest on 29 November when a rare weather event suddenly filled the canyon with billows of thick fog: an occurrence that usually happens only once a decade, according to the National Park Service. Called an inversion, the event is caused by cold air getting trapped in the canyon by a “lid” of warm air; the warm air rises while the humidity in the cold air causes a dense sea of fog. (National Park Service)

Collection of Fascinating Photos

One of the blast doors at the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain complex

In court, the parents of a murdered 16 year old girl sees the accused killer for the first time. If looks could kill.

"Marlboro Marine", iconic photograph of James Blake Miller of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, a unit which took part in the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004. He was later diagnosed having PTSD.

Japanese Maple Tree- Portland Oregon

Route 66, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1969

The A.C.Camargo Cancer Center in São Paulo, Brazil, recently teamed up with Warner Bros. to make their children’s ward more comforting to young patients by rebranding chemotherapy ‘superformula’ and covering IV bags with Justice League themed boxes

Antartica

Dental mannequins are kind of terrifying

Every part needed to build a VW Golf

Village in Chaharmohal and Bakhtiari, Iran

A plant brought back to life from a seed that had been frozen for 32,000 years

Stone house city, Yemen

Burning Man 2013 – “Truth is Beauty” by Marco Cochrane

One way to hide a cell phone tower

My local Sam’s Club is selling a barrel of Jack Daniels

Ethiopian Welo Opal New gem found looks like the ocean in rock

Building taken over by moss

An Albino Humpback Whale

Man stands in front of 12 Polar Bears as they feast on the remains of a Whale Harvest.

350 year Oak tree

Antarctic research base

The most frightening thing, is that it existed. The Titanoboa

Egypt as seen from the International Space Station

Control room of a submarine in 1918

Four generations of women – 103, 85, 48, 20.

Black Dragon Fish

Burning Man 2013 Caveman Circus Rules!

This was built in the 1930s.

Young Conan O’Brien, Louis CK, And Bob Odenkirk

World's Top Animal Movie Stars

Looking into our beloved animals who still play a crucial role in the entertainment industry.

To celebrate all the hardworking animal actors out there, the following are a list of eight iconic animal thesps, domestic and wild, contemporary and dearly departed. In fairness, we’ve limited it to one animal actor per species as we certainly wouldn’t want hammy canines to rule the list.

Pal
Uggie as "the Dog." Cosmo as "Arthur." Jill as "Verdell." Terry as "Toto." Higgins as "Benji." And perhaps most traumatically, Darla as "Precious." While these are all fine examples of outstanding cinematic turns by canines in Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning films, only one four-legged thesp has been honored with a five-pointed star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That, of course, would be Lassie.

Lassie, depicted as a female, was in fact the stage name/alter-ego of Pal, a North Hollywood-born male rough collie who not only starred in "Lassie Come Home" but a series of sequels and spin-offs before entering retirement (he died in 1958 at the age of 18 ... or 126, depending on who you ask.)

Mitzi
While a series of female bottlenose dolphins collectively portrayed Flipper, aka "Lassie of the Sea," during the three-season TV run of "Flipper," a photogenic – and exceptionally trained – lady-dolphin named Mitzi primarily played the titular role in MGM’s 1963 family film that birthed the popular spin-off series (along with a mawkish, Jennifer Alba-starring TV revival in the 1990s and a 1996 remake starring Paul Hogan and Elijah Wood that relied heavily on animatronics in lieu of real dolphins).

Mitzi, the original Flipper, passed away in 1972 of a heart attack at the age of 14 and is interred at the nonprofit Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, the same institution where she resided and was trained.

Bart the Bear
Bart the Bear, a 9.5-foot force of nature who over the course of his storied career appeared opposite Anthony Hopkins, Ethan Hawke, Brad Pitt, Alec Baldwin and, err, Steven Segal, was born in 1977 into an established ursine acting clan – apparently his mother appeared in the late-1970s schlocky horror movies "Grizzly" and "Day of the Animals." Bart, however, had grander aspirations than low-budget genre films and went on to appear briefly in "Clan of the Cave Bear" (1986) with Darryl Hannah and the John Hughes-penned Dan Akroyd /John Candy comedy, "The Great Outdoors" (1988).

Bart passed away from cancer in 2000 the age of 23 in Park City, Utah, under the care of his long-time trainers and human companions, Doug and Lynne Seus of Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife.

Crystal
Hollywood’s go-to capuchin, 20-year-old Crystal, has demonstrated remarkable range over her short but prolific career: She’s played a drug dealer (“The Hangover Part 2”), a medical doctor (“Animal Practice”), a drunk (“Dr. Doolittle”), an unhinged personal assistant (“Malcolm in the Middle”) and the primate embodiment of Adam Sandler (“Zookeeper.”) And in 2012, she was one of television’s highest paid actors, diaper-wearing or not, commanding a cool $12,000 per episode for her roll as Dr. Rizzo in the (mercifully) now-cancelled sitcom “Animal Practice.” Funny, we figured as a monkey that she’d receive compensation in bananas, hugs and kisses. When not rehearsing, doing back flips on the red carpet or evoking the ire of PETA (and no, she doesn’t really smoke), Crystal lives a quiet life in a Los Angeles home that she shares with handler/trainer Tom Gunderson, his family and a menagerie of other showbiz-savvy critters.

Bamboo Harvester
You’d think that the Palomino behind television’s chattiest equine would have a more dignified, debonair name than Bamboo Harvester. Maybe something like Jack, Charlie, Felix or Reginald P. Hoofmeister. But Bamboo Harvester? What does that even mean?

But we digress. As the titular quip-prone gelding belonging to hapless architect Wilbur Post (Alan Young), Bamboo Harvester starred in all six seasons of “Mister Ed” from 1961 to 1966, and during that period became the hay-munching toast of the town. Although “Mister Ed” is a rather silly sitcom relic (children of the 1980s and 1990s may have fond memories of it playing during Nick at Night), one “Mister Ed” legend has held strong to this day: How did the show’s creators get Bamboo Harvester — trained by Les Hilton of Francis the Talking Mule fame — to “talk”? Peanut butter? Nylon strings? Forcefully inserted carrots?

And would an old-fashioned talking horse sitcom fly today? Probably not (we’d watch it, of course, of course). However, Fox did attempt to revive the series back in 2004 with a never-aired television pilot starring David Alan Basche, Garrett Dillahunt and the late Sherman Hemsley as the voice of the inimitable Mister Ed.

Jiggs
While a super-talented parade of apes —we’re looking at you, J. Fred Muggs — have graced television and theater screens over the years, none deserves trailblazer status as much as Jiggs, the hardworking professional ham who originated the role of Tarzan’s faithful chimp sidekick, Cheeta. Owned and trained by Tony and Jacqueline Gentry, Jiggs only appeared as Cheeta in two Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, “Tarzan the Ape Man” (1932) and “Tarzan and His Mate” (1934) along with the Buster Crabbe-starring serial “Tarzan the Fearless” (1935).

Jiggs lived a tragically short life for a chimp, passing away from pneumonia at the age of 9 in 1938. He was buried in the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, also the final home of Rudolph Valentino’s Great Dane, Charlie Chaplin’s cat, Petey the pit bull from “Our Gang” and Hopalong Cassidy’s horse, Topper.

Orangey
Orangey – also known as Rhubarb or Jimmy – is the only cat to win two PATSY (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year) Awards, the American Humane Association’s now-defunct honor bestowed upon Hollywood’s hardest-working critters. Other esteemed recipients of a PATSY include Pal, Bonzo the chimp, Bruno the Bear (“Gentle Ben”), Arnold the pig from “Green Acres” and multiple award winner, Molly (aka Francis the Talking Mule).

Orangey’s first PATSY win came in 1951 with her role as the titular kitty in “Rhubarb.” Ten years later Orangey was presented with her second PATSY award for portraying Holly Golighty’s unnamed pet feline in Blake Edward’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (pictured left.) Other Orangey appearances include “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957) as Butch, “The Comedy of Terrors” as Cleopatra (1964) and the sitcom “Our Miss Brooks” (1952-1958) as Minerva.

Tai
Tai made her film debut in “Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book” (1994) and has been working steadily, to some controversy, ever since. Playing Rosie, an abused circus elephant in the 2011 film adaptation of Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel “Water for Elephants,” Tai garnered as much praise as a nearly 10,000-pound method actor can get. However, in addition to predicable noise from PETA, Tai was at the center of real-life abuse allegations (the deplorable mistreatment depicted in “Water for Elephants” was the result of CGI and special effects) when Animal Defenders International (ADI) released a short video that purportedly showed Tai being electrocuted with stun guns and beaten with bull hooks by her handlers some years before the filming of “Water for Elephants.”

Amazing Snowy Owl

Male

Female

The Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) is a large owl of the typical owl family Strigidae. The Snowy Owl was first classified in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who developed binomial nomenclature to classify and organize plants and animals.
Until recently, it was regarded as the sole member of a distinct genus, as Nyctea scandiaca, but mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data (Olsen et al. 2002) shows that it is very closely related to the horned owls in the genus Bubo. The Snowy Owl is the official bird of the Canadian province of Quebec.

Description

Plate 121 of the Birds of America by John James Audubon, depicting the Snowy Owl

This yellow-eyed, black-beaked white bird is easily recognizable. It is 52–71 centimetres (20–28 in) long, with a 125–150 centimetres (49–59 in) wingspan. Also, these birds can weigh anywhere from 1.6 to 3 kilograms (3.5 to 6.6 lb). It is one of the largest species of owl and, in North America, is on average the heaviest owl species. The adult male is virtually pure white, but females and young birds have some dark scalloping; the young are heavily barred, and dark spotting may even predominate. Its thick plumage, heavily feathered taloned feet, and colouration render the Snowy Owl well-adapted for life north of the Arctic Circle.

Snowy Owl calls are varied, but the alarm call is a barking, almost quacking krek-krek; the female also has a softer mewling pyee-pyee or prek-prek. The song is a deep repeated gahw. They may also clap their beak in response to threats or annoyances. While called clapping, it is believed this sound may actually be a clicking of the tongue, not the beak.

Ecology

The Snowy Owl is typically found in the northern circumpolar region, where it makes its summer home north of latitude 60 degrees north. However, it is a particularly nomadic bird, and because population fluctuations in its prey species can force it to relocate, it has been known to breed at more southerly latitudes. During the last glacial, there was a Central Europe Bubo scandiacus gallicus, but no modern subspecies are recognized.

Young owl on the tundra at Barrow Alaska. Snowy Owls lose their black feathers with age, though particular females retain some.

This species of owl nests on the ground, building a scrape on top of a mound or boulder. A site with good visibility such as the top of mound with ready access to hunting areas, and a lack of snow is chosen. Gravel bars and abandoned eagle nests may be used. The female scrapes a small hollow before laying the eggs. Breeding occurs in May to June, and depending on the amount of prey available, clutch sizes range from 3 to 11 eggs, which are laid singly, approximately every other day over the course of several days. Hatching takes place approximately five weeks after laying, and the pure white young are cared for by both parents. Although the young hatch asynchronously, with the largest in the brood sometimes 10 to 15 times as heavy as the smallest, there is little sibling conflict and no evidence of siblicide. Both the male and the female defend the nest and their young from predators, sometimes by distraction displays. Males may mate with two females which may nest about a kilometre apart. Some individuals stay on the breeding grounds while others migrate.

Range

Snowy Owls nest in the Arctic tundra of the northermost stretches of Alaska, Canada, and Eurasia. They winter south through Canada and northern Eurasia, with irruptions occurring further south in some years. Snowy Owls are attracted to open areas like coastal dunes and prairies that appear somewhat similar to tundra. They have been reported as far south as the American states of Texas, Georgia, the American Gulf states, southernmost Russia, and northern China.

Between 1967 and 1975, Snowy Owls bred on the remote island of Fetlar in the Shetland Isles north of Scotland. Females summered as recently as 1993, but their status in the British Isles is now that of a rare winter visitor to Shetland, the Outer Hebrides and the Cairngorms.

In January 2009, a Snowy Owl appeared in Spring Hill, Tennessee, the first reported sighting in the state since 1987. More notable is the huge mass southern migration in the winter of 2011/2012, when thousands of Snowy Owls were spotted in various locations across the United States.

Hunting and diet

Eating a rat at Diergaarde Blijdorp (Rotterdam Zoo), Netherlands

This powerful bird relies primarily on lemmings and other small rodents for food during the breeding season, but at times of low prey density, or during the ptarmigan nesting period, they may switch to favoring juvenile ptarmigan. They are opportunistic hunters and prey species may vary considerably, especially in winter. They feed on a wide variety of small mammals such as meadow voles and deer mice, but will take advantage of larger prey, frequently following traplines to find food. Some of the larger mammal prey includes hares, muskrats, marmots, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, prairie dogs, rats, moles, and smaller birds entrapped furbearers. Birds preyed upon include ptarmigan, other ducks, geese, shorebirds, pheasants, grouse, coots, grebes, gulls, songbirds, and even other raptors, including other owl species. Most of the owls' hunting is done in the "sit and wait" style; prey may be captured on the ground, in the air or fish may be snatched off the surface of bodies of water using their sharp talons. Each bird must capture roughly 7 to 12 mice per day to meet its food requirement and can eat more than 1,600 lemmings per year.

Snowy Owls, like many other birds, swallow their small prey whole. Strong stomach juices digest the flesh, while the indigestible bones, teeth, fur, and feathers are compacted into oval pellets that the bird regurgitates 18 to 24 hours after feeding. Regurgitation often takes place at regular perches, where dozens of pellets may be found. Biologists frequently examine these pellets to determine the quantity and types of prey the birds have eaten. When large prey are eaten in small pieces, pellets will not be produced.

Natural threats

Though Snowy Owls have few predators, the adults are very watchful and are equipped to defend against any kind of threat towards them or their offspring. During the nesting season, the owls regularly defend their nests against arctic foxes, corvids and swift-flying jaegers; as well as dogs, gray wolves and avian predators. Males defend the nest by standing guard nearby while the female incubates the eggs and broods the young. Both sexes attack approaching predators, dive-bombing them and engaging in distraction displays to draw the predator away from a nest. They also compete directly for lemmings and other prey with several predators, including Rough-legged Hawks, Golden Eagles, Peregrine Falcons, Gyrfalcons, jaegers, Glaucous Gulls, Short-eared Owls, Great Horned Owls, Eurasian Eagle Owls, Common Ravens, wolves, arctic foxes, and ermine. They are normally dominant over other raptors although may (sometimes fatally) lose in conflicts to large raptors such as other Bubo owls, Golden Eagles and the smaller but much faster Peregrine Falcons. Some species nesting near Snowy Owl nests, such as the Snow Goose, seem to benefit from the incidental protection of snowy owls that drive competing predators out of the area.