The Natural World: Editorial Photography : Carl D. Walsh Photographer: Portrait Photography : Natural History Photographer

Sandhill cranes fly across the rising full moon during their annual migration through Nebraska. 650,000, the vast majority of the specie's world population, stopover in the state to rest and feed before returning to their summer homes in the northern US, Canada, Alaska and Siberia.

Snow geese, amongst a group numbering in the tens of thousands, fly en-masse from an eastern Pennsylvania field where they were feeding during a spring migration stop in March. Without any apparent signal the group stopped feeding, and in precise unison, flew away. Calculated using high definition aerial photography and a computer software count, 120,000 of the arctic waterfowl was the peak gathering at Middle Creek Wildlife Mgmt. Area in 2021.

An humpback whale fluke propels itself through the water in the Gulf of Maine.

A male cardinal (cardinalis cardinalis) eats a berry from a winterberry bush in Vermont.

A snowy owl wrestles with a mallard in a coastal Maine estuary, where it winters from the Arctic.

Sandhill cranes fly at dawn, from Nebraska's Platte River, where they spend the night, to the cornfields where they feed daily, during their annual migration stopover in the state.

A praying mantis casts a shadow on a tents outer surface in Isalo National Park in Madagascar's southwest.

In the temperate rain forest on British Columbia's mountainous central coast lives a very rare bear. Known as the white Kermode bear, the spirit bear and ghost bear, it is not an albino, or a polar bear drastically out of its range, rather an otherwise common American black bear containing a recessive gene predisposing the white coat. About one in ten are born with this color phase and no more than a few hundred exist in the world, all of them in this remote coastal region of British Columbia.

An osprey flies away with a double catch while fishing for alewives in a coastal Maine tidal river during the herring specie's annual spawning run.

Snow geese fly in front of the the rising sun at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in eastern, Pennsylvania. Wintering in the Chesapeake region, the arctic waterfowl were migrating back to their home range in the Arctic.

A common loon (Gavia immer) floats on water in Penobscot River, near Maine's Baxter State Park,

A bull moose grazes in the Allagash River in northern Maine.

A female snowy owl hovers to reposition on a log perch while wintering on the Maine coast from their home range in the Arctic.

Dozens of sandhill cranes fly from a Nebraska cornfield at sunrise during their annual spring northward migration stopover in the state. 650,000, the vast majority of the specie's world population, return through the region on the way to their summer range in the northern US, Canada, Alaska and Siberia.

A hibernating American black bear pokes it head out of its tree-top den in Maine's North Woods.

A male great egret displays his beauty while nesting on Florida's Gulf coast.

A great egret (Ardea alba) feeds on alewife frye in a Maine coast estuary.

A male bald eagle launches from a perch near the nest as his mate clenches a branch in her beak, while trying to break it away.

A silverback mountain gorilla relaxes in the highland forest of the Virunga Mountains in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fewer than 800 exist in the world.

Great egrets and a snowy white egret do a dance while feeding in close proximity at J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Sanibel, Florida.

A snowy white egret (egretta thula) hovers in flight over the water, dragging its talons along the surface as a lure to attract bait fish while feeding.

A great horned owl {Bubo virginianus} looks inquisitively at a squirrel climbing in the nesting owl's tree on Florida's Gulf Coast.