Volunteers use flour to clean birds following an oil spill caused by an incident involving two tankers damaged in a storm in the Kerch Strait, in the village of Vityazevo near the Black Sea resort of Anapa, Russia on December 20, 2024. (Photo by Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters)

Police detain a woman protesting against the court verdict for Yuliy Boyarshinov, and Viktor Filinkov, members of a left-wing group Set (Network) at the Western regional military court in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, June 22, 2020. A Russian military court convicted two members of a left-wing youth group of terrorism Monday and sentenced them to prison terms of five and a half and seven years, in a case that human rights groups called fabricated and based on coerced testimony. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

Pilot Commissioner Ozge Karabulut prepares to take off during World Pilots Day in Ankara, Turkiye on April 25, 2022. Pilot Commissioner Ebru Melek (not seen) who has been involved in the fight against criminals, especially terrorism, within the body of the Aviation Department of the General Directorate of Security, which has ensured peace and security in the skies of the homeland for 41 years with aircraft, of Turkish Police Service and Turkiye's the first female attack helicopter Pilot Commissioner Ozge Karabulut celebrate her colleagues World Pilots' Day on April 26th. (Photo by Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Frank A. Rinehart, a commercial photographer in Omaha, Nebraska, was commissioned to photograph the 1898 Indian Congress, part of the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition. More than five hundred Native Americans from thirty-five tribes attended the conference, providing the gifted photographer and artist an opportunity to create a stunning visual document of Native American life and culture at the dawn of the 20th century. Photo: Little Bird, Arapahoe, 1899. (Photo by Frank A. Rinehart)

The Greater Sage-Grouse is certainly a formidable-looking bird. Being the largest grouse in North America and having tail feathers, which look like giant spikes, make for a ferocious sight. These birds are well known for their complicated courtship rituals, in which the males perform a special “strutting display” to attract the females. Another distinct feature of the Greater Sage-Grouse is two large yellow throat sacs (gular sacs), which are inflated by the males during the courtship display. Unlike pelicans, whose gular sacs are used to store fish while hunting, the throat sacks of the Greater Sage-Grouse are merely for display.

Storks that were saved by Bulgarian farmer Safet Ismail are pictured in the village of Zaritsa, Bulgaria, March 21, 2018. Dozens of people from villages in north-eastern Bulgaria took storks to their houses as a lot of the birds got injured due to freezing temperatures and snowfalls in the area over the last few days. (Photo by Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)

Employee of ornithological flight support service Nika Ryzhova-Alenicheva holds her hawk, which is used to control fauna to avoid bird strikes during takeoffs and landings, at Domodedovo airport outside Moscow, Russia September 2, 2016. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)