In spring, the meadows near Andrés’ home in Ubrique, in Andalucia, Spain, are bright with flowers, such as these sweet-s

A Manduriacu glass frog snacks on a spider in the foothills of the Andes, northwestern Ecuador. That night, Jaime’s determination to share his passion for them had driven him to walk for four hours, in heavy rain, through the forest to reach the frogs’ streams in Manduriacu Reserve. But the frogs were elusive and the downpour was growing heavier and heavier. As he turned back, he was thrilled to spot one small frog clinging to a branch, its eyes like shimmering mosaics. Not only was it eating — he had photographed glass frogs eating only once before — but it was also a newly discovered species. Serenaded by a frog chorus in torrential rain — he held his umbrella and flash in one hand and the camera in the other — Jaime captured the first ever picture of this species feeding.,The downside with content mills is that they don’t give you any bylines. That’s right, whoever you write the story for puts their name on it. It’s not as bad as you think, the money is worth it and the topics are never tough to write about.,Whether you already have a few people on your email list or you’re just starting out, Substack can help. The website’s goal is to help you grow your email list and then eventually help you monetize it. You can monetize an email list for as low as $1 per subscriber, per month. If you have a small email list of 50 people, that’s $50 every month.,After several hours up to his chest in water in a lagoon near Brozas, in the west of Spain, Jose Luis captured this intimate moment of a great crested grebe family. The grebes are at their most elegant in the breeding season — ornate plumage, crests on their heads, neck feathers that they can fan into ruffs, striking red eyes and pink-tinged bills. They build a nest of aquatic plant material, often among reeds at the edge of shallow water. To avoid predators, their chicks leave the nest within a few hours of hatching, hitching a snug ride on a parent’s back.This morning, the parent on breakfast duty emerged with damp feathers and a tasty meal. In soft light and muted reflections, Jose Luis was able to reveal the fine detail of these graceful birds and their attentive parental care.,This rare picture of a family of Pallas’s cats on the remote steppes of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau in northwest China is the result of six years’ work at high altitude. These small cats are normally solitary, hard to find and mostly active at dawn and dusk. Through long-term observation, Shanyuan knew his best chance to photograph them in daylight would be in August and September, when the kittens were a few months old and the mothers bolder and intent on caring for them. Hours of patience were rewarded when the three kittens came out to play, while their mother kept her eye on a Tibetan fox lurking nearby. In the clear air, against a soft background, Shanyuan caught their expressions in a rarely seen moment of family life, when their mother had issued a warning to hurry back to the safety of the lair.,This remarkable simultaneous framing of a red-banded sand wasp (left) and a cuckoo wasp, about to enter next-door nest holes, is the result of painstaking preparation. The female cuckoo wasp parasitizes the nests of certain solitary digger wasps, laying her eggs in her hosts’ burrows so that her larvae can feast on their eggs or larvae and then the food stores. The much larger red-banded sand wasp lays her eggs in her own burrow, which she provisions with caterpillars, one for each of her young to eat when they emerge. Frank’s original aim was to photograph the vibrant cuckoo wasp, but despite the extremely narrow depth of field and tiny subjects, he captured not only the cuckoo wasp but also the sand wasp. Though these two species don’t regularly interact, Frank was gifted a perfectly balanced composition by the insects’ fortuitous flight paths to their nest holes.,These two ferocious predators don’t often meet. The giant riverine tiger beetle pursues prey on the ground, while weaver ants stay mostly in the trees — but if they do meet, both need to be wary. When an ant colony went hunting small insects on a dry river bed in Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India, a tiger beetle began to pick off some of the ants. In the heat of the midday sun, Ripan lay on the sand and edged closer. In defence, one bit into the beetle’s slender hind leg. The beetle swiftly turned and, with its large, curved mandibles, snipped the ant in two, but the ant’s head and upper body remained firmly attached. “The beetle kept pulling at the ant’s leg,” says Ripan, “trying to rid itself of the ant’s grip, but it couldn’t quite reach its head.” He used flash to illuminate the lower part of the beetle, balancing this against the harsh sunlight, as he got his dramatic, eye-level shot.,A tiny diamondback squid paralarva flits below in the blackness, stops hunting for an instant when caught in the light beam, gilds itself in shimmering gold and then moves gracefully out of the light. The beam was Songda’s, on a night dive over deep water, far off the coast of Anilao, in the Philippines. He never knows what he might encounter in this dark, silent world. All sorts of larvae and other tiny animals — zooplankton — migrate up from the depths under cover of night to feed on surface-dwelling phytoplankton, and after them come other predators. Transparent in all stages, a diamondback squid swims slowly, propelled by undulations of its triangular fins, but by contracting its powerful mantles, it can spurt away from danger. Chromatophores (organs just below the skin) contain elastic sacs of pigment that stretch rapidly into discs of colour when the muscles around them contract. Deeper in the skin, iridophores reflect and scatter light, adding an iridescent sheen. From above, Songda captured the fleeting moment when, hovering in perfect symmetry, the diamondback paralarva turned to gold.,It was on a summer holiday in Helsinki that Liina, then aged 13, heard about a large fox family living in the city suburbs on the island of Lehtisaari. So Liina and her father spent one long July day, without a hide, watching the two adults and their six large cubs. It was 7pm when the excitement began, with the vixen’s arrival with a barnacle goose. Feathers flew as the cubs began fighting over it. One finally gained ownership — urinating on it in his excitement. Dragging the goose into a crevice, the cub attempted to eat his prize while blocking access to the others. Lying just metres away, Liina was able to frame the scene and capture the expression of the youngster as it attempted to keep its hungry siblings at bay.,I’ve actually used the rest of these sites before and I’ve made money from each of them. UserTesting is my favorite because I’m able to make around $15 an hour and most of the time all I’m doing is clicking around and typing a few sentences.,A young male proboscis monkey cocks his head slightly and closes his eyes. Unexpected pale blue eyelids now complement his immaculately groomed auburn hair. He poses for a few seconds as if in meditation. He is a wild visitor to the feeding station at Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary in Sabah, Borneo — “the most laid-back character,” says Mogens, who has been photographing primates worldwide for the past five years. Mogens’ unforgettable portrait, with the young male’s characteristic peaceful expression — “quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen on another monkey” — connects us, he hopes, with a fellow primate.,On a diving holiday in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, Sam stopped to watch the behaviour of a group of clownfishes as they swam with hectic and repeated patterns in and out and around their home, a magnificent anemone. He was intrigued by the expression of one individual, the result of its mouth being constantly open, holding something. Rather than following the moving fish in his viewfinder, Sam positioned himself where he knew it would come back into the frame. It was only when he downloaded the photos that he saw tiny eyes peeping out of its mouth. It was a “tongue-eating louse,” a parasitic isopod that swims in through the gills as a male, changes sex, grows legs and attaches itself to the base of the tongue, sucking blood. When the tongue withers and drops off, the isopod takes its place. Its presence may weaken its host, but the clownfish can continue to feed. Sam’s image, the reward for his curiosity, captures the three very different life forms, their lives intertwined.,That is one of the uses of academic freedom: we tolerate ideas that we think are wrong, because we could be wrong. If I am wrong, it is nonetheless my right to say what I think, and it is my privilege (a writer’s privilege, not a white man’s) to think that I am right.,Not many people know about Amazon Vine because it’s under the radar (you’re welcome for the inside information). It’s probably because Amazon Vine is an invitation-only program at the moment.,I’ve also found that Substack promotes your emails to be shared with other people who aren’t subscribed. This is wonderful because the more subscribers your email list gets, the more potential money you could make.