Storks losing their wetland homes end up at local garbage dump in India 

Fast vanishing wetlands in and around Guwahati city have now become a major threat for the survival of the Greater Adjutant Stork. Guwahati city has the largest concentration of the stork in the world but their numbers are gradually declining due to the loss of wetlands, habitat and declining availability of food. [EPA via msnbc]

Is it me, or are those storks GIGANTIC? Probably has something to do with the photography.

Alpacas after their annual shearing at Alpaca-Land farm, Goeming, near Salzburg. [Photographs: Kerstin Joensson/AP]

Madrid, Spain: A three-day-old giraffe is watched over by its mother. [Photograph: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images via Guardian]

Beiruit, Lebanon: Chicks dyed with artificial colours are sold at a street market. |Photograph: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images via Guardian.

Kenya has more than 1,000 species of birds, 261 types of mammal (such as these zebras) and 6,500 plant species. | Photograph: DAI KUROKAWA/EPA

A green gecko on a palm trunk at Vallee de Mai natural reserve, a Unesco world heritage site, in Praslin island. Bursts of torrential rain have lashed the idyllic white beaches of the Seychelles, where conservationists fear that rare species such as the giant tortoise are at severe risk from climate change.

Ranua, Finland: a male brown bear wakes from hibernation at Ranua zoo.

Krasnoyarsk, Russia: Tundra hares in their open-air enclosure at Royev Ruchey zoo. (via Guardian)

Dulverton, UK : A pheasant stands in snow on Exmoor. (via Guardian)

The eye of a parrotfish near Hawaii, as captured by Swiss underwater snapper Franco Banfi, who has photographed many of the creatures who populate the waters of the Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

Hot spring, cold winter for Japanese wild monkeys: Japanese wild monkeys enjoy an open-air hot spring at the Jigokudani (Hell’s Valley) Monkey Park, at Yamanouchi in Nagano prefecture, Japan, on Jan. 24, 2012. (pic)

A pink flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber), born in captivity ten days ago, is seen at the zoo in Cali Jan. 21, 2012. (Reuters)

Anchorage, Alaska: A mallard looks for a place to land among the hundreds of ducks in sub-zero temperatures. (AP)

Golan Heights, Israel: Red deer stand in a puddle near the border with Syria on a foggy day. (Reuters via Guardian)