Day: October 27, 2024

A tree seemingly growing out of a pristine white salt island in the heart of the Dead Sea isn’t something you’d expect to see when visiting the world’s saltiest body of water, and yet that’s exactly the sight you’re treated to near the beach of Ein Bokek.

With a salt concentration over 10 times that of the ocean, the Dead Sea is incapable of sustaining any plant or animal life, so come there’s a tree growing there, and on an island made of salt, of all places? Within swimming distance of the beach in Ein Bokek, an Israeli resort near Arad, lies the iconic Dead Sea Salt Island, a surreal natural formation made of dazzling white salt and surrounded by turquoise water. At its center are a pool of shallow, inviting water, and a tree that has no place being there. And yet…

The tree of the Dead Sea is such an amazing sight that I’m surprised it hasn’t received more attention on Instagram and other travel-oriented social networks. Seeing a living thing surviving, thriving even, in the middle of a body of water famous for its inability to sustain life is quite surreal, even though everything isn’t quite as it seems.

Even though a close inspection of the tree will reveal buds on the branches and roots stretching into the salty crust of the island, it doesn’t mean that the tree sprouted and grew there. It was a local artist who brought and “planted” it on the salt island as an original art installation. Apparently, he has been visiting the tree every day, putting mud around its base to ensure that it gets all the nutrients needed to survive in this extremely harsh environment.

The Dead Sea itself is dying, with the shoreline encroaching on the water every year, and maybe the so-called “tree of life” is a metaphor for that, or maybe having something grow in the middle of the Dead Sea is the metaphor. No one really knows for sure, but then again , no one really cares. The tree exists, and it makes a great prop for Instagrammable photos…

clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>

Meet this sweet Raccoon named Pumpkin, he was found very small and raised in a house with dogs.
One day, a resident of the Bahamas, Rosie Kemp, was walking along the streets of her hometown and found a small raccoon that fell from a tree. The cub was injured and had a broken leg, but Rosie did not notice any of his family nearby.

Then the woman decided that she was nursing the animal herself. The woman fed the little raccoon a special mixture every 2 hours throughout the day, and over time the raccoon felt much better and quickly settled into his new home and made friends with the members of his new family – two dogs that Rosie and her husband also rescued from the street.

This video showcases survey efforts to confirm the presence of Nightjar in the south-east of Ireland in 2024. The mysterious and elusive Nightjar is one of our most intriguing birds. A summer visitor with perfectly camouflaged bark-like plumage, it can be incredibly difficult to spot, only revealing its presence after dark, when the male engages in it’s hypnotic ‘churring’ song.

With only sporadic records of breeding over recent decades, mostly in the south and south-east, the general consensus was that we had effectively lost Nightjars, despite few attempts to prove otherwise. This survey coordinated by BirdWatch Ireland and supported by Kilkenny County Council, Wexford County Council and the National Parks and Wildlife Service through the Local Biodiversity Action Fund confirms that this species still survives in the southeast.

In the arid regions of southern Africa, elephants are known to dig wells in sandy riverbeds using their feet and trunks to reach water beneath the surface. They may also damage boreholes in their quest for water.

African elephants are keystone species, essential to the balance of their ecosystems. In the savanna, they uproot trees and eat saplings, ensuring open spaces for species like zebras and other plains animals to thrive.

In this video, zebras can also be seen in the distance along the roadside.

MVI 1764