【分享】国家地理杂志2004最佳图片

CHILE: Patagonia
A rare patch of calm settles on Torres del Paine National Park, where gale-force winds often batter glacial lakes and granite peaks. The sparsely inhabited region known as Patagonia includes about 25 percent of Argentina and Chile but is home to less than 5 percent of their populations.

Photograph by Peter Essick
“Land of the Living Wind,” January 2004

SOUTH DAKOTA: Badlands National Park
Rippling in the breeze like waves on a summer sea, wild grasses come alive on a late afternoon in the heart of the park. The Badlands are home to some of the last native prairie left in the Great Plains.

Photograph by Annie Griffiths Belt
“Reefs in a Prairie Sea,” April 2004

COSTA RICA: Monteverde Cloud Forest
You can almost see through this Fleischmann’s glass frog in a terrarium. Monthly surveys in the 1990s found no more than eight of the inch-and-a-half-long (four-centimeter-long) frogs along a 394-foot (120-meter) stretch of the R���Guᣩmal. A 1980 study had estimated 300.

Photograph by Peter Essick
“Signs From Earth: EcoSigns,” September 2004

GABON: Loango National Park
A tropical sunset bounces color off clouds and sea at a lagoon on the Gabon coast. As the tide shifts, it washes in sand that builds up into sandbars, blocking seawater from entering the lagoons. Fresh river water then fills the basins until a storm or the next tide breaks the barrier and starts the cycle anew.

Photograph by Michael Nichols
"Land of the Surfing Hippos," August 2004

IDAHO: Island Park
Home delivery: A flicker arrives at an aspen tree to regurgitate a meal of ants for its chicks. Young flickers, members of the woodpecker family, get feisty when hungry, battling each other for position in the chow line. Biggest usually wins.

Photograph by Michael S. Quinton
“Flickers: Carving Out Their Niche,” June 2004

FRANCE: Pau
Long-distance traveler, a Eurasian crane makes its way over southern France en route from Russia to Spain.

Photograph by Jean Patrick Deva, Galatée Films
“Cranes: No Mere Bird,” April 2004

FIJI ISLANDS: Somosomo Strait
Schooling bannerfish off Fiji’s Rainbow Reef blissfully ignore the camera. Each of the plankton eaters is the size of a hand.

Photograph by Tim Laman
“Fiji’s Rainbow Reefs,” November 2004

GABON: Loango National Park
A few days old and less than eight inches long, a Nile crocodile takes a test swim in Louri Creek.

Photograph by Michael Nichols
“The Land of the Surfing Hippos,” August 2004

AUSTRALIA: Western Australia State
A storm-fed, coffee-colored river splits the outback during the “wet,” the monsoon season in northern Australia. Almost all the rainfall occurs from December to March.

Photograph by Randy Olson
“The Wet Down Under,” November 2004

BRAZIL: Rio de Janeiro State
Among the last of their kind, these amaryllis flowers, sometimes called Empress of Brazil, exist only on a few mountain slopes not far from the city.

Photograph by Mark W. Moffett
“The Rain Forest in Rio’s Backyard,” March 2004

每一张都象在梦里。