Hello Nature Lovers !

I would like to cordially invite you to another great week of the Amazing Nature Contest. There were already so many excellent entries regarding how amazing nature can be in the past episodes, thanks to all of you, but there is still so much more to see! ^^ To participate in the #amazingnature contests just create a post that shows how amazing nature is for you personally. This can be anything from a beautiful flower or animal to an astonishing sunset.

What is the Purpose of the Contest ?

I am a huge lover of nature and really enjoy to take pictures of all the lovely things that surround me every day, no matter if those are plants, animals or landscapes. I found Hive to be a brilliant place to find and watch nature pictures from all over the world. There is such a diversity of great content out there, thanks to all of you, from different perspectives and out of various motivations. I would like to collect all those beautiful snapshots and their amazing stories in a weekly compilation so that you can all benefit from the beauty that we are facing all the time, but so often are not able to appreciate in the modern and fast paced times we are living in.

This #amazingnature contest is at home in the DNA-Discord, a organization run by people for the people, with the aim to foster and densify nature-appreciation in the blockchain. DNA is also the home of the #featheredfriends hosted by amazing @melinda010100 🦢 and the @fungilovers hosted by @qwerrie 🍄.

Contest Rules :

• Please join the Community and POST your entry INTO the AMAZING NATURE COMMUNITY. This makes it a part of it and visible to all other members of the community. You can add the #amazingnature TAG after it if you like.
• CLEARLY MENTION that your post is an ENTRY for this contest.
• All pictures have to be your own. You can use the amazing nature banner if you like or create your own.
• STATE IN THE TEXT why those pictures are representing YOUR AMAZING NATURE. This is an ESSENTIAL part of this contest.
• Drop the LINK to your post IN THE COMMENTS. You can add a picture if you like. It is NECESSARY as I have to post a link in Discord on Friday, 5 days later for voting and also for my own compiling purposes.
• The entry window is open for ~ 5 DAYS. Watch out for the -CLOSED in the title.

If you miss the entry, please wait for the next round. As I have to work and also a family to manage, there are no fixed UTC times and the window can open in a wide range between 10 am - 10 pm and therfore also close accordingly ^^

• The AMAZING NATURE COMMUNITY is there FOR ALL POSTS ABOUT THE AMAZING NATURE AROUND YOU that are not necessarily a contest entry. We would highly appreciate it if you share your great nature content there with us! .. But the contest is also located in this community as an integrated part and special feature .. You can also still use the #amazingnature tag if you like.

Possible Topics :

As nature covers an incredible wide range there is really anything possible. Amazing Natures categories could be anything from the following topics:

• Botany
• Zoology
• Geology
• Landscapes
• Philosophy
• ... Surprise us ^^

Prizes to Win :

• 1st : 3 HIVE
• 2st : 2 HIVE
• 3st : 1 HIVE

I will always try my best to link and present all participants of Amazing Nature in the entries section of the announcement posts that will be published roughly one week later on Sunday (depending on my time schedule this may shift some time ^^). This way you will have a nice compilation of them all. As an special feature, the new title picture of the contest will be created from the entry of the contest winner. This time it is from @qwerrie.

How are the Winners chosen ?

The voting for the winners will be done by the whole DNA community. Therefore we created a special contest channel in the DNA Discord (Amazing Nature Contest). Here I will post the announcement post including the winners (Announcements) EACH SUNDAY together with all your entries (Entries) EACH FRIDAY. Every member of DNA will be able to assign "voting emojis" under the entries for 24 HOURS and in the end those three with the most of them are the lucky winners. This I hope should lead to a more objective consideration than just involving myself as a judge. I will engage as a judge in case of a draw ^^

THIS WEEKS WINNERS

This weeks winner, with an overwhelming majority of the votes, is @qwerrie, for his amazing post about the Great Crested Grebe duck. He was so lucky to find one of their nest hidden in the reeds in his local park in St.Petersburg. These beautiful ducks have a really breath-taking look, with long flexible curvy necks, intense red eyes, and funny "shaggy wigs" on their head, which start to look especially impressive while they are actually in motion. Unfortunately the pictures here are not able to show them in proper action, as well as their funny voice, which he compares to a quiet train whistle. But on the other side we are so super lucky to see some amazing shots of the ducks nest, and as the mama duck decided to walk away for some minutes, we are able to admire the eggs within it. Thank you very much for this entry ! It has some really great pictures, as expected from this great photographer, and also some nice added information too, such as about their wedding dance. I am already exited about the next entry, as we already got to know that there were nearly 140 frames taken from this amazing duck species ^^

@qwerrie

This Calotes Mystaceus here was submitted for us by @alexanderfluke. He is a huge fan of lizards in general and already published a lot of photos of lizards in his blog. But this amazing and super beautiful species here can be only found in the regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia, where he found it on a visit there. This lizard have this very long tail and the characteristic large blue head! Interesting is, that during the mating period, males of this species change the color of the front part of the body to a bright blue color. Thank you for showing this exotic lizard to us ;)

@alexanderfluke

This week @librepensadora shows us a real wonder of nature. It is not only a super beautiful place, but a really spectacular one too, the Lavish Jaspe´s Crack Falls in Venezuela. Those falls are also listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. These Jaspe´s Crack Falls are a small tributary of water that crosses a huge smooth slab of Jasper of about 300 meters of length. This intense red color that you see on the pictures are due to the presents of Jasper. It is a semiprecious stone composed mostly of Quartz and Silica, with a strong red color produced by its Iron content. In general, Jasper comes from the cracks of volcanic rocks and only occurs in relatively small deposits, but in the mountains of Guyana, magma intrusions into the bed of sedimentary rock have led to the formation of huge slabs of the stone. Thank you very much for showing us around this amazing and magical place ^^

@librepensadora

HONORABLE MENTIONS

@mllg

@oizaguirres

@rosanita

@brittandjosie

@borjan

@lighteye

@nelinoeva

@racarjoal

@glotokens

@ninahaskin

@dzoji

@shuvo35

@porters

@kamrunnahar

@careassaktart

@fmbs25

@starjewel

FEATURING

This weeks feature is about @papa-pepper, a "Wild-man, Gardener, Encourager, Homesteader, Lyricist, Deep Thinker, Papa, Humorist and Husband" from the Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains or Ozark Plateau, in the U.S. state of Missouri. When I first looked into his blog I was super amazed and still am. His whole blog is dedicated to the deep love to nature, no matter if its about gardening, father-daugther fish shooting trips, super cute animal, or, .. its too much, just look there for yourself. By the way, if you are in love with turtles, such as I am, or snakes, then you will be deeply satisfied by his great posts. I really hope that we will be seeing more in the future from this Hivean. Thanks for finding and posting to the Community @papa-pepper !

@papa-pepper

Amazing Nature Community :

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You all asked for one and here it is, the AMAZING NATURE COMMUNITY. It is dedicated to all you Nature Lovers out there, no matter if Zoology, Botany, Landscapes or Philosophy ^^ You will also find many entries to the contest in there. It has the #hive-127788 tag and you can find it here:

AMAZING NATURE COMMUNITY

This community is there FOR ALL POSTS ABOUT THE AMAZING NATURE AROUND YOU. Currently I have 39 Nature Lovers on the autovote, which is set to 20% for 2 daily upvotes at the moment. I still reserve some voting power for manual curating on nature content when needed.

Previous Participants :

I thank all of you who participated and voted this week and hope that you enjoyed the Amazing Nature Contest. I am looking forward to more excellent content every week ^^. Of course this format is open for all kind of critics that can increase the quality of the contest and I am always happy about anyone who wants to join us on this little adventure.

@akinome @alexanderfluke @alinix @annamarina @annephilbrick @apnigrich @artofwisdom @angelro @antoniarhuiz @atomcollector @bahttg @belkisa758 @bigsambucca @borjan @brittandjosie @bucipuci @careassaktart @carolinacardoza @chetanpadliya @cocolefleur @crazyandy @davidesimoncini @derekrichardson @dkkarolien @dzoji @elkezaksek @ellenripley @engrsayful @farm-mom @fmbs25 @futven12 @glotokens @godlovermel25 @haastrecht @gingbabida @hangin @iamraincrystal @insense @ireenchew @irvet @isabelpena @jesuslnrs @joanstewart @joebtc @johannpiber @julianhorack @justclickindiva @kalemandra @kamrunnahar @karbon @kheys @letalis-laetitia @lighteye @leslierevales @librepensadora @lisfabian @manojbhatt @manorvillemike @manuelramos @mariacaffrey @melinda010100 @mers @mintymile @misschance @mllg @molometer @mondoshawan @myjob @mysteriousroad @nelinoeva @nilom @ninahaskin @oizaguirres @offgridlife @olivia08 @paradigm42 @phortun @porters @qwerrie @racarjoal @razeiv @redheadpei @rosanita @sarimanok @sayee @sallybeth23 @seadbeady @shuvo35 @sunscape @s3rg3 @thebigsweed @theoctoberwind @thesobuz @travelsbyblue @trincowski @trudeehunter @truelovemom @viking-ventures @vincent21 @whatisnew @wongbraling @zhanavic69

If you want me to take you out of the list, or if you don't want your picture, in the case you are the winner, to be used as a new title picture, just let me know about it in the comments.

Dedicated to all Nature Lovers out there, no matter if Zoology, Botany, Landscapes or Philosophy ^^

DNA - Densifying Nature-Appreciation :

DNA is an organization, managed by @medro-martin, to foster and DENSIFY NATURE-APPRECIATION which aims to establish REPORTS OF BIODIVERSITY DATA that is contributed by all of us Hiveans and subsequently cataloged.

Therefore DNA searches for HIGH-QUALITY posts that aim to DESCRIBE and determine the BIODIVERSITY AROUND YOU with added EXPLANATIONS and INFORMATIONS. For these informative posts they offer a CURATION SERVICE using the @dna.steem account. It is also a CURATION TRAIL. Just add the #dna TAG if you think that any of your posts is what they are looking for.

At the moment DNA is also the home of the #amazingnature for all your post about the amazing nature all around us and also the home of the #featheredfriends hosted by the lovely @melinda010100 🦢 for all you great posts about our feathered friends and the #fungifriday hosted by the amazing @qwerrie 🍄 for all your posts about fungi and mushrooms ^^ But we hope that more nature related communities will join, or maybe some Hiveans start their own little project there ;) .. Maybe even you?

FEATHERED FRIENDS COMMUNITY

FUNGI LOVERS COMMUNITY

If you are INTERESTED in DNA, please do not hesitate to ask about it, or directly JOIN US in the DNA DISCORD ;)

"By The People, For The People"

The Terminal & Discord :

There is another initiative here on Hive that I would like to bring close to you as I absolutely love them, The Terminal:

THE TERMINAL DISCORD

It is a great location for LEARNING ABOUT STEEM, Discord, and Hive-related communities, full of nice people that you may ask if you need ASSISTANCE, with nearly everything ^^ You will find documents to assist you, a place to learn and practice, and find out about the many opportunities to form CONNECTIONS with other Hiveans.

It also host the REDFISH RALLY, a funny challenge for all those that are new here to the world of Steem. The Terminal also hosts the HEYHAVEYAMET project by @heyhaveyamet, which introduces all new Hiveans on a daily basis, so that you don't have to search for them ^^

THE TERMINAL COMMUNITY

So why not joining us in the THE TERMINAL DISCORD? You will not regret it ^^

"Your one-stop location for learning about destinations in the Hive blockchain and Discord"

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Best wishes,
Adalger