After reading many beautiful and heartwarming articles written by mothers and daughters about Mother's Day, I wanted to share some of the photos and stories of animals I've seen around the world taking care of their young.  Some of you know that I've been involved in animal rescue for many years and have a soft spot in my heart for all animals.  I am always amazed at how protective and caring animals are of their offspring.

  I really wanted to write a post in honor of all mothers and especially those that are often overlooked on Mother's Day each year.  If you have pets you are a mother they could not survive without you!  I wrote a similar post about animal mothers and their offspring for Mother's Day a couple of years ago.  One of my readers was very grateful that I had posted it.  Sadly not humans have a mother at all or one that they are close to. 

My husband and I have also taken in several stray pregnant cats.  We found homes for all of the babies and mothers including the seven orange ones in the second photo down.  We actually kept the mothers - Princess (the black cat) and Peaches (orange cat) for ourselves. 

The monkeys that I saw at the Monkey Forest in Ubud, Bali we're so fun to watch.  The babies were so cute and well taken care of by their mothers.   I thought this mother was showing tremendous patience with her little one.
Here is a mother monkey feeding her baby what appears to be some coconut:
I saw many elephant mothers with their babies in the Serengeti National Park while in Tanzania:

I love visiting Las Vegas at Christmas time.  I do not drink or gamble, but I love looking at all of the Christmas decorations. Las Vegas has so many grand hotels to begin with and the decorations just make it even more majestic! 

One of my favorite hotels to visit is the Bellagio.  They do such a good job decorating for the holidays. I especially love the polar bears and the penguin exhibit. I can stand for a very long time and just look at the ceiling in the lobby by Dale Chihuly:

Penguin exhibit:






Polar bear exhibit:

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I hope you are enjoying the holidays and staying warm depending on where you are.  Take care my friends! 

~Michelle

One of my most popular photos, taken in Antarctica, on Panoramio with more than 9000 views:

There are many benefits to joining Panoramio for those who like to take photos for any reason.  First of all you get free storage space for your photos.  They are stored in full-size.  Facebook  does not store your photos full-size.  One can also get a page rank when you join Panoramio.  

I just joined in March 2013 and I have a PR of 2. Here is my site:  

http://www.panoramio.com/user/7406641

You also can join groups in Panoramio similar to how you can join them in Facebook. Members can comment on your photos as well as like and favorite them. Each photo has its own statistics showing how many views it's received, likes, and favorites.  You also can see the lifetime views of each of your photos.  For me it is like social networking for photographers who are both professional and hobbyists.  When one joins panoramio, they can choose for no one to be able to use your photos at all without your permission, or you can choose to let anyone use your photos for any reason.

One of the best things about joining Panoramio is your Photos can be used in Google Earth and Google Maps if they are selected.  There are certain criteria your photos must meet in order to be used.  First of all there cannot be recognizable people in your photo or close-ups of flowers and animals.  I like it for my landscape photography which is probably my favorite thing to take photos of.

Panoramio was acquired by Google so in 2007 so it is probably a fairly safe place to store your photos.  I used AOL photo storage eight or nine years ago.  When they no longer offered photo storage, they did give their users plenty of warnings to move their photos.  Those who did not, unfortunately, lost all of their photos.

  Here is my most popular photo overall based on Panoramio's algorithm,  It was taken on my dolphin siting expedition in Lovina, Bali:

Here is my most popular photo in Google Earth with more than 26000 views.  It's a research station in Antarctica:
Here is my most popular photo taken in Antarctica in Google Maps with more than 31000 views:
Here is my most popular photo which is shown on an external widget of a sunrise in Lovina, Bali with over 5600 views:
Do you use Panoramio?  Are there any other photo storage sites that you would recommend and why?  Thanks so much for your visit and your comments!

~Michelle

If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.

~ Andrew Denton

The above photo is of a tabular iceberg only seen in the Antarctic seas.

The only sunset I saw while in Antarctica.  It was after 11PM at night.  The sun came up around 3AM!

I was very surprised to see this relatively small boat out in the Gaylor Strait.  The waters were VERY calm on this day and in this area than in others that I will discuss later.

The above shows a volcano near the middle of the photo.

Very foggy most of the time.  Added to the beauty I thought.

I thought this penguin looked mad.  Maybe someone stole his fish?

It was not easy for me to capture photos of the seals in Antarctica.  I have some better ones from our stop in Montevideo, Uruguay.  It was wonderful seeing them in their natural habitat though!

Above is the best photo that I was able to get of a Humpback Whale in Antarctica.  We saw a lot of them, but it was NOT easy to capture a great photo of them!

I will end with a photo of an eskimo (yours truly actually)

Thank you so much for stopping by.  Please let me know if you ever have any questions since I'm always lacking in the description department.  I will try to answer them.  Take care everyone!

Michelle