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The spiraling staircase of the Vatican Museum near the exit on May 21st.
John Sanfillippo of Hoffman Estates
While on a road trip to the west coast last month my wife and I stopped at Morro Bay CA. to see the sea otters. This sea gull landed on our car and decided that riding is better then flying. He didn't fly away until we were slowly driving on the road that rings the bay.
Milton Hoskins of Hampshire
A praying mantis stands in the grass near the bank of a creek in Des Plaines in August of 2014.
Butch Law of Des Plaines
The Yaquina Head Light along the Oregon coastline last summer.
Mike Gilligan of Hawthorn Woods
A late spring sunset over Green Bay at Sister Bay, WI. Nature at its finest!
Michelle Hudson of Elgin
My husband noticed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of these little beauties outside as they dropped silk strands and waited to be carried away on the breeze, we both recalled Charlotte and her babies in the lovely book, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Photographing them was interesting and I made sure to step away each time a breeze came up so as not to interfere or end up with any of them on my camera or body. Within 15 minutes, they were all on their way. Another wonderful moment with nature.
Debra Hruby of Wheaton
A stormy sunset creates dramatic cloud cover over the calm water on Fox Lake, Wisconsin on May 16th.
Steven De Spain of Lake Zurich
A wild turkey and three hens wander around a backyard of a West Bend, Wis. home in May of 2016.
Kathy Goffee of Ivanhoe
A mother duck with her 12 ducklings stand in front of Binny's Liquors at the shopping center at Rand Road and Arlington Heights Road on May 3. The group was eventually herded to a nearby pond.
Karen Burrise of Arlington Heights
An Civil War-era cannon salute highlights an annual Memorial Day observance at West Aurora Cemetery Sunday, May 29. The event was sponsored by costumed members of Phillip H. Sheridan Camp No. 2, Illinois Sons of Veterans of the Civil War. An Abraham Lincoln re-enactor read a poem, "Bivouac of the Dead" and laid retired U.S. flag ashes at the tombstone of Daniel A. Wedge. last survivor of Aurora Post No. 20, Grand Army of the Republic, who died in 1947.
Al Benson of Aurora
I took this photo of the Pysanky Museum which is the decorative egg museum, in Kolomyia, Ukraine, in the Carpathian Mountains. The museum houses over 10,000 decorated eggs, not just for Easter but as a traditional Ukrainian craft. I visited as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine in 2013 before being evacuated due to the revolution and Russian invasion. The plate of pysanky is a photo I took at a festival in the village of Severynivka, Ukraine.
Michael Dixon of St. Charles
This photo was taken at TriCounty State park, Elgin Il. It's a grim reminder that in order for a predator to eat, something else needs to die. All that is left of a prairie crayfish is a single claw.
Andrew Zydell of Elgin
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