Photo of the Day 292

Collared Kingfisher, Khulna Province, Bangladesh, 2006

Photograph by Tim Laman

A collared kingfisher preens in the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangladesh. A vast breakwater on the Bay of Bengal, the Sundarbans covers nearly 4,000 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) of Bangladesh and India, making it the largest mangrove wetland on Earth. Worldwide, these coastal forests thwart wave-driven erosion and capture riverborne sediments as they meet the sea, building new land.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Forests of the Tide," February 2007, National Geographic magazine)