Photo of the Day 504

Koi Feeding, Texas

Photograph by Randy Heisch

This Month in Photo of the Day: Your Photos

Blue sky reflects off the surface waves created by a koi surfacing to feed in our backyard pond.

—Caption by Randy Heisch

Photo of the Day 441

Saddled Horse, Mentone, Texas, 2000

Photograph by Jodi Cobb

A saddled horse stands in the tiny town of Mentone, Texas. Seat of Loving County, the least populated county in the lower 48 states, Mentone sits smack in the middle of furnace-hot desert with oceans of oil belowground and not much to speak of above.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "ZipUSA: Mentone, Texas," September 2000, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 419

Boot Track Cafe, Mentone, Texas, 2000

Photograph by Jodi Cobb

The town of Mentone, Texas—population 15, more or less—supports a leisurely business at the Boot Track Cafe. The ramshackle restaurant with the lipstick-red posts sets out bottles of hot sauce as centerpieces and serves about 25 cheeseburgers per day.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Zip USA: Mentone, Texas," September 2000, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 410

Spanish Church, Texas, 1996

Photograph by Bruce Dale

A peaceful image of the 140-year-old presidio chapel in San Elizario, Texas, belies the restive reality of life along the U.S.-Mexico border. Towns beside the dangerous and polluted 1,250-mile-long (2,000-kilometer-long) Rio Grande don’t always know calm and order.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, “Tex-Mex,” February 1996, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 281

Spacesuit, Houston, Texas, 2007

Photograph by Mark Thiessen

A spacesuit is put through its paces at the Johnson Space Center's Lunar Yard in Houston, Texas. The 2-acre (0.8-hectare) mock moon surface, made of sand and crushed granite, allows engineers to test systems and concepts as they prepare for NASA's return to the moon.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Space Age Turns Fifty," October 2007, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 112

Attwater's Prairie Chick Hatchling, Texas, 2002

Photograph by Joel Sartore

Newly hatched at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas, this Attwater's prairie-chicken is part of a captive breeding program aimed at increasing the birds' numbers in the wild. These charismatic birds once numbered about a million along the Texas coastline, but overhunting and habitat loss have cut their wild population to just 50 or so. Captive breeding programs like this one are trying to reverse the trend.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Down to a Handful," March 2002, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 47

Attwater's Prairie Chick, Texas, 2002

Photograph by Joel Sartore

A weeks-old Attwater's prairie-chicken perches in a delicate nest in Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas. A century ago, as many as a million Attwater's prairie-chickens roamed coastal grasslands here. Today fewer than 50 of these chickens are left in the wild, due to overhunting and habitat loss.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Down to a Handful," March 2002, National Geographic magazine)