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 and there is still so much more to see ^^ .. To participate in #amazingnature 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 Steemit 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 times we are living in.

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Contest Rules :

• Use #amazingnature as FIRST TAG and CLEARLY MENTION that your post is an ENTRY for this contest. This assures that this contest can grow and reach out to as many nature lovers as possible.
• As an ALTERNATIVE you can also use the #hive-127788 TAG prior to #amazingnature as the first one. It is the tag of the former #amazingnature community that is now the new DNA & AMAZING NATURE community together.
• All pictures that you use have to be your own. You can use the amazing nature banner if you like or create your own. Do not forget to mention the source !
• Clearly 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 so all participants can find it easily and fully enjoy this weekly collection. You can add a picture if you like. It is also NECESSARY as I have to post one link to the Discord on Friday 5 days later for voting and also for my own compiling purposes.
• Please submit only one post per contest. Of course you can do more, but I will stick to the first entry per Steemian.
• The entry window is open for 5 DAYS.

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 ^^

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Prizes to Win :

• 1st Place : 3 SBI
• 2nd Place : 2 SBI
• 3rd Place : 1 SBI

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 @redheadpei.

How are the Winners choosen ?

I do not choose the winners personally, also I did it in the beginning. The voting will be done by the community instead. For this purpose the Steem Terminal was so kind to create a special contest room in their Discord. Here I will post the announcement post (contests-and-such) EACH SUNDAY together with all your entries (adalger-contest) EACH FRIDAY. Every member of the Terminal will be able to assign "voting emojies" 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 ^^

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Steem Terminal Discord Server:

If you want to vote for the entries, feel free to join us on the Steem Terminal Discord:

https://discord.gg/XZGPGpz

It is a great location for learning about Steem, Discord, and Steem-related communities, full of nice people that you may ask if you need assistance, with nearly everything ^^ It also host the Redfish Rally, a funny challenge for all those new here. You will find documents to assist you, a place to learn and practice, and find out about the many opportunities to connect with other Steemians. So why not joining us? You will not regret it ^^

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THIS WEEKS WINNERS

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The first winner of this week's contest is our well-known @redheadpei. At her place in Eastern Canada it was quite cold and it snowed a lot lately and her entry is about a raven eating up a piece of bread that she put out for him during that harsh weathercconditions ^^ Usually she encounters rather timid raven, but this time she found this big one here landing very close to the kitchen window. Not only a sign of more snow coming if they approach that close, but also of being blessed and favored by Odin. It is a fantastic little photographic story and I hope he comes back another day, now that he knows that there is always a bite of bread for him at your place ^^ Thank you for this great story and entry about the raven ^^

@redheadpei

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Today I have the honor to present to you a new participant of the contest, namely @haastrecht. He is a dutch photographer that shows a lot of great landscape pictures in his blog. Also some very nice drone captured footage ^^ In his entry he shows us some beautiful pictures from the Utrechtse Heuvelrug National Park in the Netherlands. The weather was great, the autumn leaves hanging nicely, and the light was absolutely perfect. I already put this National Park k, which is quite close to my home place, on my list of places to visit next :) .. Thank you so much for participating in Amazing Nature and also for already joining the community hive ^^ I am sure we can expect many great landscape pictures from this amazing duch drone pilot in the future :)

@haastrecht

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Here we have @bucipuci again. There are for sure some great steemians here in the contest, but he has the hand to find the beauty of nature in all the places which most people would never even look at. While he is walking alone or with the dog, he always enjoys every moment in nature. From time to time you even get some amazing philosophical statements in his post that are absolutely stunning. He would find hope even in the most deserted places. It is so nice to see you around so often in the entry list and congratulations for being in the winners list ^^

@bucipuci

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HONORABLE MENTIONS

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@annephilbrick

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@irvet

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@mariacaffrey

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@phortun

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@isabelpena

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

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Normally I use this chapter to feature a Steemian, but today I have an amazing announcement instead. It is about the merging of Amazing Nature and the Steem Biodiversity Project that initialised the founding of DNA - Densifying Nature-Appreciation.

You know that I was always eager to find and watch nature pictures from all over the world in all their diversity and from various perspectives and motivations. I wanted to collect all those beautiful snapshots and their amazing stories in a compilation from which you can all benefit. Now I found @aakashsinghbais who came up with that amazing project idea here. I directly fell in love with it at the very first moment and already jumped in heads first. By working together, hand in hand, all us Steemians can now create something even bigger and far more valuable for the whole community that Mother nature would be so proud of ^^

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SBioP (Steem Biodiversity Project)



@bioportal.steem

"The aim of our project is to reward people for their efforts and to publish reports of biodiversity data contributed or cataloged by Steemians giving due credits to the contributors.
The Steem Biodiversity Project is a non-profit effort based on community support and contributions. We'll also try to use our funds to help deserving fellow Steemians contribute more than they could (without our support) towards the goal of the project. The remaining funds will be used for giving remunerations to the people actively working as scientists and those helping in managing this project. We started working fully 2 weeks ago on 9th January 2019. The past two weeks (Week-1, 2) of our project have been great and interesting with your support."

_{Project description by @aakashsinghbais}

SBioP Announcement Post

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We talked a lot already and came to the conclusion that our motivations are very similar. We will combine our efforts and try to bring all of you nature lovers together under the same roof, with #amazingnature and #sbiop as just the beginning to fill the house that is called:


DNA - Densifying Nature-Appreciation

There will be several changes in the future that I will list now. But to calm you down a bit, I will still host this contest for you that you all love soo much, just with some changes:

• There is already a DNA Discord server. If you want to participate in DNA, please join us there and help to build it up for all of you. You will find the DISCORD INVITATION HERE
  
  
• The #amazingnature contest is already implemented in this server, but the "emoji" voting system has not migrated from the Terminal yet. I like to give you some time to adapt to the recent changes first. The whole contest will be moved next week, or maybe the one after.
  
  
• A curation service for nature related post is implemented by DNA using the @dna.steem account. It is also a curation trail and it would be nice if you think about following or delegating to it.
  
  
• I will still leave the autovotes for my contestants so far, but I am planing to support the new manual curation system by @dna.steem from now on. I withdrew some SBI delegation already, but will leave enough to manage SBI rewards for you. The remaining voting power will be distributed between the contestants autovotes and the @dna.steem delegation. It may shift to full delegation in the future too.
  
  
• This said I would encourage you to create high quality nature content. Do not just post simple pictures, but add some explanation and information if possible and remember to quote the sources. DNA curation aims to posts that support high quality posts and not just simple pictures.
  
  
• The Amazing Nature #hive-127788 that I created for you was already rearranged too. I know that beta.steemit is still there to come, but we would like to already encourage you to join in with all your posts that are in the spirit of DNA. The community hive already changed to DNA. Just use #hive-127788 as first tag for the purpose of posting in this community. If you want you can also use and populate the regular #dna tag too for this purpose by using it as anyone of your tags if you have nature related content.

DNA WELCOMES ALL NATURE LOVERS OUT THERE AND ALL EXISTING NATURE RELATED COMMUNITIES TO JOIN, PARTICIPATE AND HELP US TO GROW SOMETHING BIG AND MEANINGFUL. PLEASE LEAVE YOUR CRITICS IN THE COMMENTS !

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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 to come as 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.

Previous Participants :

@akinome @alinix @annamarina @annephilbrick @apnigrich @artofwisdom @angelro @atomcollector @bahttg @bigsambucca @brittandjosie @bucipuci @careassaktart @cocolefleur @davidesimoncini @dkkarolien @elkezaksek @ellenripley @engrsayful @haastrecht @hangin @iamraincrystal @ireenchew @irvet @isabelpena @joanstewart @joebtc @johannpiber @justclickindiva @kamrunnahar @karbon @kheys @lighteye @manojbhatt @maricaffrey @melinda010100 @mintymile @misschance @molometer @myjob @mysteriousroad @nelinoeva @nilom @ninahaskin @paradigm42 @phortun @qwerrie @redheadpei @sarimanok @sayee @sallybeth23 @seadbeady @s3rg3 @theoctoberwind @thesobuz @travelsbyblue @trincowski @viking-ventures @wongbraling

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.

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If you want to know more about me, just look up my Introduceyourself post or follow my blog ^^

Learn more about @adalger here !

Best wishes,
Adalger