The natural world in pictures
Winner of the Birds Behaviour category was Audun Rikardsen, from Norway. Rikardsen carefully positioned an old tree branch that he hoped would make a perfect golden eagle lookout. He bolted a tripod head with a camera the the branch, flashes and motion sensor attached, and built himself a hide a short distance away waiting for the perfect moment.
The Natural History Museum has announced the winners of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards. Now in its fifth year, the competition showcases the world’s best nature photography attracting over 48 000 entries from professionals and amateurs across 100 countries.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.
All pictures courtesy of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year
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- Yongqing Bao from China was a joint winner in the Behaviour: Mammals category with this gem. “The marmot was hungry,” explains the photographer. “It had spotted the fox an hour earlier, and sounded the alarm. But the fox itself hadn’t reacted, and was still in the same position. So the marmot ventured out of its burrow again to search for plants to graze on. The fox continued to lie still. Then suddenly she rushed forward. And with lightning reactions, Yongqing seized his shot. His fast exposure froze the attack.”
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- Winner of the Birds Behaviour category was Audun Rikardsen, from Norway. Rikardsen carefully positioned an old tree branch that he hoped would make a perfect golden eagle lookout. He bolted a tripod head with a camera the the branch, flashes and motion sensor attached, and built himself a hide a short distance away waiting for the perfect moment.
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- The rat pack by Charlie Hamilton James, from the UK, won the photographer first prize in the Urban Wildlife category. Lighting his shot to blend with the glow of the street lights and operating his kit remotely, the photographer realised this intimate street-level view of the brown rats of Pearl Street, in New York’s Lower Manhattan.
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- Ingo Arndt, from Germany was a joint winner in the Behaviour: Mammals category with this image. The photographer explains: “When the puma was within about 10 metres, she sprinted and jumped. As her claws made contact, the guanaco twisted to the side, his last grassy mouthful flying in the wind. The puma then leapt on his back and tried to deliver a crushing bite to his neck. Running, he couldn’t throw her off, and it was only when he dropped his weight on her, seemingly deliberately, that she let go, just missing a kick that could easily have knocked out her teeth or broken bones. Four out of five puma hunts end like this – unsuccessfully.”
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- Jasper Doest, from the Netherlands, won the Wildlife Photojournalist Story Award, which this photo forms part of. For the past 17 years Riku, a Japanese macaque legally captured from the wild, has performed comedy skits three times a day in front of large audiences at the Nikkō Saru Gundan theatre north of Tokyo. Recording Riku’s performance on stage – here with one of the trainers dressed in a Scottish kilt – he was appalled that such intelligent animals, once considered sacred, are now exploited for laughs.
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- Youngster Riccardo Marchgiani from Italy won the 15-17-year-old category with this photograph titled “Early Riser”. Marchgiani could not believe his luck when, at first light, this female gelada, with a week-old infant clinging to her belly, climbed over the cliff edge close to where he was perched. He was with his father and a friend on the high plateau in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains National Park, there to watch geladas – a grass-eating primate found only on the Ethiopian Plateau.
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- Ripan Biswas from India won the Animal Portraits category. Biswas was photographing a red weaver ant colony in the subtropical forest of India’s Buxa Tiger Reserve, in West Bengal, when he spotted the odd-looking ant. On a close look, he realised it was a tiny ant-mimicking crab spider, just 5 millimetres long.
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- Chinese photographer Shangzhen Fan captured this image titled Snow-plateau nomads winning the “Animals in Their Environment” category. The image captures a small herd of male chiru leaving a trail of footprints on a snow-veiled slope in the Kumukuli Desert of China’s Altun Shan National Nature Reserve.
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- German Stefan Christmann claimed the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Portfolio Award. This picture forms part of a winning photo story. More than 5 000 male emperor penguins huddle against the wind and late winter cold on the sea ice of Antarctica’s Atka Bay, in front of the Ekström Ice Shelf. It was a calm day, but when Stefan took off his glove to delicately focus the tilt-shift lens, the cold ‘felt like needles in my fingertips’. Each paired male bears a precious cargo on his feet–a single egg –tucked under a fold of skin (the brood pouch).
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- Youngster Thomas Easterbrook, UK claimed the 10 years and under category victory with this image entitled “Humming surprise”. With the moth moving quickly from flower to flower it was a challenge to frame a picture. But Easterbrook managed it, while capturing the stillness of the moth’s head against the blur of its wings.
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