‘A dream came true when I took this picture,’ says Vegard. After years of searching, he had finally found a riverside location visited by the deer of Valldal. After partly submerging his camera in a waterproof box, he set up a flash above and below the water, along with motion sensors. Near midnight, a male crossed the river – the camera capturing its proud pose.

After moose, red deer are the largest species of deer. Only the males have antlers, which have been known to grow to more than a metre in length and weigh up to five kilogrammes. At the end of each winter they shed their antlers, which are made of bone – when spring comes they regrow, protected by a soft covering known as velvet.

‘I love creating photos with impact,’ says Isak, who is often on the lookout for Zambia’s most iconic animals. He was photographing a pride of lions when this lioness wandered off. Anticipating it was going for a drink, he positioned himself by the nearest waterhole. It then appeared through the long grass, framed by a wall of lush green.

Lions kill more than 95 per cent of their prey at night, and spend the majority of the day resting. Although they drink readily when water is available, they are also capable of consuming sufficient moisture from their prey and plants – making them perfectly adapted to their arid landscape. Yet despite this, lion numbers are decreasing significantly.

One evening during Botswana’s dry season, I waded into a water hole to capture a shimmering reflection of a gathering of elephants at twilight, with a full moon suspended in a luminous pink sky. The image is my homage to the primeval qualities of southern Africa’s wilderness, the grandeur of elephants, and the precious nature of water in a land of thirst.

Tom saw the rook as he glanced out of his living room window. Wings spread, the bird was using the neighbour’s chimney pot to smoke bathe. Realising the opportunity – and knowing the heat and smoke would only allow the rook to remain for a few minutes – he quickly took his photograph before leaving it to enjoy its smoky bath.

Rooks are incredibly intelligent creatures and smoke bathing is likely to be a learned behaviour, rather than instinct. The smoke helps the birds to fumigate their feathers, ridding them of irritating parasites such as lice, mites and ticks. The related jackdaw has even been seen fumigating itself over smouldering cigarette ends.

While driving with his father through the city, Arshdeep saw a bird disappearing into an old waste-pipe. He asked to stop the car, then primed his father’s camera and telephoto lens, kneeling up on the seat and resting it on the half-open window at eye-level. It wasn’t long before a spotted owlet emerged, followed by a second. Both stared right at him.

Spotted owlets traditionally nest in tree hollows, where the female lays up to five eggs. Although common in the Punjab, these small birds are rarely seen in the day, as they are nocturnal. This breeding pair – the larger female on the left – is among those using urban nesting sites following widespread deforestation in the region.

The rusty metal rod at the opening of a sewerage outlet pipe was a favourite perch for kingfishers, giving them a view of the fish below. Felix visited the spot many times to study them. Seeing the photographic potential of the colourful scene, he used a gentle flash to highlight this particular bird against the dark opening.

Excellent hunters, kingfishers are also good indicators of high water quality. With better water treatment and bans on pollutants in some cities, these birds are slowly returning to urban areas. Kingfishers can struggle to find natural fishing perches in cities and so use whatever they can find, including shopping trollies and scrap metal.

After tracking this pack of African wild dogs on foot for more than three kilometres, Nicholas looked on as this pair of pups played a macabre game with the remains of their baboon breakfast. ‘Half of me felt disturbed by the disrespect this deceased fellow primate was receiving,’ he says. ‘The other half was caught up in the infectious joy of the puppies.’

The endangered African wild dog, also known as the painted wolf, is best known for hunting antelope, such as impala and gazelle. However, its main prey can vary from pack to pack and will include smaller animals such as this baboon. Known for their intricate social structures, painted wolf pups old enough to take solid food are given priority at kills.

For Sergey, this photograph of a solitary polar bear walking steadily along a glacier is ‘a symbol of Franz Josef Land’. It speaks of the vulnerability of an iconic animal that depends entirely on this frozen wilderness. His powerful composition gives no hint of the biting wind and icy sea spray he had to endure while taking it.

The Russian Arctic National Park has recently been expanded to include the 191 uninhabited islands of Franz Josef Land. With a lack of data for this remote region, both polar bear numbers and rates of sea ice decline are unknown. This presents problems for polar bear conservation, as researchers need data to understand the impact of climate change here.

Surveying the scene, Darío was captivated by ‘the fragility of the chick’ as it used its oversized legs to scurry after its parents. After an uncomfortable crawl through a salt field in the rain and mud, Darío trained his lens on the speckled fluff of the chick, framing it against the dramatic background of salt and sky.

Two-banded plover chicks will leave their nests almost immediately after they hatch, relying on their stilt-like legs to keep pace with their parents and to evade potential predators. Their long legs also keep their soft down away from the wet ground. After four or five weeks, they will grow large enough to fly away from the care of their mother and father.

Kuhirwa, a young female mountain gorilla, would not give up on her dead baby. Initially she cuddled and groomed the tiny corpse, carrying it piggyback like the other mothers. Weeks later, she started to eat what was left of it. Forced by the low light to work with a wide aperture and a narrow depth of field, Ricardo focused on the body rather than Kuhirwa’s face.

From elephants stroking the bones of deceased family members to dolphins trying to keep dead companions afloat, there is an abundance of credible evidence to show that animals visibly express grief. Kuhirwa’s initial actions can be interpreted as mourning, her behaviour showing the pain of a mother who has lost her child.

Karine quietly watched this bobcat raise her kittens beneath the decking of a remote ranch house over several months. As they grew, Karine earned the bobcat’s trust, enough that the mother sometimes left her young with her while she went to hunt. ‘Animals can teach us so much,’ Karine says. ‘She taught me what trust was.’

Bobcats usually have one litter in spring with up to six kittens. The kittens stay with their mother before separating from her in winter. They eat mainly small mammals, especially rabbits and birds, and are often considered a nuisance. Despite being hunted for sport and trapped for their pelts, populations have remained resilient.

As the group of Qinling golden snub-nosed monkeys jumped from tree to tree, Marsel struggled to keep up, slipping and stumbling over logs. Gradually he learned to predict their behaviour, and captured this male and female resting. With the Sun filtering through the canopy, they are bathed in a magical light, their golden hair glowing against the fresh greens of the forest.

This pair belongs to a subspecies of golden snub-nosed monkey restricted to the Qinling Mountains. Among the most striking primates in the world, these monkeys are in danger of disappearing. Their numbers have steadily declined over the decades and there are now fewer than 4,000 individuals left.

Perching in a small motor boat on a fast-flowing river, Chris steadied his long lens on this battle. The jaguar had come across the yacaré caiman by chance – accidentally stepping on the reptile after a failed charge at a capybara. Without hesitation the jaguar pounced, overcoming its monstrously large prey in minutes.

The yacaré caiman and jaguar are both top predators in the Pantanal Wetlands, and struggles like this are not unusual. Though excellent swimmers, jaguars tend to stalk or ambush their prey on the ground, subduing them with their formidable bite. After they have delivered their final blow, they will often drag carcasses to shelter to enjoy their meal in peace.

Notoriously shy and elusive, the resident leopards of the Mashatu Game Reserve are hard to spot. But this time Skye was in luck. After tracking the leopards for a few hours, he came across Mathoja – a well-known female. In a fleeting moment, just before the leopard nodded off, Skye captured a peaceful portrait of this majestic creature.

Named by local guides, Mathoja means ‘the one that walks with a limp’ – a title given to her after a serious leg injury as a cub. Although her chances of survival were slim, Mathoja is now a healthy adult. She is one of the lucky ones – this species has been classed as vulnerable and many leopards are illegally hunted for their highly desirable skins.

Growing on the low stone wall of a house, this pyrolusite mineral looked ‘like oriental drawings on rice paper,’ says Carlos. Some resembled trees, others mountains. Crouching to capture the scene, he waited half an hour for this ladybird to wander over. For Carlos, the image ‘shows the beauty of small and common places when you stop to look closely’.

Manganese dioxide, also known as pyrolusite, is a mineral commonly found when water percolates through the cracks of sedimentary rocks. A closer look reveals the minute fissures from which the pyrolusite mineral emanates, spreading out in a self-repeating pattern. The ladybird is a twenty-two spot, and unusually feeds on mildew rather than aphids.

It had been a year since Julius had set up his camera trap and he only had two records of a Eurasian lynx to show for it. Overcoming problems with failed batteries, deep snow and spider webs he was on the brink of giving up when his luck changed. As soft light hit the snow-clad branches, two kittens turned up to play, rewarding Julius with nearly 100 images.

After several illegal lynx kills in Bavaria, catching sight of these shy, elusive and desperately endangered animals is a sign of hope that the population is hanging on. The Eurasian lynx has been, and continues to be, intensively hunted for its fur and perceived as a threat to livestock. Many of the current populations are the result of re-introductions.

Surveying the scene, Akshay decided to use the in-camera multiple-exposure mode. He captured two frames – the first of the dramatic dusk sky, and the second of the silhouetted impala. The camera seamlessly merged them, and the result is this creative illusion of a pool of water, leaving the viewer wondering why the sky is reflected in the water but the impala isn’t.

Impalas are one of the most common antelopes in Africa. Young males, like this one, often wander the savannah, usually after being evicted from mixed mating herds by dominant males. They will herd together until they are strong enough to establish a territory of their own, complete with their own group of females.

Lying ruined and looted, the city of Pripyat is within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which was established after the nuclear disaster of 1986. Devoid of humans, the city has surrendered to nature. This red fox trotted into the derelict classroom, stopping briefly on the carpet of child-sized gas masks just long enough for a picture. Seeing it was ‘completely unexpected,’ says Adrian.

The long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster are still far from clear. But, in the absence of humans, Pripyat appears to be thriving. The forest encroaches on all sides of the city, encouraging wild boar, beavers, otters, deer and moose. With radiation levels still high, only time will tell if this natural regeneration is a sign of hope for this bleak place

Morgan found this black-tailed doe, its eyes not yet dulled by death, by a road. Returning at dusk, she brought flowers to arrange a funeral wreath around the deer as a roadside memorial. ‘I wanted it to have one last moment of grace in this world,’ she says. ‘To tell it “I see you and you were loved”.’

With an increasing number of cars on the road, roadkill is a common sight in America and it is estimated drivers kill more than a million vertebrates every day. Solutions such as wildlife overpasses, tunnels and reduced speed zones have decreased animal fatalities, but it is still a pressing issue.

Dream Duel
As storm clouds gathered over the forest, the roaring sound of two competing red deer stags echoed through the trees. Well matched, neither challenger would walk away, so the contest escalated to a dramatic clash of antlers. Michel, hiding behind a tree under a camouflage net, had time to capture just a few frames before the stags separated.

Every autumn, young males, known as bucks, begin the annual search for a mate and compete to attract female attention. In preparation, males will often binge on fallen conkers, bulking up for their displays of strength. During the rutting season, bucks will stand side by side, assessing their rivals before locking antlers and going into battle.

Rearing its head, an Anchieta’s cobra lunged towards two meerkat pups. Reacting instantly, their 20-strong pack ran back to the warren and split into two – half ushering the pups away, the other half advancing towards the snake, growling and fluffing up their coats. Focusing on the snake’s classic profile, Tertius caught the meerkat mob’s fear and aggression.

This scene is rare – there are few records of an Anchieta’s cobra attacking a meerkat pack. In a group, the mammals have the advantage, using a system of alarm calls to notify others of predators and to co-ordinate a mobbing of the attacker. This snake was just an opportunistic hunter looking to snatch one of the p ups before the pack arrived.

As Emanuele walked along the beach, the stench of rotting sea lion carcasses was almost unbearable. He had seen insects feeding on the corpses, but knew when he saw the iguanas eating the insects that he’d found something interesting. Lying on the sand, choked by the vile smell, he caught this iguana peeping through an eye socket.

With a colony of 15,000 South American sea lions nearby, the beach of Paracas National Reserve is a graveyard for the ones that have succumbed to illness or injury. Others die in occasional mass events triggered by El Niño, where ocean temperatures rise temporarily. The iguanas survive here on the sand, where little vegetation grows, by feeding on insects instead.

A river once flowed through this remarkable place in the dunes of Namibia, but it changed course. The camelthorn trees that once flourished here are now just sculptural skeletons on a rock-hard clay pan. But backed by soaring dunes glowing with sunrise light, they are monuments to a time of abundance.

Georgina was at the waterhole early to photograph birds, but her attention was diverted to these industrious wasps. They were busy at the water’s edge, rolling the soft mud into balls and carrying them to their nearby nests. For a good angle, she lay in the mud, then pre-focused on a likely flight path and began shooting continuously.

The female mud-dauber wasps use the mud balls to build their nests. Collecting them into clusters, they then carve chambers inside the balls into which the females lay their eggs. Before closing each one up, the wasps insert the paralysed bodies of orb-weaving spiders as food for their larvae when they hatch.

A young Siberian tigress is laid out, awaiting an autopsy. Its emaciated body was found under a car, missing a forepaw. Undoubtedly, it had chewed off its own foot after being caught in a poacher’s trap. Unable to hunt, it would have slowly starved to death. For Antonio, seeing such a majestic animal reduced to this was heartbreaking.

Siberian tigers have been hunted almost to extinction, with barely 360 left in the wild. Despite being classified as endangered for the past few decades, their numbers continue to decline, as they are hunted by poachers and their homes are lost to deforestation. Human disregard continues to decimate tiger populations, leaving their fate hanging in the balance.

Large numbers of herring were overwintering in the northern fjords, attracting hundreds of predators and night fishing boats. The killer whales had realised that the sound of nets being hauled up meant the possibility of an easy meal. Audun asked the fishermen to angle their strongest light into the water, to capture his shot.

Killer whales are the largest members of the dolphin family. Although one species, it’s now thought there are several kinds living in different areas, using specific hunting strategies and social structures. This is a male eastern North Atlantic form, which is known to work together with other killer whales to herd fish into dense shoals.

Accompanied by rangers, Emmanuel had climbed 700 metres to set up eight cameras, selecting areas with previous tiger sightings and evidence of recent use such as tracks, scratches and faeces. ‘The forests were nothing like I had ever seen,’ he says. ‘Every species was something new.’ Twenty-three days later, this Bengal tiger gazed directly into one of his cameras.

In the Kingdom of Bhutan, tigers are making a comeback. There are now thought to be 103 tigers living in the wild there – almost a third more than the last count in 1998. As Bhutan has developed, the country has created a network of wildlife corridors from one national park to the next to allow wildlife to roam relatively undisturbed.

Cameron built his first drone with his father in 2013, all the while dreaming of photographing whales from the air. Four years later he achieved his ambition, capturing this spectacular shot of a humpback whale, its calf and their accompanying male escort. For Cameron, this image is a unique perspective of ‘nature’s most breathtaking subjects’.

These whales are part of a group known as the Tongan tribe, which is classed as endangered. It lives isolated from other breeding groups, and so numbers have fallen dramatically. Sightings such as this bring hope that the population is recovering. This calf is just a few days old, and the male, hoping to mate with the mother, will defend them both from predators.

After days of rough seas, Sue woke to find tranquil water and a single young booby circling. ‘Suddenly, a fish leapt out,’ she says, ‘and down came the booby’. With quick reactions, her camera already poised, she captured the fleeting moment of the bird in hot pursuit, reflected in the painterly water.

Boobies are extraordinarily lean, aerodynamic birds. Adults are nimble enough to catch moving targets, but this juvenile might just be practicing. The fish has broken the surface, and is gliding on its stiff pectoral fins. It does this to escape underwater predators, such as tuna and marlin, but this makes it vulnerable to attack from above.

Robert was trudging through dense woodland at night when he saw the huntsman spider, dangling in mid-air, clutching a dead frog. ‘It was fascinating to see it manipulating the frog with its front legs while gripping it with its fangs,’ he said. ‘To see it predating an animal so large was extraordinary.’

Huntsman spiders don’t build webs. Instead they hunt their prey, usually stalking large insects and other spiders, but also occasionally frogs. This one probably fell off a branch while struggling with the frog, and was left hanging dramatically from a silk anchor line. It had set this up as a precaution against such an event.

When Emily approached, the young sun bear hurried to the front of its filthy zoo cage, seemingly eager to interact with her. Yet when it spotted its keeper, its demeanour changed. As the keeper poked and provoked the bear ‘he started screaming,’ said Emily. ‘I’ve never heard such an awful noise, it was very frightening.’

Sun bears are the world’s rarest bears, yet are commonly exploited for their gall bladders and bile. In traditional Chinese medicine the bile is thought to treat a range of ailments, from hangovers to hepatitis. Cubs are farmed, sometimes living permanently with a catheter used to drain the bile.

Last time Georg tried to enter this ice cave, it was deemed too dangerous, due to excessive ice melt. But on this cooler day he made it in. With the sound of dripping water and the creak of the glacier shifting, he used natural light to capture the interior, including the distant larch trees and alpine scenery. ‘A breathtaking yet daunting experience,’ he says.

Glacier caves are often carved out by water running through or under a glacier’s ice. Unlike ice caves that are present all year round, glacier caves are seasonal. Global warming has caused some glaciers to completely disappear and others to retreat, meaning caves such as these are becoming less frequent or inaccessible.

From the garden of his hotel, Jan noticed that when the hummingbirds rotated around this plant’s spikes, and closed their tails for a moment, a beautiful cross appeared. From the low position of his wheelchair, it took him two half days to get the perfect shot, ‘their fast movements to me symbolise the freedom of our imagination,’ he says.

Endemic to Peru, the bearded mountaineer hummingbird spends its day feeding on sweet, nectar-rich plants. Unlike the hummingbird, the showy, dramatic torch lily seen here is not native to the region, but has become a popular food source for these hummingbirds. They are attracted by the delicious nectar of its bright red flowers.

Timbul, a long-tailed macaque, puts his hand to his face to try and relieve the discomfort of his mask, while being trained to stand upright for a street show. Sights such as this are common in Indonesia, and Joan spent a long time gaining the trust of the monkey’s owners. ‘They are not bad people,’ she says. Most are earning money to send their children to school.

Macaques like Timbul live in awful conditions, deprived of the social relationships they need to thrive. They work many hours, dancing and riding bikes, movements that are unnatural and uncomfortable. Animal charities are working to enforce legislation that makes it illegal to take young monkeys from the wild or to trade in them without a permit.

I like to get eye to eye with the animals I photograph and portray them as individuals. I followed this pride of lionesses for several weeks, and got to know their most intimate moments. Here at dusk, with eyes and ears scanning the bush, they are awake and ready to hunt.

The brown bears of Notranjska Regional Park are cautious, and so avoided the area where Marc had set up his camera trap, aware something had changed in their environment. However, after 14 long months the box protecting the camera lost all its scent, and the bears finally acclimatised. One morning a young bear strolled up the hill at sunrise ready for its close-up.

Brown bears were once found throughout much of Europe, but today their range is greatly diminished and fragmented. While the trend for Slovenia’s brown bear populations shows a steady growth, just a short distance away in Marc’s Austrian homeland there are very few bears left – their biggest threat is conflict with humans.

It took Susan two years to convince the orphanage to allow her access – the bond between rhino calves and their carers is fiercely protected. Moving quietly, she was careful not to disturb these two, Nandi and Storm, as they were fed by their carer under infrared lamps to minimise heat loss. For Susan, this image is ‘a peaceful moment amid tremendous violence’.

Despite conservation efforts, black rhinos remain critically endangered, as demand for their horn for use in alternative medicine fuels poaching. Nine months after Susan took her photograph, the orphanage was attacked, the carers assaulted and two white rhinos killed. Nandi and Storm were spared – their horns deemed too small to be worth the trouble.

Tony was on a mission – he wanted to capture an image that portrayed the ‘unique expression and burning desire of a male in love’. His subject was the Asian sheepshead wrasse, a fish found near Sado Island. After years of planning, and amid torrential rain, he finally found an earnest suitor for his portrait. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is the face of a fish looking for love’.

If there are no dominant males in the school of Asian sheepshead wrasse, larger, older female wrasse will change sex. The transformed fish will use its bulbous head, which turns red in the breeding season, to gain control over other males, attracting a harem of females in the process. It will then mate with these females dozens of times a day.

Extending his camera ahead of him using two monopod poles and a float, Valter slipped into the icy water to photograph the walruses he had spotted from his dinghy. This caught the attention of some curious youngsters who began to swim towards him. Exhilarated by this peaceful encounter, Valter captured this intimate portrait from a pole’s length away.

These walruses are likely to live for up to 40 years, spending their days trawling the seafloor, using their whiskers and muzzles to find and extract food. Their thick skin protects them from the cold as they forage mainly for molluscs, such as clams. In the Arctic water, blood flow to the surface of their skin is reduced to retain heat.

Little Big Head
Javier found just two of this species of treehopper in the three months he spent looking for them. The first flew away before he could photograph it. Taking great care not to scare this small bug away, he captured its portrait head-on for maximum impact.

Nearly all treehoppers have enlarged structures known as helmets, which develop from wing-like forms at the front of the thorax and then fuse above the body. These often disguise treehoppers as thorns or leaves to match their host plants. This one is perhaps mimicking an ant to deter predators, or by simply being difficult to swallow.

A yellow pygmy goby floats inside its human-made home: a discarded bottle lying on the seabed. Wayne set up his camera a few centimetres from the bottle’s narrow opening, and focused on the goby’s arresting, bulging blue eyes. The movement of the fish blurred the rest of its features into a haze of yellow.

Usually found in breeding pairs, the tiny and colourful yellow pygmy goby often inhabits old worm holes or empty bottles or cans. In this temporary home, the female lays several batches of eggs, while the male takes on guard duty to defend its spawn from intruders. Plastic is an increasing feature of its marine environment.

Clamped in the jaws of a hungry hellbender salamander, things were not looking good for the northern water snake. But when its attacker repositioned its bite, the snake pushed free and escaped. David was thrilled to catch a battle between these two unlikely foes. ‘I’ve seen hellbenders display an array of behaviours, but this was by far the most remarkable,’ he says.

Hellbenders are the largest salamanders in the USA and are among the most endangered. Usually they hunt for small prey, such as crayfish, insects and eggs, so a northern water snake is an unexpected choice. These amphibians use suction to secure their prey before using their teeth – a method unlikely to subdue a wriggling snake.

It took David three years to locate this quoll – and another six months to take this photograph. He set up a camera trap where a fallen log bridged a stream, foregoing flash to minimise disturbance, then placed a scent bait to pause any passing quolls. His perseverance paid off when this hunting female scampered into view.

These shy creatures are ferocious predators. Almost a metre long from nose to tail, quolls can slice meat off the reptiles, birds and mammals they hunt with their strong teeth and muscles. Like all quoll species, the spotted-tailed quoll is threatened by habitat loss due to industrial logging and competition with introduced species.

Jess captured the intense focus of this great northern diver parent, a species that usually lays just one to three eggs. With food for its precious chick gripped in its beak, its piercing red eyes stand out from its smart summer plumage.

In the first few days of life, young great northern divers struggle to swallow even small fish. This parent is instead offering its chick a damselfly nymph. Parents lead them into shallow water, where the young birds can pluck small aquatic insects from the lake bottom and underwater vegetation.

Every spring, hundreds of rough-skinned newts migrate from nearby forests to this pond to breed. David follows suit, spending hours in the icy water. He seized this moment, when one male successfully embraced the female in the centre, while rivals jostled beneath. ‘The males are so desperate to mate,’ says David, ‘that I usually have a few hanging off me’.

This large, writhing group of newts indicates a healthy population, where the two lighter skinned ones are female, and the others are male. Scientists have, however, become concerned about a new fungal disease called bsal, which is fatal to newts and other salamanders. Named the amphibian plague, once in a habitat it can decimate numbers.

Plosky Tolbachik volcano stopped erupting in 2013. Yet five years later, molten rock was still glowing as Denis picked his way through the lava field. Suddenly, the heat stopped him in his tracks – getting closer was out of the question. As the Sun set, he framed his shot, the dramatic clouds and glowing fissure in the lava tube reflecting the same deep pink.

With around 300 volcanoes, 20 of which are active, the Kamchatka Peninsula is one of the most volcanically active areas in the world. In the north is Plosky Tolbachik, a volcano with a history of eruptions stretching back thousands of years. The most recent episode lasted a year and left a lava plateau 50 metres thick.

‘The ocean is a victim of human activity,’ explains Greg. This frogfish couldn’t hide among the plastic, and the nearby frond of Sargassum seaweed was a far cry from the rafts of it that normally shelter this specialised species. Some people classify the mass of plastic carried on ocean currents as the seventh continent.

A master of camouflage and a voracious ambush predator, the frogfish normally stalks its prey through floating islands of brown Sargassum seaweed, using the lure on its head to entice prey. In recent decades, it has been forced to share its habitat with some of the 12.7 million tonnes of plastic that end up in the oceans each year. Reducing our usage is an obvious solution.

Lorenzo watched quietly as the two adders swayed cheek to cheek, aware that even the smallest movement from him would distract the pair. Glad of the low angle, he isolated the intertwined bodies of the courting couple, softly blurring their surroundings in the light of a foreboding sky

These male and female adders are taking part in a courtship ritual. Bodies entwined, the pair will restlessly rise up and down, constantly shifting positions and on occasions vibrating their tails. If mating goes ahead, they will twist closer together, and the female will then give birth to up to 18 live young about three months later.

Working on a climate change story, Thomas had secured a rare permit to land on Wolf Island, a remote part of the Galápagos Islands. Scrambling over loose rocks to reach this plateau, he spied a bizarre scene – pecking away at the flight feathers of a Nazca booby was a sharp-beaked ground finch. With scarce food alternatives, it had resorted to drinking blood to survive.

Encircled by steep cliffs, with no permanent water and little rainfall, Wolf Island is a difficult place to live. While the boobies can fish in the ocean, the finches are limited to a scant supply of seeds and insects. To survive they drink the blood of the Nazca boobies – a behaviour that may have evolved from feeding on parasites in their feathers

Justin spotted these hungry blue dragons closing in on a by-the-wind sailor in a rock pool, and wanted to capture this ‘different layer of life in the ocean’. He used an underwater torch to light his shot from beneath, and framed their elaborate forms from above, against a galaxy of reflective particles.

Blue dragons are small sea slugs that float upside down buoyed by air bubbles in their stomachs. They feed on cnidarians, a group of marine animals that includes jellyfish and this by-the-wind sailor. Storing stinging cells from their prey in finger-like protrusions, the blue dragons use this venom to defend themselves against predators.

Lying prone in a quagmire of thick, gooey mud, Paul spent an hour quietly nudging closer to this flock of flamingos. Eventually, he focused on the birds’ red legs, framing the shot to include their reflection. In post-production he rotated the image 180 degrees to create, as he describes, ‘a more abstract reflective image’.

Lesser flamingos find safety in numbers and tend to gather in large groups to protect themselves against predators. They feed almost entirely on blue-green algae, but will also feed on crustaceans. Gathering food by holding their beaks upside down in the water, they often synchronise, raising and lowering their heads to feed in orchestrated mass movements.

‘Humans have tried to master the art of sculpture, but icebergs show us we are no match for nature’s great design,’ explains Cristobal. To reveal the beauty of this spectacular ice carving, he used a low-noise drone, flying it high so as not to disturb the crabeater seals. The aerial viewpoint showed a heart-shaped pool in the iceberg’s centre.

Crabeater seals feed primarily from dusk to dawn, hauling out onto the ice around the middle of the day to rest. The clear blue area in this image is where the iceberg has melted away below the water line, creating a small and shallow pool, contrasted against the deep and dark ocean.

By one in the morning, the forest was quiet, but its nightlife shone out from the leaf litter. The star of the show was a large firefly larva about seven centimetres long, which emitted a continuous glow from four light organs at its rear end. Using a long exposure with a burst of flash, Christian revealed the larva apparently blazing a trail.

Fireflies spend most of their lives as larvae, feeding on other invertebrates such as snails and slugs. This one is a voracious predator of snails, even tackling those many times its size. Its glow is the result of a chemical reaction within its light organs, and is most likely a warning to predators that it is unpalatable.

Snow Snooze
Passionate about not disturbing his subjects, Michel silently approached this slumbering red fox, first walking and then crawling. Finally close enough, he isolated the fox against the snow with a long lens and blurred the background. ‘I stayed with it for a sublime 10 minutes,’ he says. ‘Its ears twitched from time to time, but it never once woke up.’

When hunting, foxes are able to detect their prey through the layers of snow by using their keen sense of smell and excellent hearing. They begin their hunt by standing motionless, listening for any sound of a mouse or vole. When they are sure of their prey’s location, they will leap into the snow, using their strong forelegs to pin their meal to the ground.

With a frenzy of colour and squawks, a flock of cobalt-winged parakeets descended on the small muddy pool Liron had positioned himself next to. Using a slow shutter speed, he framed the birds in mid-flight to capture the flurry of movement. Liron hopes that his image shows ‘just how amazing and worth protecting nature is’.

The parakeets spend most of their day up in the safety of the trees – predators are unlikely to catch these strong and rapid flyers up in the canopy. But the birds need to come down to drink, and so, aware of the risks, they descend in groups, gathering together near pools. They are vulnerable to attack on the ground, and so even the slightest noise can disperse the flock.

Late one night, over deep water, Michael was following a flying fish. By day, they move extraordinarily fast, but at night they swim slowly just below the surface. He tried various shutter and flash settings, all the while keeping track of his small subject. ‘I wanted to create a sense of movement,’ he says.

By rapidly beating their forked tails, flying fish such as this juvenile propel themselves in the water until they take off at the surface. By holding their long, pointed pectoral fins out stiffly, they can glide in the air for several hundred metres, away from underwater predators.