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An eye for nature: The 2020 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards

An eye for nature: The 2020 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards

Winner in the Animal Portraits category: The Pose
Winner in the Animal Portraits category: The Pose.  A young male proboscis monkey cocks his head slightly and closes his eyes.  Mogens Trolle/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
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By Loz Blain
2020 Oct 17
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After more than 49,000 entries were whittled down to just 17, the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton to her friends) announced the winner of the 2020 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards at a live-streamed event from London’s Natural History museum this week.

This is one of the more prestigious photo awards going around, with a history going back to 1965. Started by the BBC’s Animals magazine, it aimed to highlight species, behaviors and natural events that few people get to see first-hand. The very first winner was presented with his award by no less than Sir David Attenborough, and for the last 38 years, the winners have been put into an exhibition.

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This year’s overall winner, bringing in £11,250 (US$15,000) in prize money, was no joke to capture. Russian photographer took nearly a year to shoot it, using motion sensor-activated cameras. It shows a huge Amur (Siberian) tiger scent-marking a fir tree with what looks like an ecstatic hug. There are only 550 or so of these beasts remaining, although that’s a considerable rebound from the 20-30 wild tigers that remained after they were almost hunted into extinction over the last hundred years.

Overall winner, and winner in the Animals in their Environment category: Wild and free Siberian Tiger!"With an expression of sheer ecstasy, a tigress hugs an ancient Manchurian fir, rubbing her cheek against bark to leave secretions from her scent glands. She is an Amur, or Siberian, tiger, here in the Land of the Leopard National Park, in the Russian Far East. The race –now regarded as the same subspecies as the Bengal tiger –is found only in this region, with a small number surviving over the border in China and possibly a few in North Korea. Hunted almost to extinction in the past century, the population is still threatened by poaching and logging, which also impacts their prey–mostly deer and wild boar, which are also hunted. But recent (unpublished) camera‑trap surveys indicate that greater protection may have resulted in a population of possibly 500–600 –an increase that it is hoped a future formal census may confirm. Low prey densities mean that tiger territories are huge. Sergey knew his chances were slim but was determined to take a picture of the totem animal of his Siberian homeland. Scouring the forest for signs, focusing on trees along regular routes where tigers might have left messages–scent, hairs, urine or scratch marks–he installed his first proper camera trap in January 2019, opposite this grand fir. But it was not until November that he achieved the picture he had planned for, of a magnificent tigress in her Siberian forest environment."

Overall winner, and winner in the Animals in their Environment category: Wild and free Siberian Tiger!

“With an expression of sheer ecstasy, a tigress hugs an ancient Manchurian fir, rubbing her cheek against bark to leave secretions from her scent glands. She is an Amur, or Siberian, tiger, here in the Land of the Leopard National Park, in the Russian Far East. The race –now regarded as the same subspecies as the Bengal tiger –is found only in this region, with a small number surviving over the border in China and possibly a few in North Korea. Hunted almost to extinction in the past century, the population is still threatened by poaching and logging, which also impacts their prey–mostly deer and wild boar, which are also hunted. But recent (unpublished) camera‑trap surveys indicate that greater protection may have resulted in a population of possibly 500–600 –an increase that it is hoped a future formal census may confirm. Low prey densities mean that tiger territories are huge. Sergey knew his chances were slim but was determined to take a picture of the totem animal of his Siberian homeland. Scouring the forest for signs, focusing on trees along regular routes where tigers might have left messages–scent, hairs, urine or scratch marks–he installed his first proper camera trap in January 2019, opposite this grand fir. But it was not until November that he achieved the picture he had planned for, of a magnificent tigress in her Siberian forest environment.”

Sergey Gorshkov/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
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“Hunted to the verge of extinction in the past century, the Amur tiger population is still threatened by poaching and logging today,” said Dr Tim Littlewood, one of this year’s contest judges and the Natural History Museum’s Executive Director of Science. “The remarkable sight of the tigress immersed in her natural environment offers us hope, as recent reports suggest numbers are growing from dedicated conservation efforts.”

The contest also goes out of its way to support and feature young talent, and this year’s Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award went to Finland’s Liina Heikkinen, who was just 13 when she shot this image of a young fox jealously guarding its dinner – a goose its mother had slain – from its five siblings.

Young Grant Title winner and winner in the 15-17 Years Old category: The Fox the Got the Goose

Young Grant Title winner and winner in the 15-17 Years Old category: The Fox that Got the Goose.  Liina Heikkinen/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
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Shekar Dattatri, a wildlife filmmaker and jury member, commented “A sense of furtive drama and frantic urgency enlivens this image, drawing us into the frame. The sharp focus on the fox’s face leads us straight to where the action is. A great natural history moment captured perfectly.”

Winner in the Under Water category: The Golden Moment"A tiny diamondback squid paralarva flits below in the blackness, stops hunting for an instant when caught in the light beam, gilds itself in shimmering gold and then moves gracefully out of the light. The beam was Songda’s, on a night‑dive over deep water, far off the coast of Anilao, in the Philippines. He never knows what he might encounter in this dark, silent world. All sorts of larvae and other tiny animals –zooplankton–migrate up from the depths under cover of night to feed on surface-dwelling phytoplankton, and after them come other predators. Diamondback squid are widespread in tropical and subtropical oceans, preying on fish, other squid and crustaceans near the surface. In November, hundreds gather off Anilao to spawn. A paralarva is the stage between hatchling and subadult, already recognizable as a squid, here 6–7 centimetres long (21/2inches). Transparent in all stages, a diamondback squid swims slowly, propelled by undulations of its triangular fins (the origin of their name), but by contracting its powerful mantles, it can spurt away from danger. Chromatophores (organs just below the skin) contain elastic sacs of pigment that stretch rapidly into discs of colour when the muscles around them contract; recent research suggests that they may also reflect light. Deeper in the skin, iridophores reflect and scatter light, adding an iridescent sheen. From above, Songda captured the fleeting moment when, hovering in perfect symmetry, the diamondback paralarva turned to gold."Winner in the Under Water category: The Golden Moment

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Winner in the Mammals Category: When Mother Says Run"This rare picture of a family of Pallas’s cats, or manuls, on the remote steppes of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau in northwest China is the result of six years’ work at high altitude. These small cats are normally solitary, hard to find and mostly active at dawn and dusk. Through long-term observation, Shanyuan knew his best chance to photograph them in daylight would be in August and September, when the kittens were a few months old and the mothers bolder and intent on caring for them. He tracked the family asthey descended to about 3,800metres (12,500 feet) in search of their favourite food–pikas (small, rabbit‑like mammals)–and set up his hide on the hill opposite their lair, an old marmot hole. Hours of patience were rewarded when the three kittens came out to play, while their mother kept her eye on a Tibetan fox lurking nearby.Their broad, flat heads, with small, low‑set ears, together with their colour and markings, help them stay hidden when hunting in open country, and their thick coats keep them alive in the extreme winters. In the clear air, against a soft background, Shanyuan caught their expressions in a rarely seen moment of family life, when their mother had issued a warning to hurry back to the safety of the lair.Their real threat, though, is not foxes but the degradation and fragmentation of their steppe grassland–throughout their Central Asian range–caused by overgrazing, arable conversion, mining and general human disturbance, alongside poisoning of their prey and hunting, for their fur and as pets."Winner in the Mammals Category:  Mother Says To Run

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Winner in the Amphibians and Reptiles category: Life in the Balance"A Manduriacu glass frog snacks on a spider in the foothills of the Andes, northwesternEcuador. As big consumers of invertebrates, glass frogs play a key part in maintaining balanced ecosystems. That night, Jaime’s determination to share his passion for them had driven him to walk for four hours, in heavy rain, through the forest to reach the frogs’ streams in Manduriacu Reserve.But the frogs were elusive and the downpour was growing heavier and heavier. Ashe turned back, he was thrilled to spot one small frog clinging to a branch, its eyes like shimmering mosaics. Not only was it eating –he had photographed glass frogs eating only once before –but it was also a newly discovered species.Distinguished by the yellow spots on its back and lack of webbing between its fingers, the Manduriacu frog is found only in this small area. The reserve is private but seriously threatened by mining activities permitted by the government (open-pit mining for gold and copper), as well as illegal logging, and the new frog is considered critically endangered. Serenaded by a frog chorus in torrential rain –he held his umbrella and flash in one hand and the camera in the other –Jaime captured the first ever picture of this species feeding."Winner in the Amphibians and Reptiles category: Life in the Balance

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These shots, along with all the other winners (15 of which we present in our gallery), will be featured in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London until June 2021.

View all 16 images here: https://newatlas.com/photography/2020-wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-winners/

If you enjoy these shots, check out the 2019 competition’s winners as well.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.

Source: Natural History Museum

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