A resplendent quetzal takes food to its two chicks in the Costa Rican cloud forest of San Gerardo de Dota. The photographer, Tyohar Kastiel, arrived before dawn each day and sat in the same place, wearing the same jacket, so the pair of resplendent quetzals bringing food to their young chicks would not be startled by his presence.
Tyohar Kastiel
The Iberian lynx, an endangered cat that exists in only two small populations in southern Spain. Laura Albiac Vilas's family went to the Sierra de Andújar Natural Park to track them down, and got lucky when they found a pair close to the road.
Laura Albiac Vilas
A pair of mating "sea angels" in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Russian Far East. Sea angels are molluscs and each individual is both male and female. This pair are about three centimetres long, and they stayed joined for 20 minutes then went on to lay around 30-40 eggs each.
Andrey Narchuk
These saguaro cacti in the Sonoran Desert National Monument could be 200 years old. They're slow growing, and their roots spread out far and wide underground. Jack Dykinga found one he could almost get inside of to take this photo showing the landscape at dawn.
Jack Dykinga
A sea horse grabs onto a plastic cotton bud on a reef near Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, as conditions in the water became rougher. Photographer Justnin Hofman says that as the tide came in a sewage sludge covered the surface of the water, and plastic debris could be seen floating about.
Justin Hofman
Mountain hares fighting during mating season in the mountain birch forest in Vauldalen, Norway. Photographer Erlend Haarberg spent freezing nights in a hide watching and waiting for the hares, and illuminated some areas with lamps which he says didn't bother the hares at all. One night two hares began fighting over food, and Haarberg managed to capture it.
Erlend Haarberg
Imapla being attacked by a Nile crocodile during a drought at Kruger National Park, South Africa. After three years of low rainfall in the area water was scarce, and the impala's drank while keeping an eye on the crocodiles in the water. Photographer John Mullineux was also keeping close watch and snapped his photo just as the crocodile made its (fruitless) attack.
John Mullineux
A six-month-old Sumatran tiger cub whose back leg was mangled in a snare and had to be amputated. He was discovered in a rainforest in Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and will now spend his life in a zoo.
Steve Winter
A Weddell seal and her pup in the icy water of east Antarctica. Weddell seals give birth on the ice and take their pup's swimming after a week or two. Photographer Laurent Ballesta said: "They looked so at ease, where I felt so inappropriate."
Laurent Ballesta
The magnificient anemone stings most fish, but clown anemonefish are covered in a mucus that tricks the tentacles into thinking they are brushing against themselves. These were spotted by photographer Qing Lin while diving in the Lembeh Strait in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Qing Lin
An elephant at dusk in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve. Photographer David Lloyd waited for the elephant herd to take their evening trek to a waterhole so he could take this photo of what is probably the matriarch of the group.
David Lloyd
An avalanche in the Himalayas, Pakistan. Photographer Paddy Scott was there to document an expedition to the peak of the as-yet unassailed Link Sar, when he was stopped in his tracks by this avalanche.
Paddy Scott
An Anthony's nightjar rests on a tire on a farm in Ecuador’s Jardin de los Sueños Reserve. Jaime Culebras was looking for frogs and snakes when he found the bird hunting insects around the farm. Before sunrise it settled onto the tyre and Culebras was able to get this shot.
Jaime Culebras
An arctic fox with a snow goose egg on Wrangel Island in the Russian Far East. Arctic foxes take snow goose eggs and bury them in the tundra to tide them over once the geese have migrated south again.
Sergey Gorshkov
A brown bear and her playful cub at the Lake Clark National Park in Alaska. "This young cub seemed to think that it was big enough to wrestle mum to the sand," says photographer Ashleigh Scully. "As always, she played along, firm, but patient."
Ashleigh Scully
A bald eagle at Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island in Alaska, after several days of constant rain that appear to have soaked it to the skin. Photographer Klaus Nigge laid on his front on the beach to gain the trust of the eagles in the harbour, until this one came so close it towered over him.
Klaus Nigge
Yoina, age nine, with her pet saddle-backed tamarin in Yomibato, a remote area of Peru’s Manú National Park. Yoina is a member of the Machiguenga, an indigenous hunter-gatherer community of around 1,000 people who live in the area.
Charlie Hamilton James
A pack of African wild dogs standing over a male impala they just brought down, in Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools National Park. Photographer Greg du Toit lay in the sand as he aimed for a shot that revealed the pack "as a collective unit". The backlight in this photograph is actually a neighbouring camper's torch.
Greg du Toit
Top down view of a school of Atlantic horse mackerel bunched up into a ball about five metres across, surrounded by predators including European barracudas and bluefish. "It was so dense that I could put my hand inside and catch fish," says photographer Jordi Chias Pujol.
Jordi Chias Pujol
At the edge of the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap in Iceland it fractures and blocks of ice fall towards the melting face of the glacier. Dark lines show where ash from the volcano beneath has been deposited during past eruptions.
Chris Bray
A 15 centimetre-long smooth-sided toad on the banks of the Tiputini River in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. Photographer Jaime Culebras followed the toad until it stopped right in front of him and let him compose this portrait.
Jamie Culebras
The overall winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year will be announced on 17 October. The exhibition opens on 20 October at the Natural History Museum in London.
from BuzzFeed - Kelly Oakes http://ift.tt/2wmfdzu
