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Wildlife Photographer of the Year: stories behind classic portraits

by editor

With an almost human eye and pose, a head decked in finery, and a wing cloak of feathers masking its face, this remains an enigmatic portrait, even when given a name. Without a glimpse of the beak – among the world’s biggest – it is hard to visualise this as a Dalmatian pelican, even though the waved silver-white feathers on its forehead and flamboyantly loose plumes on its head could belong to no other species. Photographed at dawn, on an island in Romania’s Danube Delta, the bird is still in its sleeping position, with its head rotated 180 degrees and its beak resting on its back, buried in feathers. Notoriously shy, Dalmatian pelicans are easily disturbed, and so it was necessary for the photographer to enter his hide before sunrise and wait for dawn. The island and the marsh vegetation offer safety from predators, both for nesting – this population of pelicans migrates from the Mediterranean region to eastern Europe specifically to breed – and for sleeping. But like many birds, a pelican sleeps with one eye open and only half its brain resting, and then only in snatches, adjusting how much of its brain is asleep by how open its eye is. Its bill, with its huge pouch of skin, is a marvellous tool, not only for scooping up fish and holding a catch, but also for evaporation-cooling when it exposes and flutters the skin. But on cold nights, with such a large area for heat loss, a huge beak can be a handicap – the reason for burying it in the feathers of its backrest, as the pelican inhales air warmed by its own body heat. With that in mind, this image of a Dalmatian pelican could be said to be a most thought‑provoking portrait of Europe’s biggest fishing bird.

The hunter
by Konrad Wothe

The hunter

Leopards are among the most popular portrait subjects for photographers. But since leopards normally sleep during the day, most portraits show them reclining, usually draped over a branch. Rarely does a portrait reveal the fluid grace of a leopard in motion. To create such a shot required planning. The photographer stayed for more than a week in Tanzania’s Serengeti national park and got to know the leopard’s hunting area and where she was likely to rest. He also knew she would climb down from her sleeping tree at dusk to begin hunting. This was in the days of film, the 1990s, when a picture could be taken after sundown only with the use of a low speed and a wide aperture to capture the last of the light. Working with rather than against the inevitable grain that would result, the photographer enhanced the sense of movement by panning the camera along with the stride of the leopard, keeping the focus on her eye. The result was a painterly representation and a prize‑winning picture that has stood the test of time.

Little watcher
by Cyril Ruoso

Little watcher

The photographer couldn’t have asked for a more perfect pose or a more photogenic sitter. Though it was a cold, overcast morning in China’s Qinling mountains, with frost on the ground under the forest canopy, the soft light was perfect for photography. And for the young monkey, the fascination of the bipedal primate and his tripod and lens on a facing slope was irresistible. Having left the warmth of its mother, it sat where it had the best view, perfectly balanced, tucking in its feet and hands for warmth. The youngster was the photographer’s favourite in the troop of Qinling golden snub-nosed monkeys he was following. Though the monkeys occasionally come to the ground, they mostly feed in the trees, on leaves, bark, buds and lichen – so little ones need to learn to be agile. For the smallest there is a risk of a swooping goshawk or, more rarely, a golden eagle. But the real danger for all snub‑nosed monkeys is deforestation, the spread of the human population and, in the past, hunting. In the last millennium, golden snub‑nosed monkeys occurred in both lowland and upland areas across eastern, central and southern China. But today, fewer than 4,000 individuals remain, confined to a series of nature reserves in southern Shaanxi province.

Swish mover
by Tim Laman

Swish mover

This portrait of a male twelve-wired bird of paradise shows him not at his most spectacularly beautiful, but at the pinnacle of his spectacular performance, posed at the top of his dance pole, with the object of his desire in the frame. With his back to the discerning female, he is mesmerising her not just by the vivid yellow of his plumage but by swishing her face with the 12 wires that extend from the tips of his flank plumes. He has already attracted her to the pole with singing and a full‑frontal display, exposing the metallic glint of his breast feathers and the startling emerald green of the inside of his beak. Now he is at the intimate stage, which may or may not result in her allowing him to mate with her – a brief affair, after which their liaison will end. It all hinges on her judgment of his fitness. The pole itself is a tall dead tree in swamp forest on the island of New Guinea, which the male attends at dawn. To get the shot, the photographer also had to be in position before dawn in a tree at the same height as the dance pole, then wait in a hide, and repeat the process for however long it would take for the finale of the display to materialise – seven days, as it happened. The extraordinary yellow of the male’s feathers needs to be topped up by eating certain types of fruit to keep the feathers from fading to white. And the display itself needs to be practised and performed regularly if the male is to outperform his rivals. That this female finally chose him to mate with means her sons should inherit his winning looks and energetic persistence and her daughters should have her good taste in fit males.

Desert striker
by Thomas Dressler

Desert striker

Displayed in a characteristic S-shaped ambush posture, a Peringuey’s adder wriggles into the sand. A second longer, and only its eyes and the tip of its tail will be exposed. Discovered by the photographer as it hunted on the slip‑face of a dune in Namibia’s Namib desert, it has chosen to submerge itself for safety but also in anticipation of prey. With nostrils and eyes on top of its head – rather than at the side, as is usual in snakes – it can see and breathe while remaining hidden, and by bringing its tail close to its head, the tail tip can be wriggled like an emerging grub to bring a hunting lizard or a gecko within striking distance. Depending on the season and temperature, the adder hunts on the surface by day as well as night, using a sidewinding technique that allows it to move surprisingly fast with, at any one moment, only part of its body in contact with the hot sand. Its prey is mainly diurnal sand lizards and nocturnal geckos, from which it obtains food and moisture.

The greeting
by Karl Ammann

The greeting

This is an intimate portrait of a reticulated giraffe calf, just a few weeks old, being greeted by, most probably, an aunt as its mother introduces it to the family herd in Samburu national reserve, northern Kenya. The aunt nuzzles it and rubs it with her head. Other females and young giraffes have also gathered to make its acquaintance. The calf’s mother gave birth in a patch of savannah woodland not far from the group but with enough cover to keep the calf hidden while she moved away to feed. In dappled light, the calf’s reticulated pattern – paler than an adult’s – will have helped hide it from lions and other predators. And predators are the main reason that more than half of giraffe calves never reach adulthood. When the mother gave birth, she was standing up. Having survived the long drop, the calf would, within 30 minutes, have been standing up, too, and suckling. The calf’s tiny, tufted horns lie flat against its head but will slowly stand up as bone replaces cartilage. It is part of a herd of females and young that are a sub-unit of a much larger community of groups spread out over a large range. Young males form bachelor groups, but adult males tend to be solitary. Like elephants, giraffes use infrasound (low‑level sound beyond human hearing) to communicate, possibly keeping track of each other over large distances and at night. It’s a connected community that the calf will be part of for life.

Snowy landing
by Vincent Munier

Snowy landing

Huge wings sweep around, feathers splayed, as a snowy owl prepares to touch down. Set against a snow‑grey sky, the owl displays both its precision‑landing technique and its grappling-hook talons. The winter setting is typical – snow-covered tundra‑like grassland – but this is not the Arctic, rather a windswept prairie in Quebec, Canada, where the owl has set up a temporary hunting territory. This is a young female – larger than a male and distinguished by her heavily barred plumage. She has moved south of the Arctic Circle in search of ground with a snow depth of 30cm (12in) or less, which she can pounce through. With layers of feathers, including an undercoat of down, and thickly feathered feet, her plumage gives her insulation equivalent to that of an Arctic fox. And being large – the snowy owl is North America’s heaviest owl, standing more than 60cm tall – her reduced ratio of surface area to body size also helps her conserve heat. Though she can catch prey as large as a hare or a sea duck, her normal diet is small rodents, mainly lemmings. If the snow becomes too deep or the icy crust too thick to break through, she might prospect for hunting grounds farther south, returning north in spring to the Arctic Circle.

The lichen look
by Pete Oxford

The lichen look

Sporting camouflage accessories, including lichen-like encrustations and moss‑like crinkled antennae, a male katydid poses on a twig that matches his ensemble perfectly. Such exquisite camouflage means only the most dedicated of nature photographers could locate it for portraiture. The species is one of hundreds of katydids (bush crickets) to be found in the forests of South America. This one is in Ecuador, in a cloud forest on the western slopes of the Andes. Most katydid species are expertly camouflaged among vegetation to avoid the multitude of predators, and many of them have yet to be identified. The male here not only matches the colours of his background, but he has body parts masquerading as elements of moss and lichen that disrupt his outline. He has also expertly positioned himself to perfect the disguise. To find a female for procreation, a male needs to call her in, but to avoid detection by daytime predators, this katydid sings at night. By rubbing together his forewings (one equipped with a scraper and the other a file) he can produce a range of captivating vibrations, with frequencies that can even extend into ultrasound – another way to try to avoid detection. In the equatorial forests of Ecuador there are no seasons, and mating can occur year round. But as typical weather in the Andes can involve prolonged cloud cover and frequent rain, the equatorial advantages are offset by the inevitable drop in night-time temperatures, which quickly cool a katydid’s ardour.

Vole in a hole
by Danny Green

Vole in a hole

The drainage pipe seemed the perfect vole-sized hole, but it took the photographer many days camped on the opposite side of the canal before he saw a water vole that thought the same. The canal in Derbyshire is disused, but has banks ideal for these large voles: steep but easy to burrow into, not overly shaded and with a rich mix of succulent grasses, sedges and flowering plants, together with aquatic plants, providing plentiful cover and food – and relatively shallow, still water to dive into as an escape route. It was the perfect urban refuge. The only problem was a risk of burrows flooding when it rained heavily. Water voles might favour living beside water, at least in England, and can swim, but they are not aquatic rodents. They do not have webbed feet, and their fur becomes waterlogged if they are forced to remain in the water for long. Luckily for this population, the council lowers the water table if flooding is anticipated, not wanting the canal to overflow. Elsewhere in Britain, however, the threats are great. Rather than flooding, it is wetland drainage, dredging, river and stream canalization and the extension of arable cultivation and livestock grazing right to the river edge that have caused water voles to vanish from nearly 90% of their former range – the most dramatic decline of any British mammal. It is a situation that has been compounded by predation by feral North American mink, which being semi-aquatic can catch voles if they try to escape into the water and, in the case of the smaller females, can even squeeze into their burrows.

Cool cat
by Isak Pretorius

Cool cat

A head-on penetrating stare – the classic portrait of a predator. But the eye-level view and the frame of lush greenery makes this image uncomfortably different – as if the lion has been unexpectedly found drinking from a pond at the bottom of the garden. The waterhole is, of course, in Africa, in Zambia’s South Luangwa national park, and the photographer achieved his shot by anticipating that, after sleeping off a night feast of a buffalo kill, the lioness would need to drink, and he knew just where she would go. So though there was an element of luck in being able to see the precise point where she emerged through the rainy-season grass, there was nothing lucky about the composition or the timing – catching both her forward glance and her lapping tongue. The low angle was achieved by using a long lens from a vehicle positioned on the opposite side of the waterhole, making use of the early morning light to bring out the rich colours. The result is a strikingly original portrait of one of the most photographed of all African animals.

Close encounter
by Tony Wu

Close encounter

This is a portrait of Scar, an unusually friendly sperm whale. His forehead appears enormous, and is. A sperm whale’s head, at nearly a third of its body length, contains both the world’s largest brain and the spermaceti organ, a huge waxy liquid-filled cavity that can function either as a buoyancy control device for deep dives in search of squid and fish or as part of its sonar-like echolocation system – or both. When this portrait was taken, Scar was still a teenager – less than 15 years old – and little more than half his potential size of more than 18 metres (59ft) long. He also appears large because he is close to the photographer, having charged up to him, wanting to be rubbed. Scar has always been friendly. He was born off Dominica in the Caribbean into a family group that has been studied by whale researchers since 2005. It was after an attack by pilot whales that he first approached a boat, perhaps seeking comfort, having been gashed on his head and dorsal fin, the scars from which would give him his name. He seemed to enjoy the contact with the couple sailing the boat, developing such a trust of humans that he would approach divers, inviting contact. Scar left his natal unit not long after this picture was taken in 2010, and he will probably not be seen at the breeding grounds until he is in his late 20s.

very sensitive beast
by Larry Lynch

A very sensitive beast

It was big, very big, and very full. Judging by its size – more than 3 metres (10ft) – this American alligator was a male. It had been gorging on fish trapped in pools as the river, in Florida’s Myakka River state park, dried up. Knowing that the giant was satiated and not about to move, the photographer set up his tripod at a respectful distance and waited until dusk. Using flash at the lowest setting, he focused on the reptile’s eyes – the defining touch to a portrait of a nocturnal hunter. That their eyes shine red is the result of light bouncing off the tapetum – a reflector system at the back of the eye – and back through the eye’s photo-receptor layer, enhancing the alligator’s ability to see in dim light. The tapetum also adapts to the amount of light, depending on the time of day. That an alligator can find its way around in the dark and under water is partly due to another adaptation: multi‑sensory organs on the skin of its head and especially around the eyes and jaws, which give it a pressure sensitivity more acute than that of human fingertips. This allows it to sense pressure waves caused by the smallest water movements and to help it detect prey in the dark. Despite its thick armour of scales and its sluggish looks, it therefore appears that the south-eastern US’s biggest land predator is, when it comes to vision and touch, a very sensitive beast.

The art of relaxation
by Jasper Doest

The art of relaxation

Though just a portion of the face is revealed and the subject’s eyes are closed, this is a portrait which encapsulates pure relaxation. That we can interpret this is because the subject is a fellow primate, and we are attuned to the tiniest signals in a face so similar to our own. Indeed, the eyes rolled back under the translucent lids suggests a state of dreaming. The dozing individual is a young Japanese macaque, once considered by the Japanese as a sacred mediator between humans and the gods.

Unforgettable portraits book cover

Today it is a protected species, though its fate is mixed. In some places it is indulged, but elsewhere it is persecuted as a pest. Here the youngster is with its large extended family group, soaking and socialising in a hot-spring pool – the famous Jigokudani monkey “hot tub” in the volcanic mountains of Jōshin’etsu‑kōgen national park, on the main island of Honshu. The local Japanese macaques have been coming here to relax and warm up every winter since the 1960s, when a bold female, presumably having observed the pleasure exhibited by humans bathing in the pool, took advantage of the hot spring, and then brought her relatives. Today the pool is kept just for the macaques, and in winter, a stream of them come to warm up, observed and photographed by a gaggle of human onlookers. Showing no fear of the nearby human presence, this youngster had fallen asleep in front of the photographer, accompanied in the pool by 25 or more sleeping adults – a scene of pure tranquillity.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/27/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-stories-behind-classic-portraits

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