Leaving the Nest, Highly Commended, 10 Years and Under; tawny owlets ready to leave their parent's ... [+] nest

For this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, celebrating its 60th anniversary, the Natural History Museum of London attracted a record-breaking 59,228 entries from photographers of all ages and experience across 117 countries and territories.

Young owls preparing to leave their parent’s nest, a furtive moonlight hunter, the tough life of female Burrowing bees and a David Bowie spider are a sneak peek at the extraordinary images selected by the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year jury.

Entries were judged anonymously on their creativity, originality and technical excellence by an international panel of industry experts. The winners of each category, and the prestigious Grand Title and Young Grand Title awards, will be announced on October 8, 2024.

The exhibition of the 100 award-winning images will open at the Natural History Museum on October 11. To mark the 60th anniversary, the museum’s flagship exhibition will also feature a timeline of key moments in the competition’s history.

This year, the organizers have introduced a new Impact Award in both the young and adult competitions to recognize conservation success, a story of hope and/or positive change: “The special prize is part of the Natural History Museum’s vision of a future where both people and planet thrive.”

Among the newly-released Highly Commended images is a first-ever-awarded smartphone image showing the successful completion of a mule deer doe’s circle of life, the complex relationship of mating lions, the distressing moment a shark was hauled aboard a Spanish longliner in the Southern Atlantic Ocean and in the 10 Years and Under category, an atmospheric image of a peafowl in Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur, India.

“In this selection you see species diversity, a range of behavior and conservation issues,” explains Kathy Moran, chair of the judging panel. “These images represent the evolution of the competition through the years, from pure natural history to photography that fully embraces representation of the natural world — the beauty and the challenges. It is a powerful selection with which to kickstart a milestone anniversary.”

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is a global platform for the world's best nature photography and wildlife photojournalism. Find out how to enter here.

The exhibition closes June 29, 2025.

Precious Rocks, Highly Commended, Behaviour: Birds

Samual Stone watched as a jackdaw brought stones to its nest. He had been keeping an eye on the hole in the trunk of a half-fallen willow tree in London’s Bushy Park and had seen a pair of jackdaws visiting with their beaks full of hair taken from the coats of local deer.

Jackdaws are highly intelligent and adaptable. They build new nests each year from all manner of materials: twigs, branches, feathers, wool, moss, mud and animal dung. This pair kept adding rocks to theirs.

Centre of Attention, Highly Commended, Behaviour: Invertebrates Carnarvon, Western Australia

It's a tough life for Burrowing bees, especially for females. The males (brown) search for virgin females (white) and upon finding one hiding in a burrow wait until she emerges. When she does finally venture out, she’s often mobbed by the males in a furious mating frenzy. Females are known to be killed in such mating balls.

“I have studied these bees for several years and their bad bee-haviour never ceases to fascinate me,” Georgina Steytler explains.

She’s been studying these bees for a few years and knew she had to keep her distance. Lying on the hot, rocky, sun-baked ground with sand blowing in her face, her long lens enabled her to get the perfect image.

After mating, the female bee will dig a new burrow filled with pollen and eggs from which the hatched bees will emerge in spring. This was shot near Carnarvon in Western Australia.

Stormy Scene, Highly Commended, Behaviour: Mammals

William Fortescue uses a backdrop of storm clouds lit by the setting sun to show mating lions.

It was the rainy season in the Namiri Plains of the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, as he watched the lions mate several times before the female broke it off.

It wasn’t until Fortescue viewed an enlarged image that he noticed the saliva trails and the explosion of insects from the male’s mane. Lions can mate throughout the year, but synchronizing the births of cubs increases the reproductive success of a pride. Female pride members display cooperative behaviours, including raising cubs together to ensure their survival into adulthood.

Moonlight Hunter by Xingchao Zhu, China Highly Commended, Behaviour: Mammals

Xingchao Zhu comes face to face with a Pallas’s cat as the moon sets.

He tracked a group of Pallas’s cats for several days on the freezing plateau of Hulun Buir in Inner Mongolia during the Chinese New Year in February, 2023. Shortly before dawn, Xingchao managed to make eye contact with this cat, just as it had caught a small bird.

The thick winter coats of Pallas’s cats help them survive at altitudes up to 5,000 meters. They avoid larger predators by stealth, and it’s thought that their low, rounded ears allow them to peer over obstacles while remaining hidden.

Ziggy Spider, Highly Commended, Behaviour: Invertebrates

Lam was exploring the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia when he came across this spider. Perched on broken branches beside a river, the bright white disc of eggs in the spider’s jaws and its orange body stood out against the lush green moss.

Found in Malaysia, Singapore and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, this spider was named in 2008 by arachnologist and Bowie fan Dr Peter Jäger. He thought the striking markings up to the spider’s head region resembled the make-up worn by the singer during the 1970s.

The Last Resting Place, Highly Commended, Natural Artistry

The successful completion of the circle of life: Randy Robbins was struck by the unusual beauty of the frosted form of this deer on the forest floor.

On an early winter’s morning, Robbins was checking the trail cameras near his home when he found the body of this deer. He photographed this poignant moment using his smartphone before the ice could melt.

“This doe raised several sets of fawns on my property over several years, and I regularly recorded their antics on my trail cameras and in person,” he recalls.

In December 2020 she laid down by a log and went to sleep for her final rest. She had a successful life avoiding predators and raising young. “I see this image as a reminder of the fragility of life and the grand design of it all,” he concludes.

In the Spotlight , Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Runner-Up, 10 Years and Under

Shreyovi Mehta found two Indian peafowl ‘looking perfect for a picture’.

She spotted this scene while walking in the forest with her parents, ran back to her father, who was carrying the cameras, lowered to the ground and took her photograph from a ground-level angle.

Renowned for its birdlife, Keoladeo attracts large numbers of water birds in winter. Peafowl are year-round residents that roost in large trees. They rest in the shade during the day and are more active in open areas at dawn and dusk.

Deadly Bite, Highly Commended, Behaviour: Mammals

Ian Ford documents the moment a jaguar delivers a fatal bite to a caiman in the Pantanal.

A call over the radio alerted Ford that a jaguar had been spotted prowling the banks of a São Lourenço River tributary in Brazil’s Mato Grosso area of the Pantanal. Kneeling in the boat, he was perfectly placed when the cat delivered the skull-crushing bite to the unsuspecting yacare caiman.

The South American Pantanal wetland supports the highest density of jaguars anywhere in the world. With prey being so abundant, there is no need to compete for food, and the usually solitary big cats have been seen fishing, traveling and playing together.

Twist and Jump, Highly Commended, Behaviour: Mammals

Jose Manuel Grandío braves below-zero temperatures at Athos, in France’s Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, to witness a stoat jumping high into the air above the snow.

Winter is Grandío’s favorite season for photography. He saw the performance of this stoat jumping mid-air as an ‘expression of exuberance’ as the small mammal hurled itself about in a fresh fall of snow.

Scientists refer to this behavior as dancing, although opinions are divided about what motivates it, from an attempt to confuse prey through to a parasitic infection. Stoats are usually active at night and prey on small mammals and birds.

Going with the Floe, Highly Commended, Animals in their Environment

Tamara Stubbs spotted these crabeater seals taking a nap among the sea ice.

In a standout moment on her nine-week expedition for Atlantic Productions in the Weddell Sea, she noticed that seals had fallen asleep alongside the ship, with the tips of their nostrils at the water’s surface. These two had bobbed up so they could take a deeper breath. There are some four million crabeater seals in the Antarctic.

Although they are not considered endangered or under threat, the seals are protected by international conservation agreements. More research is needed to understand the impact of climate change and tourism on their populations.

Strength in Numbers, Highly Commended, Animals in their Environment

Theo Bosboom shows how mussels bind together to avoid being washed away from Portugal’s shoreline at Praia da Ursa, Sintra.

Bosboom likes to take images of species that aren’t usually considered beautiful or important to highlight their unappreciated significance.

Mussels play an important role in creating dynamic ecosystems for other marine invertebrates such as crustaceans, worms and even small fish. They improve the water quality by filter-feeding, extracting plankton as well as bacteria and toxins, which prevents them from building up to dangerous levels.

The Disappearing Ice Cap, Highly Commended, Oceans: The Bigger Picture

Thomas Vijayan used his drone to show the epic scale of the Bråsvellbreen glacier. Encapsulating the magnificence of the Austfonna ice cap required meticulous planning and favorable weather conditions.

This image is a stitched panorama of 26 individual frames and provides a spectacular summer view of meltwater plunging over the edge of the glacier. The Bråsvellbreen glacier is part of Austfonna, Europe’s third-largest ice cap. This dome of ice is one of several that covers the land area of the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. Some scientific models suggest that Svalbard’s glaciers could disappear completely within 400 years due to climate change.

Hooked, Highly Commended, Oceans: The Bigger Picture

Tommy Trenchard documents the bycatch of a requiem shark, its body arched in a final act of resistance.

Trenchard was traveling on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in the South Atlantic Ocean. The ship’s research expedition aimed to document the bycatch or accidental capture of sharks by fishing boats targeting tuna and swordfish, and to highlight the lack of effective regulation of industrial-scale fishing in international waters. Approximately 80 million sharks are taken from the world’s oceans every year.

Because of fishing, numbers of sharks worldwide have dropped since 1970. Three-quarters of all shark species are now at risk of extinction.