A starling jealously guards a seed station in the back garden of the photographer’s Michigan home in January 2024. (Photo by Lisa Cavanary/Solent News)

While many of us would pay good money for a spa mud bath, these fortunate hippos in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, have nature to thank as they take a plunge in a lagoon in the second decade of February 2024. (Photo by Dimitar Nedelchev/Solent News)

A stork starts from its nest in the cliffs high above the Atlantic Ocean in Cabo Sardao, Portugal, Friday, March 29, 2024. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A curious trio of owl monkeys peep out of a tree hollow on the Marañón River near the city of Nauta, Peru in April 2024. (Photo by James Cai/Solent News)

One-year-old female giant panda cub Nuan Nuan reacts inside her enclosure during joint birthday celebrations for the panda and its ten-year-old mother Liang Liang at the National Zoo in Kuala Lumpur on August 23, 2016. Giant pandas Liang Liang, aged 10, and her Malaysian-born cub Nuan Nuan, 1, were born on August 23, 2006 and August 18, 2015 respectivetly. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

These young sloth bears hitch a ride on their mother's back as she forages for food in the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in the Indian state of Rajasthan in May 2023. (Photo by Aditya Singh/Solent News)

As if pulled from a Disney film, a fox is mesmerised by a butterfly hovering in front of its nose in a field in Taplow, Berkshire, South East England in the second decade of July 2023. (Photo by Ann Aveyard/Animal News Agency)

The rabbit population of San Juan Island, brought in to feed lighthouse keepers, got so big that in the 1930s foxes were introduced to kill them. Although they are red foxes, their coats can be orange, silver, black or multi-coloured. Picture date: September 2023. (Photo by Jun Zuo/Solent News)