The shortlist for the coveted Bird Photographer of the Year awards has been announced by Nature Photographers and the British Trust for Ornithology. Here: Red-billed oxpecker on an impala, Kruger National Park, South Africa. (Photo by Edmund Aylmer/BPOTY/Cover Images/The Guardian)

A hippopotamus is sprayed with water on a hot summer day at Anna National Zoological Park in Chennai, India on April 26, 2017. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

A young baboon receives an earful from an adult as another primate yanks its tail at Kruger National Park, South Africa in the first decade of July 2024. (Photo by John Mullineux/Solent News)

A meerkat stands guard as her pups cuddle at Mountain Zebra National Park, South Africa early November 2025. (Photo by Nadine Leonard/Two Point O Media)

These frozen caves seem almost otherworldly as they daylight illuminates them. Matej Kriz’s shots reveal the beauty of the brilliant caves, but he’s also very aware of how deadly they can be. The photographer captured the amazing shots in the Vatnajokull National Park on the Breidamerkurjokull glacier tongue. Here: The ice caves, taken in the Vatnajokull National Park in Iceland, on November 11, 2017. (Photo by Matej Kriz/Caters News Agency)

Photographer Maurizio Pignotti, 46, spends all night in freezing temperatures painstakingly shooting the breathtaking crystal-clear stars. He uses a technique where he merges together anywhere between 80 and 450 shots to create what he describes as a “rainbow of stars”. Space-lover Maurizio, captures the star trails on the borders of the Adriatic Sea – including the Sibillini Mountains National Park, the Conero National Park, and the Gargano National Park. (Photo by Maurizio Pignotti/Caters News)

Mahouts return home with their elephants carrying grass to feed them on the eve of the rhino census in Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, India, 24 March 2015. Kaziranga will be closed to visitors for the next two days for a census of the rhinos commencing 25 March, in a previous census in 2013 in the park the population of the Indian rhinos was 2329. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)

Dr. Marius Kruger (C) and memeber of the Kruger National Park keeps the head of a rhino up during a white rhino relocation capture on October 17, 2014. The Kruger National Park relocated four rhinoceros from a high risk poaching area to a safer area as part of ongoing strategic rhinoceros management plan. (Photo by Stefan Heunis/AFP Photo)