Nature – first prize, stories. Pandemic Pigeons – A Love Story. The photographer’s daughter, Merel, cowers after Dollie flies past and perches on the balcony before entering the house in Vlaardingen in the Netherlands on 6 April 2020. “She’s still frightened when Dollie suddenly lands on the balcony railing. I hide my smile behind the camera, as I try to comfort her by saying they won’t hurt you. “I thought he was going to attack me”, she replies. As the nesting pigeons keep coming back to our place, slowly my girls have started to appreciate them – perhaps not as much as I do, but it’s a start”. (Photo by Jasper Doest/World Press Photo 2021)

A general view of dried-up rivers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia December 2, 2013. Western Australia's Pilbara region, which is the size of Spain, has the world's largest known deposits of iron ore and supplies nearly 45 percent of global trade in the mineral. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

Anti-racist Loldiers of Odin clowns speak with police as they take to the streets against anti-immigration marchers in Tampere, Finland January 23, 2016. Police prevented the groups from confronting each other. On the northern fringes of Europe, Finland has little history of welcoming large numbers of refugees, unlike neighbouring Sweden. But as with other European countries, it is now struggling with a huge increase in asylum seekers and the authorities are wary of any anti-immigrant vigilantism. (Photo by Kalle Parkkinen/Reuters/Lehtikuva)

A person in costume is pictured during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Ave in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., April 17, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Dancers learn choreography they will need to perform as part of an open audition for the 2022 Radio City Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York, New York, USA, 18 April 2022. The open auditions, the first being held since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, were expected to draw nearly 900 dancers competing for one of the few open spots in the 2022 Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, a long running holiday show. (Photo by Justin Lane/EPA/EFE)

People visit Luke Jerram's “In Memoriam”, a temporary memorial artwork for all those who lost their lives due to COVID-19, in Seaton Carew Park, Hartlepool, Britain on August 20, 2021. (Photo by Lee Smith/Reuters)

Hundreds of flamingos take flight in the Rift Valley in East Africa early September 2024. The birds gather in the region’s saline lakes to eat the blue-green algae that grows in abundance. The red-orange pigment in the algae is what gives them their distinctive pink plumage. They also use the site to breed. (Photo by Alexandre and Chloe Bes/Naturagency/Solent News)

A Yemeni soldier, pictured through a vehicle's windscreen, which was damaged by a bullet, gestures out of the window, in Marib, Yemen October 15, 2015. Marib is a city that is heavily armed even by the standards of Yemen, where the ready availability of weapons helped start civil war and is now preventing anyone coming out on top. Yemenis often say there are three guns for every person, a boast that has become an urgent concern in a country where the United Nations says the humanitarian situation is "critical". (Photo by Angus McDowall/Reuters)