A person participates in the parade of the “San Jose Carnival” in San Jose, Costa Rica, 27 December 2018. The festival sees people parading through the city's main avenues as part of the San Jose Celebrations that take place at the end of each year. (Photo by Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA/EFE)

Birds behaviour winner: Land of the Eagle by Audun Rikardsen, Norway. High on a ledge, on the coast near his home in northern Norway, Rikardsen carefully positioned an old tree branch that he hoped would make a perfect golden eagle lookout. To this, he bolted a tripod head with a camera, flashes and motion sensor attached, and built himself a hide a short distance away. From time to time, he left road‑kill carrion nearby. Very gradually – over the next three years – a golden eagle got used to the camera and started to use the branch regularly to survey the coast below. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/2019 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

A king eider sea duck tackles a prickly dinner of sea urchin on a lake in Batsfjord, Norway in the last decade of August 2024. The drake’s breeding plumage consists of a distinctive powder-blue head and neck, orange frontal lobe and a red bill. (Photo by Mia Surakka/Solent News)

A snail (Helix Aspersa) and a baby snail sit on a leave in a farm in Vienna June 12, 2013. Andreas Gugumuck owns Vienna's largest snail farm, exporting snails, snail-caviar and snail-liver all over the world. The gourmet snails are processed using old traditional cooking techniques and some are sold locally to Austrian gourmet restaurants. (Photo by Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)

A leopard seal feeds Paul Nicklen a penguin. (Photo by Paul Nicklen/National Geographic). Antarctic Peninsula, 2011

“Chameleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, their separately mobile and stereoscopic eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, the possession by many of a prehensile tail, crests or horns on their distinctively shaped heads, and the ability of some to change color. Uniquely adapted for climbing and visual hunting, the approximately 160 species of chameleon range from Africa, Madagascar, Spain and Portugal, across south Asia, to Sri Lanka, have been introduced to Hawaii, California and Florida, and are found in warm habitats that vary from rain forest to desert conditions”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A woman with the latest fashion accessory, a chameleon. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). Circa 1926

This strange coral-looking specimen is actually a mushroom. The photo, “Beautiful Destroyer”, was taken in the Panamanian tropical rainforest where the mushroom produces nitrogen, an element vital to soil health. (Photo by Sarah A. Batterman)

David Hall’s photographs of scenery and creatures off the coast of Canada in the Pacific Northwest portray serenity under the water, which belie the extreme challenges he faces to get his images. For each shoot, Hall wears a dry suit, a neoprene body suit that covers all of his body but his head and traps air inside to keep him warm. Water temperature in Canada’s British Columbia typically ranges between 45 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Photo: Moon jellyfish and cross jellies. (Photo by David Hall)