The battle by Jose Garcia, US. Category: bird behaviour. A great white heron (Ardea herodias occidentalis) fighting a green snake in the Florida Everglades. The fight lasted for nearly 20 minutes with the heron having to release its prey. (Photo by Jose Garcia/2017 Bird Photographer of the Year Awards)

This is a bearded tit bird, diving for food. Photo by Edwin Kats.

Creative imagery, gold winner: Sprats and Bread, Ruediger Schulz, Germany. (Photo by Ruediger Schulz/2021 Bird Photographer of the Year)

A visitor to the New Museum walks through the “Carsten Holler: Experience”, exhibition at the museum on December 14, 2011 in New York City. The show, which has been called an art world amusement park, includes a 102-foot slide that corkscrews down from the fourth floor to the second; an installation of flashing lights that is supposed to make you hallucinate and a sensory-deprivation tank that is meant to resemble the Dead Sea. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The Atlantic Puffin is definitely a curious-looking bird. The special coloring that this bird develops for the breeding season in the spring is very reminiscent of tropical birds. The bright colors of the beak and the markings around the eyes serve no particular advantage and have evolved as a result of sexual selection. However, Puffins don’t look that pretty all year round. They shed all these festive colors in partial moult after the breeding season is over. They lose the ornaments around their eyes, their face becomes darker, and their beak becomes very different. The natural habitat of these birds is the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

“The RSPB’s Snettisham Nature Reserve lies on the edge of The Wash, one of the most important bird estuaries in the United Kingdom. The Wash, on England’s east coast, supports over 300,000 birds, and Snettisham sometimes holds more than a third of them”. – The Palm Beach Post. Photo: Waders flock together seeking new feeding grounds during the incoming tide. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images via The Palm Beach Post)

Best portfolio winner. Roseate Spoonbill, Platalea ajaja, by Petr Bambousek, Czech Republic. (Photo by Petr Bambousek/2018 Bird Photographer of the Year)

Migrating gray cranes, on November 30, 2009 around the Hula Lakes in northern Israel. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)