- The London Natural History Museum announced its 2022 winners Contest for Wildlife Photographer of Year.
- More than 38,000 entries were submitted to select the winners.
- The winning photos include a wild ball of bees and a dancing sea star.
Karine Aigner captured the spectacle with her camera as a ball of swarming Cactus Bees rolled over the Texas sand.
Cactus bees like all other bees are at risk from habitat loss, pesticides and the changing climate. However, this group of buzzing insects did not stop trying to multiply. The bees in the ball were all males and swarming around one female. Aigner’s camera lens caught the bees as they clamored for a chance to mate.
The Grand Title in this year’s contest was awarded to the above photo. Wildlife Photographer of The Year competition, which is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London each year.
Aigner’s photograph and 19 other category winners stood out from more than 38,000 submissions.
“Wings whirring as incoming males close in on the ball full of buzzing bees rolling into the photo. Roz Kidman, Cox, chair of the judges panel said that this sense of intensity and movement is displayed at bee-level magnification.
Other winners photos show sea and bird life in its throes: hunting, wandering around, dying, searching for mates, and trying to survive in an ever-smaller world.
Grand Title Winner for Young Photographers captured the contrast within a whale’s mouth.
Katanyou Wuttichaitanakorn/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Katanyou Wuttichaitanakorn was a 16 year old Thai girl who was on a whale watching tour. A Bryde’s Whale appeared near her boat. He snapped a photo after being struck by the whale’s pale skin, pink gum and brittle mass of baleen teeth. It snagged Wuttichaitanakorn’s first award in the competition.
Cox described the photo as a “dazzling creation”.
Cox explained, “The fine detail of the tiny anchovies contrasts with an abstraction of color. The weave of brown baleen is rimmed by water drops.
A snake captured a frightening snack in another winning photograph
Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
In the Cave of the Hanging Snakes, in Quintana Roo, Mexico, Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar waited in the dark as a Yucatan rat snake poked its head from the rock ceiling. The resident snakes waited, just like every night as thousands of bats invaded the cave to grab food.
Using a red light that would be less disruptive in the dark, Martínez Belmar captured the hunt in the split moment before this snake retreated with its prize.
A snow leopard chased after its larger prey
Anand Nambiar/Wildlife Photographer Award
Anand Naambiar was standing in a ravine of the Himalayas watching this leopard charge toward a steep rock.
Due to climate change and hunting, the extinction of snow leopards is imminent.
An insecure spectacle bear looked out at its territory as it vanished
Daniel Mideros/Wildlife photographer of the year
The only native South American bear species is the Spectacled Bear. Their numbers are declining. They are now just a handful of thousand, due to habitat destruction and disappearance.
Daniel Mideros was able to capture one of the bears with his camera that he mounted on a wildlife corridor. This corridor connects fragments of habitat between human settlements and Quito, Ecuador.
In the arms of her caregiver, a beloved mountain gorilla passed away.
Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer-of-the Year
Ndakasi, a gorilla troop leader, was killed by her troop at the age of two months. Ndakasi was saved. Brent Stirton, a photographer who was there to photograph her rescue, returned thirteen years later to capture her dying in the arms of Andre Bauma at Virunga National park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Bauma said that she loved Bauma like a child. BBC after her death in 2021. “Her happy personality brought a smile every time we interacted.”
A long-abandoned village was raided by polar bears
Dmitry Kokh/Wildlife photographer of the year
The human population of the island Kolyuchin in the Siberian Chukchi Sea has long since disappeared. They now have a new population, wandering polar bears.
Dmitry Kokh, who was on a yacht and sheltering from the storm, spotted the bears moving into and out of buildings on the distant Island. He flew a drone out to photograph them.
One small bird listened to the earth…
Nick Kanakis/Wildlife Photographer Of The Year
Nick Kanakis, a photographer, spotted this young grey-breasted woodwren while he was out foraging. The ground-dwelling bird hopped through the leaf litter in Colombia’s Tatamá National Park, listening to the ground for the faint squirms of small insects — lunch for the wren.
…while a showy bird puffed out its chest feathers
José Juan Hernández Martinez/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
The Canary Islands’ houbara performs a fast courting dance. From a spot he dug out, José Juan Hernández Martinez watched the whole thing. The houbara raises their necks, throws their heads back and sprints forward. After that, it stops to pause for a while before moving on. This photo captures the houbara’s puffy glory in that short pause.
A sea star performed an eerie mating dance
Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer Award
While birds may need to impress their mates to be successful, sea stars can only spawn. To ensure their success, they have to dance. The eggs and sperm may be released by rising, swaying and pulsing or being pushed into water currents to fertilize. Tony Wu, a photographer, captured the invertebrate’s extraordinary dance as it filled the water with sea-star sperm eggs and sperm.
