[imagesource: NHM/Hannah Vijayan]

Hannah Vijayan, who snapped the image above of a bear hunting salmon in an Alaskan national park, earned a prestigious nod in the 5-17 Years Old category from the judges of the 56th Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

She isn’t old enough to legally purchase a drink, but she sure knows her way around a camera.

Try not to think too hard about what you were getting up to at her age.

The Natural History Museum’s annual competition is on the go with an exhibition that invites the public to take it all in and have their say.

The overall winners, including the prestigious Grand Title winners, will be announced on October 13, 2020, in the competition’s first virtual awards ceremony.

In the meantime, those of us who can’t make it to the exhibition (there’s a pandemic on and London is rather far), have been treated to a look at some of the images that have been pegged as ‘Highly Commended’ this year.

Enjoy:

Image: Paired up puffins by Evie Easterbook. Highly Commended 2020, 11-14 Years Old.

Image: Eye of the drought by Jose Fragozo. Highly Commended 2020, Animal Portraits.

Image: Head start by Dhritiman Mukherjee. Highly Commended 2020, Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles.

Dhritiman Mukherjee’s photograph has an interesting backstory.

Per BBC, it shows a male gharial crocodile entirely covered by its young.

The freshwater gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) is critically endangered with less than 1 000 adult crocs left. Three-quarters of these live in the Uttar Pradesh sanctuary where the photo was taken.

“This male had mated with seven or eight females, and you can see that it was very much involved,” explained Dhritiman. “Normally the gharial is quite a shy crocodile compared with the saltwater and marsh crocs. But this one was very protective and if I got too close, it would charge me. It could be very aggressive,” he told BBC News.

Other crocs carry their babies in their mouths, but the strange shape of the gharial’s mouth makes this impossible.

I would imagine that the sheer volume of children is also a contributing factor.

Image: The forest born of fire by Andrea Pozzi. Highly Commended 2020, Plants and Fungi.

Image: The spider’s supper by Jaime Culebras. Highly Commended 2020, Behaviour: Invertebrates.

The happy lady above (I’m trying to be kinder to spiders) is enjoying a meal of an egg from a giant glass frog.

The image was taken by Spanish photographer Jaime Culebras in a stream in Manduriacu Reserve in northwestern Ecuador. To consume the egg, the spider injects digestive juices and then sucks back the liquefied products.

I’m going to move on, now.

Image: The rat game by Matthew Maran. Highly Commended 2020, Behaviour: Mammals.

Images of foxes have made it to the finals of the competition before.

The winner of last year’s People’s Choice Award, Yongqing Bao, captured an extraordinary shot of a showdown between a Tibetan fox and a marmot frozen in an impending life-or-death struggle.

On to sadder things:

Image: Memorial to the albatrosses by Thomas P Peschak. Highly Commended 2020, Wildlife Photojournalism: Single Image.

Image: Amazon burning by Charlie Hamilton James. Highly Commended 2020, Wildlife Photojournalism: Single Image.

The Amazon is home to some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes, 40 000 plant species, 3 000 freshwater fish species, and more than 370 types of reptiles.

Last year it was ravaged by fire, and it looks like Charlie Hamilton James managed to capture a devastating, but beautiful image of it on film.

If you’d like to see who won last year’s competition, head here to take in more shots of nature, while you avoid your emails.

[source:nhm&bbc]