Photographers Find Comedy Gold in the Wild

Photographer Mark Meth Cohn was hiking in the Virunga Mountains in East Africa when he happened upon a troop of gorillas, including one young male “especially keen to show off his acrobatic flair: pirouetting, tumbling, and high kicking.” The result is “High Five,” the overall winner of this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards. Cohn wins a week-long safari for two in Kenya for his winning effort.

In the US, Grayson Bell was stretched out on the ground near his Maine home, snapping pics of male frogs vying for territory in the local pond. Among the aquatic wrestling matches and reptilian manspreading, Bell caught one boy getting rudely dunked by another. His “Baptism of the Unwilling Convert” aced the Reptiles, Amphibian and Insect category and, as a 16-year-old photographer, his entry snagged the Nikon Junior award.

The UK’s Warren Price spied a pair of cliff-dwelling guillemots nesting on a small rocky cliff ledge, the two birds among many others vying for precious space. Amidst all the unneighborly infighting, Price caught one in flagrante delicto, seemingly attempting to swallow the head of his confused victim.

“I liked the way the guillemot was looking directly into my lens, its white eye-liner eyes highlighting its predicament!”

Australian Annette Kirby’s shot of a Steller’s Sea Eagle, snapped in frigid cold Hokkaido Japan was a worthy runner-up. The rare raptor looks amused as it feasts on a fish in the snow, even as it fends off competitors hoping to pinch a bite. “There was no way it was parting with its catch,” says Kirby.

And this year’s video winner, Tatjana Epp’s “Surfing Heron,” is worth a look, if only to see the thing the bird is using for a surfboard. 

It’s all good fun and for a good cause. Contest organizers give ten percent of the net revenue to charity partner Whitley Fund for Nature. See all the winners (and runners up) here.