Veolia Wildlife Photos

This year's Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year is Daniel Beltra with his ironically entitled Still Life in Oil, which shows brown pelicans smothered in oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Above is the winning photo in the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award: Pester Power, taken by Polish teenager Mateusz Piesiak on the coastal sands of Long Island, New York. How's that for international? Mateusz had to lie prone on wet sand to capture this intimate photo of a young oyster catcher pestering a parent for food, and he was so engrossed in taking the shot that he very nearly got caught by the incoming tide. This year's competition attracted 40,000 entries with first-time submissions from Cambodia, Moldova, Brunei and Kyrgyzstan. The exhibition opens at the Natural History Museum in London tomorrow (title link) adults £9.00, silver surfers £4.50 half price! Wow! Congratulations, NHM. CLICK for a brief BBC slide show of some of the best entries.