10 superb pictures from Nature Photographer of the Year 2019
A cheeky duck and a majestic arch of the aurora borealis are among the magnificent photographs honoured by the 2019 Nature Photographer of the Year competition.

The competition — which only started up a few years ago — may not have the same high profile or lengthy history as the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, but it still attracted 14,000 entries from 73 different countries.
The overall winner was this incredible shot of a pair of hares by a Hungarian photographer named Csaba Daróczi.
Csaba was taking a walk in Kiskunsag, near the village of Bócsa, when he spotted a colony of rabbits and started taking photos.
'After a while I saw them jumping high in the air, especially when they were fighting over food,' he explains. 'When I saw that, I realised that I wanted to take that photo immediately.'
Csaba returned many more times to take pictures of the rabbits, including this one — which won him the €3,000 first prize.
'This photo is proof of the fact that you don’t have to get an extremely rare or extraordinary species in front of your camera to be able to create a great nature photo,' said Keith Wilson, chair of the judging panel.
If you've taken a picture you think could appear on this page, you'll be interested to hear that from 1st December 2019 you can enter photos for Nature Photographer of the Year 2020 via www.naturephotographeroftheyear.com.
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
The website also has more of the images that won prizes or commendations in the awards — we've picked our favourites on this page to give you a taster.
Credit: © Audun Rikardsen - Wildlife Photographer of the Year
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Credit: ©Landscape Photographer of the Year awards - Ken Rennie
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Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.
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