2005: Behaviour: Mammals - Runner-up
Thorsten Milse (Germany)
Polar trek
The female polar bear is ravenous: she hasn't eaten for eight months. For much of that time, she lived in a cramped snow-hole in Canada's Wapusk National Park, giving birth to and suckling twins - an astonishing physiological feat. Now it's March, and she is taking her three-month-old cubs on a 70-kilometre (43-mile) trek to Hudson Bay. The sea-ice there will have frozen again, and for a few bountiful weeks, she will be able to fatten up on seal meat. But she hasn't got long: the ice melts again in July. 'You could sense the urgency,' says Thorsten. 'The tiny cubs whimpered to their mother as they sank into steep snowdrifts.' He watched as the female was tugged in different directions by two mighty instincts: forwards by hunger, and backwards by her youngsters.
Canon EOS 1DS mark II with Canon EF 600mm f4 IS lens and 1.4x teleconverter; 1/250 sec at f8; tripod.
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