An Amur Tiger in Bliss

 

 

Verbatim from the London Guardian on October 14, 2020

 

An image of a clearly ecstatic tigress hugging an ancient Manchurian fir tree in a remote Siberian forest has won one of the world’s most prestigious photography prizes.

 

It took Russian photographer Sergey Gorshkov 11 months to capture the moment using hidden cameras. His patience led to him being named 2020 wildlife photographer of the year…..

 

The image was selected from more than 49,000, with Roz Kidman Cox, the chair of the judging panel, calling the photograph “a unique glimpse of an intimate moment deep in a magical forest”.

 

The animal is an Amur or Siberian tiger, which live in the vast woodlands of eastern Russia with a small number over the border in China and possibly North Korea.

Hunted to the verge of extinction, the population is still threatened by poaching and logging, which also affects their prey – mostly deer and wild boar. Recent surveys have indicated that greater protection may have resulted in a population of 500 to 600.

4 thoughts on “An Amur Tiger in Bliss”

  2. I wonder if the photographer put catnip on the tree. Maybe the tiger is using the tree to clean his teeth. That’s a great photo. It leaves you wondering.

    1. The cameras were set up 11 months before this photo was taken. There was, apparently, no intervention of any kind other than that. This is the great cat acting, it seems, as it does in its own environment. I don’t think we know the half of how these great cats act or why. Sarah

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