Best Wildlife Pictures: British Nature Winners 2012

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"Animal Behavior" WinnerPhotographer Amanda Hayes tried for more than a week to photograph herring gulls trying to steal puffins' sand eel catches as the puffins landed, but the smaller birds kept outwitting the gulls.

But one day, "a puffin landed and a herring gull grabbed the back of the puffin's neck, lifting it high off the ground," Hayes said in a statement.

"Fortunately for the puffin, it wriggled free and escaped. I'm not sure whose heart was beating faster—the puffin's or mine!"

Photographer Matt Doggett used dead mackerel to attract the birds in a remote location off northern Scotland.

"I like this image, as almost every stage of the action is captured—gannets entering the water, gannets eyeing up the fish, gannets taking the fish, gannets eating the fish and then finally leaving," Dogget said in a statement. "It looks like chaos, but the gannets know exactly where the other birds are."

Explorer of the Week: Rayna Bell

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Bell holds a 40-year-old gopher tortoise at Archbold Biological Research Station, Florida. Photograph by Kelly Zamudio

Rayna Bell received a grant from National Geographic in 2010 to research patterns of diversification in a species-rich genus of reedfrogs from Central Africa. Inspired by stories from her high school biology teacher about fieldwork in Africa, Bell decided to pursue research in evolutionary biology as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Now a graduate student at Cornell University, she spends about four weeks in the field for each of her research expeditions to look for frogs, lizards, turtles, and snakes. Technically, she’s also been searching for the elusive limbless amphibians called caecilians, and she finally found one on a recent trip to São Tomé Island!

SKYDIVING PICTURES

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Skydiving gives you a bird's-eye view, but first you have to get up high.This skydiver is almost ready to jump. While most go out the door, some jumpers hang from the airplane before falling.This group celebrates just before jumping. All that's left is to make the leap

Winners—Winners Gallery

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Viewers' Choice Winner: HusetA lonely cabin is illuminated under the Northern Lights in Finnmark, Norway.Second Place Winner: My Balloon

H'mong children play with their balloons on a foggy day in Moc Chau, Son La province, Vietnam; photographed January 2012.

National Geographic contributing photographer Alexandra Avakian, one of this year's judges, shares her thoughts on the second place winner:This picture is like a dream, and it’s timeless not only because it’s black and white and there’s no sense of modernity, but also because it depicts an activity that children everywhere on the planet do with balloons. The fog and soft background make it feel like a memory. It’s every bit as good as the photographs in the seminal black-and-white photo book, "The Family of Man." Sometimes the best scenes to shoot are not in the obvious places for travelers but can be found anywhere from a far-flung location—such as this remote Hmong village—to just the around the corner from a big event.

Before you Travel Europe

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