A middle spotted woodpecker swoops into her nest and feeds her young in a forest in Trentino, Italy. Jacopo Rigotti, of Val Di Cembra, Trento, Italy, photographed the bird as she flew towards her nest, located in the trunk of a black pine tree, before feeding her hungry chicks a beakful of insects. The 25-year-old photographer says: "I decided to set up the camera on a tripod at the base of the tree, along with a flash that would help to prevent shadows in the photographs."
Animal rescue volunteers have told how a cat riddled with cancer was forced to ripped off its own ears after it was abandoned by its owners .
A rare manuscript of one of Charlotte Bronte’s earliest poems went under the hammer today and fetched nearly £100,000 – double what it was expected to get .
EXPERTLY camouflaged, this clever panther chameleon knows how to catch its prey by surprise .
THIS DANGER-mad female pensioner could be the oldest Brit to cage dive with CROCODILES .
Full of tired and busy commuters, these underground stations are rarely admired for their architecture or beauty .
SURROUNDED by divers, a hungry green sea turtle enjoys being the centre of attention .
Playing, splashing and generally messing around, these polar bears show they certainly have a soft spot for the water, and not just each other .
SOARING through the air, a hungry white-tailed kite prepares to snatch a vole from his mother’s claws .
A grey whale and her calf greet an audience of awestruck admirers on the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico .
HUNDREDS of colour coordinated yarns lie abandoned in this once thriving textile mill .
A young otter wades through a lake with his eyes set on an older rival’s fish .
This is the moment a nimble red fox and a lumbering Alaskan brown bear were locked in a tense stand-off .