Photo of the Month Gallery - WiNZ Photography

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Photo of the Month Gallery

The beauty of nature photography is that it can become "surprise photography," capturing some rare and unusual moments that are well-worth sharing. The Photo Of The Month Gallery is an annual collection of images and accounts with like-minded enthusiasts who were kind enough to share their more inspirational moments on the PotM Calendar.
February 2024

A Song of Truth and Resemblance by Roger Cox
The Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire
Until 1897 it was thought that Britain was home to only five kinds of Paridae1 or true tits. Since they all differed in appearance from one another, it was assumed that identifying each species in the wild presented no great challenge – until it was discovered that one of them had a double by way of a close cousin.
 For the keen bird-watcher, spotting a marsh tit in the company of willow tits and vice versa is probably one of the most perplexing and exasperating headaches faced by any British birder. Both species share the same winter and summer diets, and although their habitat preferences are dissimilar, they’re known to coexist where they naturally overlap. Even the more distinguished features like the glossy black cap of the marsh tit can appear as a matt one in fluffy-feathered juveniles, giving the impression of a willow tit, and the tell-tale “pale wing patch” of the willow tit, which is sometimes missing, can create the spitting image of a marsh tit.
 To add to their long list of similarities, both species are now in decline. Yet, for all their small and hidden differences, the best way to tell them apart in the field is by their song. “A willow tit has a zee-zurzur-zur call, whereas a marsh tit sounds like pitchou.” Unfortunately, this suspected marsh tit in The Forest of Dean was silent, which, once again, left some doubt to its true identity, thanks to that infuriating family resemblance to its near-identical cousin.

1. Initially, Britain’s five true tits were the great tit, blue tit, coal tit, crested tit, and marsh tit. The willow tit was the last native breeding bird to be recognised here in 1897, bringing the UK Paridae species count to six.  


January 2024

Lar Lar Land by Roger Cox
The Lake District Wildlife Park, Keswick, Cumbria
In ancient China, when King Chuang-Wang of the Chou dynasty lost his gibbon, he ordered an entire forest to be laid waste to find it. How successful this drastic action was in recovering his favourite pet isn’t clear. But the destruction was to echo a distant warning for many of S.E. Asia’s remarkable forest-dwelling animals like the now-endangered lar gibbon.   
 Lar Gibbons have the most extensive north-south range of all the gibbons, stretching from Northern Indonesia to Thailand – the territorial limit to their resounding hoots and howls, which sadly, are no longer heard across the Thai border with China, where that ancient edict of King Chuang-Wang appears to have transcended the boundaries of time and place to the rain forests of Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar for roads, cattle, agriculture, logging, and palm oil plantations.
 To add to their plight, adult lars are poached for their meat, with any surviving babies taken for the illegal pet trade. Hence, many like this one at The Lake District Wildlife Park end up in zoos, spending too much time sitting on flat surfaces and walking bipedally with their arms raised above their heads for balance. However, in their native environment, they rarely come to the ground – a dream life for those in captivity, but with much of their habitat now gone, where else can these arboreal primates see themselves howling whilst freely brachiating[i] from tree to tree, except within the blissful realms, of la la land.

[i] locomotion accomplished by swinging the arms from one hold to another.


Is wildlife or nature photography something you’re passionate about? If you have a story to tell with a stand-out picture you’d like to share, we've plenty of wall space here in our gallery.

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