WHEN the young photographer was despatched to a London park to get a picture of Winston Churchill, the shot of the great man emerging from his car was not quite what he wanted; so he requested the living legend to repeat the act.

With a typical Churchillian growl the request was declined and Maurice Tibbles was told: "You'll have to learn to take pictures on the wing, my lad!"

Tibbles, who has died at the age off 66, certainly did learn to perfect that art for he became a pioneering and award-winning wildlife photographer who brought joy to millions of television viewers.

Tibbles, whose home for a number of years was an old rectory at Whitchurch, near Ross-on-Wye, was an accomplished Fleet Street photographer who later turned his affinity with nature into an art form.

Winner of a BAFTA Cameraman of the Year award - the equivalent of an American Oscar - he worked on such television epics as 'Life on Earth' and 'Wildlife on One'.

The diversity of his subjects and their habitats was a constant delight to Tibbles whose work could range from lying on his stomach pointing his camera down the jaws of a crocodile to capturing on film a cuckoo laying an egg in a reed warbler's nest.

The latter bird shot took two years in preparation and 11 seconds in the taking. He regarded this as his greatest moment as it was the first time the behaviour had ever been recorded.