This year, a panel of judges reviewed more than 8,500 submissions and selected nine winners and five honorable mentions. Photos were judged on technical quality, originality and artistic merit. The grand prize winner is a gorgeous shot of two quarreling Blackburnian Warblers. This year there is a new prize category, ‘Birds in Landscapes,’ which celebrates the beauty of birds in the broader context of both natural and developed surroundings. Its winner, an image of the California Quail in its preferred scrubby turf, is a stunner. Each winning photograph includes a story about the shot, some fun facts about that species and some comments from the judge on why that photograph was selected. You can view the winning photographs here.
