Audubon Society announces most fabulous bird photos of 2020

Each year, the National Audubon Society picks 10 award-winning photographs of birds.

The contest, in its 11th year, honors images that “evoke the ingenuity, resilience and beauty of birds small and large, terrestrial and aquatic,” according to a recent Audubon Society press release.

Photos are judged on technical quality, originality and artistic merit. Audubon receives submissions by professional, amateur and young photographers.

Here are the Audubon Society’s top 10 chosen from more than 6,000 submissions from around the country and seven Canadian provinces and territories.

This year’s grand prize winner was an underwater photo of a double-crested cormorant swimming after sardines by Joanna Lentini, a New York-based professional photographer.

Lentini had already experienced photographing a California sea lion rookery in the Bay of La Paz in the Gulf of California, and had never seen diving cormorants there. “I watched in awe as the cormorants plunged beak-first into the sea to snap at the sardines swimming by,” she wrote in her account published in Audubon Magazine, which also published the back story from other award winning photos.

“Although I spent a long time admiring these birds, I didn’t see a single one catch a fish,” Lentini noted.

The winning photos will be featured in future issues of Audubon and Nature’s Best Photography magazines.