2019 National Audubon Top 100 Images

Yellow Headed Blackbird

Each spring I visit my favorite wetland areas to photograph Yellow-headed Blackbirds and listen to their raucous calls. On a particularly cold May morning at sunrise, the birds and cattails were backlit and glowing like miniature lanterns. One landed very close to me, and through my lens I could see a burst of breath rolling in the cold wind with each call. I returned every day for more than a week trying to create a similar image, but the same conditions didn’t occur again.

https://www.audubon.org/magazine/summer-2019/the-2019-audubon-photography-awards-top-100

yellow headed blackbirdXanthocephalus xanthocephalusbirdmontana

From Backlit Birds and Silhouettes