When the gavel fell last week at the auction of John James Audubon’s “The Birds of America” the price for the rare first edition was almost $8 million—the third highest sum ever paid at auction for a book. But what a book! Its phenomenal size and heft simply doesn’t come through in photos, but the 435 life-size portraits Audubon painted are enormous, reproduced on “double elephant” stock to create a tome that’s some four feet on a side.

Few people get to see one of these first editions in person (only 120 remain), but among them is Cornell art professor Todd McGrain. As part of his initial research for his Lost Bird Project, McGrain was allowed to view Cornell University’s copy, held in the Carl A. Kroch Library. The project is McGrain’s ongoing effort to memorialize, through a range of art forms, birds that have been driven to extinction. In the video above, you can get a feel for the size and beauty of the volume as you watch two white-gloved librarians carry it out for McGrain and carefully turn the pages. For McGrain, it was an opportunity to reflect on Audubon’s artistry, and on a curious and poignant alteration that time has made to Audubon’s great work. Here’s Todd:

I arrived at the library with high expectations, but  I still wasn’t prepared for the book’s profound beauty. Not only are the individual images much larger and more colorful than I had expected, they are also more handcrafted. Loose brush marks rest fluidly within the intricate black printing. These marks, made by professional colorists, are at the same time gestural and assured with an ease that only comes with great mastery. The book as a whole is a marvel. Leather binding with gold leaf trim offers the prints a context of grandeur and authority.

With white protective gloves and synchronized movements, Curator David Corson and his assistant Evan Earle folded back the pages. It was difficult to pass by prints without affording each a full inspection. I had, however, come to see six particular birds and knew we needed to stay on task. The Great Auk, Labrador Duck, Heath Hen, Carolina Parakeet, Passenger Pigeon, and Eskimo Curlew were all depicted by Audubon. Today these birds are extinct.

Though Audubon was aware of and concerned about the plight of many species, his images are expressively optimistic—sentiments well suited for his era. Audubon’s was a time of perceived abundance and natural richness. My task as an artist working today is different. My challenge is to find an appropriate way to depict birds that will never be seen, a representation that suits birds that only exist in history and in art.

As the pages turned, I began to notice that the backs of many of the images were stained with a mirror shadow of the print upon which they rested. These ghost images were often quite soft and would have been difficult to identify if not adjacent to the original prints that created them. (You can see the faint image in the photo above.) The black ink of each print is slowly bleeding onto the sheet above. Through weight and time a new print is being formed. These impressions may only be soft recollections of the original, but in this softness I saw a tender companionship.

I began to recognize these ghost images as poetic equivalents to the relationship between memories and the events that inspire them. Perhaps the elemental, subtle silhouette is the best form to depict a creature lost but not forgotten? The ghost image of the Great Auk was particularly strong and poignant and became my inspiration for my own drawing of this lost bird.

I am honored to have had this chance to be inspired by this remarkable book, and I am glad to know that it is secure in the Cornell collection.

Along with many Audubon enthusiasts, I watched with interest as the bids climbed at the Christie’s auction. But the true value of this book remains its ability to inspire appreciation for the birds of America, including those we have lost to the tragedy of extinction.

(Images courtesy Todd McGrain)

We’re in the midst of creating a free, online bird ID tool that can answer everyone’s first birding question, “What is that bird I saw?”—and we need your help to train the system.

The project, called Merlin™, combines artificial intelligence with input from everyday birders and bird occurrence data from eBird. By using observations from birders like you, Merlin will be able to account for the many different ways that people interpret the size, color, and patterns of birds. That’s why it’s so important to get your input. To do that we’re creating online activities that let you practice your observation skills, enjoy beautiful bird photos, and train Merlin at the same time.

Our latest activity, launched this week, is Mark My Bird—a set of 18 questions about what a bird looks like. Play once or play a hundred times—every answer you give us gets Merlin closer to completion. You’ll be guided to estimate the size and shape of each bird, along with describing the size, colors, and patterns of each of its parts.

We’ve already tested Mark My Bird with a small group of volunteers. They liked how they needed to pay attention to specific parts of the bird that they might otherwise have overlooked.  One remarked, “It’s a fun way to develop the habit of looking carefully.” By spending more time with the bird, you’ll notice things you’ve never seen before and are more likely to remember when you see it in the field.

We also include questions that ask you to pick out the parts of a bird. This may seem pretty basic to you, but Merlin isn’t yet as good as you are at dividing a bird into its various parts. Just imagine being able to upload a mystery bird photo and have a computer help you identify it. This is a feature the birding community has only dreamed of, but it’s not far down the road. We just need your input to get us there.

You may think one person’s contributions don’t amount to much, but together you can have a huge effect. Do you remember our first activity, the Bird Color Challenge? It launched in August, and in less than six months we’ve received 170,000 submissions from more than 13,000 players! In fact, we’ve gotten so much data that we’ve had to add a whole new crop of photographs for you to work through!

We hope you’ll try out Mark My Bird now and that you find it just as much fun. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this exciting project.

(Merlin is funded by the National Science Foundation. Image: Mark My Bird screenshot, Prairie Warbler photo by Andy Johnson.)

These crow-sized seabirds nest only in the Caribbean and feed as far away as Gulf Stream waters off the Mid-Atlantic United States. Best estimates suggest that fewer than 2,000 breeding pairs remain, and the data collected at this nest have already been incorporated into a new conservation plan for the species (available as a PDF).

“Finding this nest shows both that gems of biodiversity are yet to be found in Haiti, despite its environmental and economic troubles, and that there’s still time to save rare species if we act swiftly,” said James Goetz, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology graduate student who helped lead the project. The nest was found on March 3, 2011, by a team from Grupo Jaragua, a nonprofit from the Dominican Republic.

Upon finding the nest, the researchers set up a motion-activated camera at the entrance to the cave. Over the next four months, the camera caught dozens of images of the parents arriving to feed the chick, as well as visits by rats and a dog, which fortunately did not disturb the growing chick.

In early July the camera photographed the chick waddling to the edge of the cave in preparation for its first flight, four months after the nest was found. The bird presumably departed safely in mid-July (the camera’s batteries ran out before then) and is now probably winging over the open ocean hundreds or thousands of miles away (the adult in the photo at left is not the same bird). Out of only a handful of nests found in the last decade, this is the only one that scientists have been able to monitor.

Black-capped Petrels are an enduring mystery among Caribbean birds. Once abundant, they fell victim to overharvest, habitat loss, and introduced predators such as rats, cats, dogs, and mongooses. By about 1850 they were thought extinct—until scattered at-sea sightings and the discovery, in 1963, of a few nesting sites in Haiti rekindled hopes for the species.

The ensuing five decades have turned up few clues about a bird that spends most of its life at sea, returning to land only a few dozen nights per year to visit nests in treacherously steep cloud forests. Only three remaining nesting areas—all on the island of Hispaniola—are known, although sightings along Cuba’s eastern coast in 2004 indicate the birds probably nest there as well.

In Haiti, poverty creates intense pressure on natural resources. Agricultural clearings reach to the tops of most mountains, no matter how steep. Loss of habitat threatens more than a dozen endemic Hispaniolan species, as well as wintering North American birds such as the American Redstart and Bicknell’s Thrush, a vulnerable species.

Lessons learned from studying this nest and the chick’s progress will help inform new efforts to discover nesting areas on Hispaniola and other islands. Until now, researchers have had to draw on details of better-known relatives such as Bermuda and Hawaiian petrels. “For such a poorly known species, every new scrap of information helps us gain ground in learning how to make conservation work for it,” Goetz said.

(Our work on the Black-capped Petrel has been funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Our partners in this important work include American Bird Conservancy, BirdLife International, and Grupo Jaragua, Images: Black-capped Petrel chick on its nest in a Haitian cave, photographed by J. Volquez of Grupo Jaragua; an adult photographed over the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, by Patrick Coin via a Creative Commons license.)

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  Rachael Butek's amazing field notes helped her win the ABA's Young Birder of the Year award in 2010.

  

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  Rachael's hand-drawn map of her family's Wisconsin farm.

  

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  Rachael also kept detailed watch as Blue Jays gathered acorns in the fall.

  

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  Keep reading to learn about how Rachael was inspired by a Song Sparrow.

  

All through our lives we draw inspiration from our elders, but there comes a point when we can turn around and start drawing inspiration from the young people coming up behind us. At a recent meeting of the Ohio Young Birders Club, we had a chance to hear from Rachael Butek, a recent high-school graduate who combines great birding skills with keen powers of observation and interest in the world around her.

Rachael gave the keynote address at the meeting and shared her story of how she got started, the pioneering bird watcher who gave her inspiration, and her pursuit of the American Birding Assocation‘s Young Birder of the Year award. We found her presentation so enjoyable and inspiring that we asked her to retell it on our blog. Here’s Rachael:

I first got interested in birds when I was 16, all because of a sparrow in my Wisconsin backyard.

It was just a “little brown bird” at first sight, but when I took a closer through my grandparents’ binoculars, I saw it was a delightful blend of buff and chestnut and stripes. And that was about all it took—just one simple little bird to change my life.

I pulled out our Golden Guide and was nearly scared off by how many different kinds there were. But I was determined, so I started narrowing down my possibilities. The nifty little range maps helped narrow down the species considerably. Then I noticed that the sparrows divided neatly into two groups, the birds with stripes on their breast, and the ones without.

From there I started reading descriptions, checking off birds one at a time. Mine didn’t have any yellow by his eye, and he had too long of a tail to be another one. He didn’t seem to have a buffy collar, and he definitely didn’t have that eyering either. Eventually, the only one left was the Song Sparrow.

That was my first real bird identification, and I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself! Ever since then I have loved Song Sparrows, and sparrows as a whole have become one of my favorite families of birds.

From sparrows to warblers to tanagers

I didn’t realize it then, but I was already hooked. I kept a list of feeder birds all winter long, and six months later I knew them well enough to start noticing migrants. When I saw my first American Redstart in real life, after months of seeing them in my field guide, I was astonished to realize they actually lived in Wisconsin!  A little yellow bird in our plum trees stumped me until I noticed his rufous cheek patch—which immediately gave him away as a Cape May Warbler.

Then, one day a brilliant yellow bird with an orange head landed on our feeder pole. I was so astonished I could hardly call my family or reach for the camera. It was a Western Tanager, a rare bird in Wisconsin. I reported it to eBird—I don’t recall exactly what I said, but I’m pretty sure it was something classic like, “It looked just like the picture in the book!” When it came to taking field notes, I had a looong way to go yet.

Lessons in watching, from one of the best ever

By early summer I was thoroughly infatuated with birds. Soon I became fascinated with Margaret Morse Nice. This woman, born in 1883, became a busy wife and mother but still found enough time to study Song Sparrows in her yard in Columbus, Ohio, for eight years. Her studies were so groundbreaking that Ernst Mayr (one of the most prominent biologists of the twentieth century), said, “She almost single-handedly initiated a new era in American ornithology.”

I was captivated by this, so I got “The Watcher at the Nest,” her story of studying these birds. I fell in love with her detailed observations and her style of note taking. She described things in such detail, yet simply enough to make perfect sense.

That year I decided to compete in the American Birding Association’s ‘Young Birder of the Year‘ contest. My focus was on note-taking and, inspired by Margaret Morse Nice, I knew I shouldn’t have to go far from my backyard to find good note-taking material. Sure enough, our 10-acre hobby farm easily provided me with a summer’s worth of mini-research projects.

A summer of study

I began by taking a census of the birds breeding on our property. Each day of the week I counted different groups of birds. For instance, Thursday was sparrow and bunting day. I would set out early in the morning and start counting the half-dozen different species in that “group,” keeping notes on where I saw or heard individual birds. By counting almost every day for a few weeks, I was able to get a good idea of the overall population of birds breeding on our property.

Later that summer, a massive rain storm flooded about half our acreage and brought in a whole new array of wildlife. So, I started my “pond project,” spending the next month and a half exploring this interesting change in my little ecosystem. I investigated everything from snails to sandpipers, highlighted by a pair of Soras that let me watch and sketch them for an entire morning.

Next came Blue Jays. I realized they were swallowing acorns whole and then flying off with them, presumably to store them for the winter. I wondered just how many acorns a Blue Jay could hold in its crop, so I started watching and counting. After a couple of days, I concluded that they normally took two or three at a time, but the occasional greedy jay took as many as five at once!

Young Birder of the Year

After one of my most wonderful summers ever, I packed up all my entries and shipped them off to the ABA. All winter long I continued taking notes, painting, and taking photos. I kept track of my favorite Northern Shrike as she terrorized the feeder birds, and I followed the regrowth of the tail on one of our cardinals, who showed up at our feeders without his tail.

One fine spring day, I was astonished and delighted to hear I had been named the 2010 Young Birder of the Year. Among the great opportunities that came from this, I especially treasured getting an invitation to visit, and then join, the banding crew at nearby Beaver Creek Reserve. They are now kindly training me in MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) bird-banding methods. Ever since learning about Margaret Morse Nice and her studies on Song Sparrows, researching birds has been a passion with me. What better way to get started than by banding them?

Birding has radically changed the way I see the world. As I look forward to college, I’ll remember Margaret Morse Nice’s suggestion to look closely at things and to consider what they mean. When she began watching Song Sparrows, she recalled, “I went to the books and read that this species has two notes beside the song, and that incubation lasted ten to fourteen days and was performed by both sexes; meager enough information and all of it wrong.”

Hopefully, as I further my education in the natural world, I’ll be able to learn some new things myself, and make a difference to the birds in my own backyard.

(Images courtesy Rachael Butek.)

Learn more and apply by filling out a short online form before the December 31 deadline. We’ll choose 10 applicants to receive awards for travel costs up to $1,000 plus accomodations. Applicants must be aged 10 to 18 and must have a chaperone. The scholarships are open to anyone, whether in the U.S. or abroad.

The workshop will focus on teaching students how to use art to teach and inspire people about the natural world. It willfeature classes with our professionally trained science illustration interns. We’ll also introduce participants to people who have made a career out of their love for science and art, explore some of the Cornell Lab’s extensive collection of bird art, and offer ideas about how art can inspire others.

(Image: Wire-tailed Manakin by science illustration intern Evaristo Hernández-Fernández.)

In addition to our suggestions for 12 gifts that give back, there’s a gorgeous new book on the shelves called Science on Ice, by Chris Linder. It’s the story of four scientific expeditions to the polar regions—and the video above previews the first chapter, on the life of Antarctica’s Adelie Penguins. In addition to Linder’s descriptions, the video features a few comments from yours truly (including my description of what a colony of 500,000 penguins smells like). I was the lucky science writer who got to accompany Linder to Antarctica in 2007 and in 2011, and I wrote the Science on Ice chapter about penguins.

The book tells the story of scientific research at the extremes of the earth: at the southernmost penguin colony in the world; during spring thaw in the Bering Sea; in the unexplored depths of the Arctic Ocean; and amid the blue lakes and rushing moulins that sit atop the Greenland ice sheet. It’s a picture book, stuffed from cover to cover with Linder’s signature photos, which are at once beautiful and insightful in their illustration of scientists at work in their surroundings.

But it’s also a detailed telling of science and nature, with each chapter recounted by the science writer who accompanied Linder and the scientists into the field (freelancer Helen Fields, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution writers Lonny Lippsett and Amy Nevala). In the telling, they recapture some of the spirit of adventure that still inspires scientists, but that seems to have vanished from the stereotype of white-coated men wielding beakers.

We hope Science on Ice helps recalibrate that image. And if the taste of wildness—or the odor of penguins—inspires a few young people to pursue science themselves, so much the better. We’ll look for them in Linder’s next set of photos.

(To learn more about the journey, visit the Polar Discovery website or like Science on Ice on Facebook to see extra photos and footage.)

As you’re making your lists and checking them twice, consider holiday gifts that give twice—thoughtful gifts that are fun to receive and also help birds by supporting conservation, research, and education here at the Cornell Lab. We’ve put together a varied list of gift suggestions—from apps on your phone to trips into the field—that will delight nature lovers. A win-win!

1. Bird Apps from $1.99
Find more birds with BirdsEye, enhance your knowledge with the Cornell Lab Bird Q&A, or discover 24 North American birds in 4 games for kids with My Bird World.

2. The Birds of North America Online $5 or $42
A boundless gift for anyone who loves to learn more about birds. $5 stocking stuffer (30-day subscription) or $42 for an entire year.

3. Bird Cards That Sing $7.99
Open these colorful greeting cards to hear authentic bird sounds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library.

4. Birds & Beans Coffee from $11.70
Your purchase supports organic shade-grown coffee farms in Latin America that give shelter and sustenance to more than 60 species of migratory birds, including thrushes, warblers, and tanagers. $11.70 and up.

5. Wild Cards: Backyard Birds $12.95
A perfect stocking stuffer for ages 6 and up: 36 playing cards and 32-page book.

6. Singing Books and More from $14.95
Choose from the Bird Songs Bible, Backyard Bird Songs for East/Central or Western, BirdScapes pop-up book, or The Bird Watching Answer Book.

7. Celebrate Urban Birds 2012 Calendar $15
Funny, poignant, and eye-catching images from winners of Celebrate Urban Birds contests.

8. Project FeederWatch $15
For you or a loved one: An entire winter of bird-watching enjoyment while helping scientists! Kit with instructions, calendar, poster, and more.

9. Cornell Lab Membership $35
A gift that gives back to the birds by supporting the Lab’s nonprofit mission to improve the understanding and protection of birds. As part of your gift, your loved one will receive the Cornell Lab’s Living Bird magazine.

10. Spring Field Ornithology from $145
For those living in the Central New York region: Sign up for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s annual Spring Field Ornithology course before February 1 and receive a $10 discount on the weekly field trips! For more than 30 years this 8-week course has thrilled birders of all skill levels and helped welcome spring songbirds migrating back to the region. Begins March 21, 2012.

11. Online Bird Course $295
Your favorite birder will gain new insights through this five-week online course, “Courtship and Rivalry in Birds.” Next courses begin February 1 and March 14. (Lab members receive a $40 discount when enrolling by phone at 866-326-7635).

12. Sound Recording Workshop $985
Students spend a week learning professional recording techniques. Takes place June 16-23, 2012, at San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus in the spectacular Tahoe National Forest.

On a recent trip in Jalisco, Mexican and U.S. teachers planned to connect their science classes so their students can share in learning about birds.

If a half-ounce songbird can visit eastern North America’s woods and Mexico’s tropical forests in a single year, why shouldn’t the students who study them—at least virtually? The Cornell Lab’s director of education, Nancy Trautmann, just returned from a visit to Mexico where teachers laid the groundwork for having students from both countries share what they know about their homes as they learn about birds and science. Here’s her story:

Children today are our planet’s hope for the future, but only if they grow up with an interest in nature and a sense of responsibility for the environment. In our Crossing Boundaries project, we aim for students to gain global perspectives on nature and conservation. One strategy is by connecting U.S. and Mexican classrooms, giving students the chance to send projects back and forth or even hold videoconferences over the Internet.

As part of this effort, I recently traveled in Jalisco, Mexico, with two New York teachers, Roberta Palmiotto and Jamie Hefti. We visited classrooms, met teachers, and talked about connecting distant students through talking about birds and teaching each other about their local species and issues.

We’ve found that when students share their work with peers, they stop worrying so much about getting a good grade and focus instead on relevant, real-world communication. Teachers have long used classroom pen pals as a way to bridge cultures and inspire students, but the Internet has made that approach more powerful than ever. Two years ago, our BirdSleuth project helped middle school students in Florida and Oregon peer review each other’s science projects. We’re hoping soon to be able to do something similar with Mexican classrooms, getting the students talking about and studying bird species that we share across countries and others that are unique to one setting or the other.

During our travels in Jalisco, we visited schools in and around Guadalajara and held a daylong workshop with Mexican teachers interested in birds and information technology. Palmiotto and Hefti demonstrated how their students use free software to create podcasts and video stories about birds—approaches their Mexican collaborators now hope to adopt. Discussions focused on questions such as how to inspire students to care about birds and their habitats, and whether exchanging podcasts or video reports with distant peers might be better than traditional classwork in motivating students to learn.

Although computers and Internet connections are more limited in some of their schools than in ours, the Mexican teachers were clearly enthusiastic about giving these approaches a try. For his part, Hefti was inspired by the creativity and resolve he saw in Jalisco. After returning home he reflected, “My perspective on what American education should be has been altered. We met with people who do so much with so little…. What I saw was that constraints were not the focus to those that wanted to make a difference in Mexico.”

“As the Jalisco teachers were leaving our workshop, I felt sad to see them go,” Palmiotto said. “It was an honor to talk with them and hear about the amazing programs they are already involved in. I truly hope that we can foster international respect by continuing to connect our students through letters and technology.”

Roberta Palmiotto takes a moment in Jalisco to Skype with her classroom back in New York. Soon, the students may use Skype to share class time with their Mexican counterparts.

While traveling, Palmiotto and Hefti posted news updates so their students could follow along at home, and they also carved out time in our hectic travel schedule to Skype (video chat) with their students and answer questions about Mexican food, weather, school life, and birds. (Here are links to Palmiotto’s blog and Hefti’s blog.)

The central question motivating our trip was whether students will be more intrigued by collaborating with students in a distant land. Will children in Mexico gain pride in their local environment through sharing information with U.S. students?

We think they will. At a school in the town of Autlán, an enthusiastic teen asked me whether we have as many endemic bird species in New York as they have in Jalisco. I replied that in fact New York has no endemic bird species and that we were thrilled to be having the chance to view several in Jalisco that we would never see on the homefront. We also had fun discussing the idea that much like the “snowbirds” in New York who take their winter vacations down south, many of our bird species do this too—and therefore are familiar at different seasons in our two settings.

After returning home, Hefti reflected, “For every new experience life in Mexico presented, my mind would further generate a thousand combinations of ideas and questions. What are the environmental issues inherent to a student’s life in Mexico? How do they compare to those of children growing up in the United States? How can we create time for students in both countries to share and discuss their environmental experiences?”

These are the sorts of questions Crossing Boundaries was created to tackle. We’ll be exploring them throughout this school year and beyond with the help of teachers like Hefti, Palmiotto, and our new Mexican collaborators. Find out more about our work, and the teachers and scientists working with us, at our Crossing Boundaries site.

(Mexico images by Kate Krantz-Odendahl. In top photo: Andrea Borrayo and Jamie Hefti talk in a classroom at Borrayo’s school, Colegio IDEO, in Guadalajara.)

An art project memorializing five extinct species has been made into a feature-length film that will be shown in New York City on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. The Lost Bird Project consists of five sleek bronze sculptures, each as tall as a person. Conceived and created by Todd McGrain, a sculptor and Cornell University art professor, they stand as memorials to loss as well as reminders of our ability to change the world.

The five pieces—a Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon, Labrador Duck, Carolina Parakeet, and Heath Hen—stood in the Cornell Lab’s Morgens Observatory for part of 2009 before McGrain embarked on a quest to place each sculpture near the spot where the species was last seen in the wild. That quest is the subject of the new film (see the trailer, above), which casts the loss of extinction against the artist’s determination to see his vision through—a neat and ultimately hopeful parallel to the resolve that’s required of conservationists.

I was there when the sculptures were installed at the Cornell Lab—I even helped move one or two of the 500-pound pieces into their final position. Walking up to them, you can look right into their eyes; their smooth curves invite you to make contact with them, to touch extinction; their flat black finish reminds us that the details of these birds are gone forever, and this revives the thought that with enough effort, we can make sure the birds we have left in the world keep their brightness and motion. It’s this thought, and the sculptures’ mute but somehow reassuring presence, that manages to give the project an air of hope.

If you’re in New York City this Friday evening, Dec. 2, the free screening will be held at the SVA Theater at 333 West 23rd St. A reception begins at 7:00 and the film starts at 7:30. Click here to register for a ticket.

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The Great Backyard Bird Count is a continent-spanning attempt to count birds over a single weekend in February that draws nearly 100,000 checklists from bird watchers all over the U.S. and Canada. People also send us thousands of pictures for our annual photo contest, which is sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited and Droll Yankees.

Once again this year the photos were stunning, from an elegant American Tree Sparrow to an acrobatic, snake-snatching Red-shouldered Hawk. Our judges have now made their choices and we are delighted to present the 2011 winners and runners-up, chosen from nearly 6,000 images submitted. The photos are beautiful, and the data from all those checklists help scientists get a picture of bird populations across North America.

This year’s overall winner is Lesley Mattuchio with her American Tree Sparrow image (above, with the other four winners in the Overall category). We judge photos in five other categories, too. This year the winners were:

Habitat: Norm Dougan, British Columbia
Group: Jeannette Tasey, Montana
Behavior: Harold Izenwasser, Florida
People: Donna Salko, Pennsylvania
Composition: Cathy Willis, Texas

Visit the GBBC website to see the top five photos in each of the six categories (my own favorite is the Red-breasted Nuthatch raiding Douglas-fir cones). This annual announcement also serves as a reminder that the 2012 GBBC is less than three months away. Mark your calendars now for Feb. 17–20!

Congratulations to all the finalists and to everyone who took the time to send us photos. Thanks to Wild Birds Unlimited and Droll Yankees for donating great prizes. The bar has been set very high—we look forward to your lenswork for the 2012 GBBC!

(Images are the winners in the Overall category of the 2011 Great Backyard Bird Count photo contest: American Tree Sparrow by Lesley Mattuchio, Common Poorwill by Allan J. Sander, Northern Saw-whet Owl by Nick Saunders, Northern Flicker by Gary Mueller, Pine Grosbeak by Norm Dougan. Visit the GBBC site to see the rest of the winners.)