Rare bird winners
News from BirdLife International
11-9-2008
The winners of the photo competition for Rare Birds Yearbook 2009 have been announced and include some stunning images of the world’s rarest birds. Hundreds of images were entered and the panel of judges had an extremely hard time deciding on the result. After much deliberation it was decided that the winners of the photo competition were Andy and Gill Swash for their beautiful image of a pair of
Lear’s Macaws in flight, taken in north-east Brazil.
“The sight of these two macaws flying together is a beautiful portrait of a very rare species and is a very deserving winner”, said Erik Hirschfeld, Editor of Rare Birds Yearbook. “Also a big ‘Thank you’ to Minox, Lynx Edicions and Inventas Media who generously sponsored the competition.”
Belding’s Yellowthroat by Javier Lascurain was awarded second place and Michael J. Morel portrait of a
Puerto Rican Nightjar claimed third prize.
New for this year was a category for photographs or paintings of species with no previous submissions. This was won by Tomasz Cofta for his painting of Kinglet Calyptura. In the new written competition, “My encounter with a Critically Endangered bird”, Blake Matheson won first prize with his story of his encounter with a Philippine Eagle.
An important objective of Rare Birds Yearbook is to create funds to help save threatened birds. That is why for every book sold, £4 is donated to the BirdLife International Preventing Extinction Programme, to be used exclusively for the protection and conservation of these Critically Endangered species.
This is a project that is trying to put itself out of business by helping save these Critically Endangered species. So why not help. You can still pick up copies of Rare Birds Yearbook 2008 and the 2009 edition will be available in November.
http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2008/09/rbyb_comp.html
