And The Winner of the Obscured Bird Contest is…

The Obscured Bird Contest was such fun!  I enjoyed looking at all the entries (over 140 of them); Xwinger and I were able to narrow down the best shots to 35.  Then the work began.  As we viewed and reviewed the semi-finalists we began looking for shots we thought the photographer had to use some skill to obtain a sharp focus in spite of any objects around the bird.  Modern cameras can focus on the eye when a bird is out in the open, but when it’s buried behind a wall of leaves, vines and limbs the photographer has to take over and use manual focus or find just the right window through the foliage to the bird.  We went back and forth about how much the bird was obscured – too much, too little, or just right.  After almost 3 hours of deliberation we selected gurineb’s “Nest-building Hummingbird”  as the winner.  As we looked at it we saw a lot of blurred vegetation in the foreground which told us the bird was buried inside the tree and she had to focus through a small window to get the show.  We loved the mess making up the nest and the spider web threads the hummer has in its beak.  I think you’ll agree it was hard to select just one, but congratulations to gurineb for her winning entry!  I’ll share the five runner-up pics next week.

With so many entries you know we had to go over 10,000 pics and Osprey90’s Gray Catbird Obscured Bird entry was it!  Congratulations – your $25 is on the way.

Here is the winning entry.  Congratulations gurineb for winning $100!

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