Member voting for the Feeding competition, which closed for entries on 10^th December and for voting on 1^st January, has been analysed and the results for the top 5 images in each category are listed here.  The Winner is the image which received the most votes; and we also show the next four highest placed images, rating them as Highly Commended if they received at least 90% of the votes for the winning image, and Commended for scores less than that.

Advanced Level – Feeding

This category attracted 66 entries, from 20 photographers. 24 members voted, with the following result:

• Winner - Pied Currawong, by Tim Van Leeuwen (Image ID 32937)
• Highly Commended - Pallid Cuckoo, by Wilson Lennard (Image ID 32761)
• Highly Commended - Rainbow Bee-eater, by Jason Moore (Image ID 32887)
• Commended - Azure Kingfisher, by Tim Van Leeuwen (Image ID 32588)
• Commended - Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, by Con Boekel (Image ID 32944)

Intermediate Level – Feeding

This category attracted 136 entries, from 44 photographers. 29 members voted, with the following result:

• Winner - Azure Kingfisher, by Bill Harding (Image ID 33038)
• Commended - Sacred Kingfisher, by Bill Harding (Image ID 32894)
• Commended - Black-shouldered Kite, by Con Duyvestyn (Image ID 32774)
• Commended - Silvereye, by Bill Harding (Image ID 33039)
• Commended - Striated Heron, by Catherine Noone (Image ID 32851)

Entry Level – Feeding

This category attracted 35 entries, from 11 photographers. 28 members voted, with the following result:

• Winner - Red-headed Honeyeater, by Chris Young (Image ID 32827)
• Commended - Pied Stilt, by Warren Bennett (Image ID 32610)
• Commended - Broad-billed Sandpiper, by Chris Young (Image ID 33082)
• Commended - Noisy Friarbird, by Ian Fellowes (Image ID 32543)
• Commended - Great Knot, by Chris Young (Image ID 32622)

Congratulations to all these photographers for their quality images

"Joy in the Morning", a photo of a variegated fairy-wren taken in Yulara, Northern Territory, has won the People’s Choice for the Australian Bird Photographer of the Year 2018 competition.  A selection of shortlisted photos from the Australian Bird Photographer of the Year is still available on The Guardian Australia website - visit here to view them. 

Over the years, we've published a number of educational/tutorial articles in our bi-monthly Newsletter.  These are now available in Resources - Our Articles.  That page provides access to articles in four categories:

• Photography Techniques and Processes
• Image Processing
• Articles about Equipment
• In-depth Technical Articles

Articles in this section which are less than 24 months old are only accessible to our members, who must log-in to access them.

More than 3,100 photos were entered in this year's inaugural Australian Bird Photographer of the Year contest, showcasing Australian birds at their most brilliant, vulnerable, astounding and beautiful.  We are proud to announce the 2018 winners across 7 categories.

• Bird Behaviour winner — ‘Slight Disagreement’ by Shelley Pearson
• Bird Portrait winner — ‘A Family Affair’ by Gary Meredith
• Human Impact winner — ‘A Tragic End’ by Danny McCreadie
• Special Theme: Black-Cockatoos winner — ‘Shadow Dancer’ by Lachlan Hall
• Birds in the Landscape winner — ‘Brolgas Flee Fire’ by Cathryn Vasseleu
• Creative/Fine Art winner — ‘Swooping’ by Sar Nop
• Youth winner — ‘Crested Pigeon’ by Campbell Mole

To view the winning and shortlisted entries, please visit the competition website: www.birdlifephotoaward.org.au/gallery-home

Prizes

Our seven winning photographers will share in $6,500 in cash awards thanks to our sponsors — Leica, NT Tourism Birding Trails, the Lake Cowal Foundation and BirdLife Photography.  The winning images will be featured in the December 2018 Australian Birdlife magazine.

Of the 120 winning and shortlisted images showcased on the Australian Bird Photographer of the Year website, 30 images will be chosen and featured in The Guardian online website in a Christmas People’s Choice Awards.

Twelve images from those shortlisted will feature in the BirdLife Australia 2019 calendar and greeting card series

Funds for Conservation

The 2018 Australian Bird Photographer of the Year Award featured a special theme — Black-cockatoos — and we are proud to announce, after the overwhelming success of this year’s award, we will be handing over $2,000 to ‘Kids helping Cockies’, a project established in 2012 with the aim of educating and engaging local schools in habitat propagation and restoration activities for the endangered South-eastern Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo.

In the past week or so (early April), we've had several members contact us to report that they have been unable to upload images to our galleries; the upload would hang, sometimes reporting a timeout error, sometimes with no error message.  It appears that a recent update to the Safari web browser - the default for Apple systems - is the cause of this behaviour.  Our advice to Safari users who experience this problem is to change to an alternative web browser; we recommend either Chrome or Firefox.