The Cranes, Storks, Crakes, Rails and Swamphens competition is open for entries from 5 April until 6 pm EST on 24 May 2021. Images from this competition must have been taken within the last 3 years from the date of commencement of the competition (that is, on or after 5 April 2018. The following species are eligible: Brolga, Sarus Crane, Black-necked Stork, Lewin’s Rail, Buff-banded Rail, Lord Howe Woodhen, Chestnut Rail. Red-necked Crake, Red-legged Crake, Ruddy-breasted Crake, Baillon’s Crake, Australian Spotted Crake, Spotless Crake, White-browed Crake, Purple Swamphen. Pale-vented Bush-hen, Watercock, White-breasted Waterhen, Eurasian Coot, Dusky Moorhen, Common Moorhen, Black-tailed Native-hen and Tasmanian Native-hen.

The Cranes, Storks, Crakes, Rails and Swamphens competition is open for entries from 5 April until 6 pm EST on 24 May 2021. Images from this competition must have been taken within the last 3 years from the date of commencement of the competition (that is, on or after 5 April 2018. The following species are eligible: Brolga, Sarus Crane, Black-necked Stork, Lewin’s Rail, Buff-banded Rail, Lord Howe Woodhen, Chestnut Rail. Red-necked Crake, Red-legged Crake, Ruddy-breasted Crake, Baillon’s Crake, Australian Spotted Crake, Spotless Crake, White-browed Crake, Purple Swamphen. Pale-vented Bush-hen, Watercock, White-breasted Waterhen, Eurasian Coot, Dusky Moorhen, Common Moorhen, Black-tailed Native-hen and Tasmanian Native-hen.

This gallery contains images that have been submitted for comments/critiques. Images in this gallery appear with a Comment section, where any members may submit comments regarding the image. These comments may be viewed by anyone viewing these images; however, only members may submit comments.

Standard gallery for all photos other than competitions. Images submitted to the New Images gallery are moved here after 30 days.

These are the candidate images for the Photo of the Year award, displayed for member voting,

For information on the voting process, please refer to the Competition Voting page.  You may vote for up to five images, awarding 5 points to the image you select as best, down to 1 point for your fifth choice; you may choose to award points to fewer than five images.  Before voting, you should review all the images in the gallery for the competition to select your choices; you can do this at any time before voting closes, and you do not have to be logged in to the website to review images.  You have to be logged in to enter your votes; the Vote section on each image page will only be visible if you are logged in.  It will not be visible if the image is yours - you cannot vote for your own image(s).

All of the Round 1 birds have introduced breeding populations on one or more islands. While most are readily identifiable, one or two surprises are included, and there is at least one tricky one. Round 2 will comprise species that are native to Australia (including vagrants) and will include some very tricky customers indeed.

General comment for all images in this ID Challenge: The size and shape of the bird, and the size and shape of its bill, generally help to put these birds into their families of Honeyeaters, Robins, Scrubwrens, Thornbills, Gerygones etc. From there we work with the key features.

The April 2014 Newsletter article on this ID Challenge reports the various mis-identifications. Some of these are addressed in the comments for the individual images, but not all.

Click on a thumbnail image to open the full-size image and view the expert comments regarding identification.

Ducks and Drakes ID Challenge

This theme was chosen to complement the first BLP photographic competition of 2017.

Every bird observer sees ducks and drakes and pretty well everyone can pick out the common species like Pacific Black Duck. However, ducks can be difficult to identify. There are some tricky customers - such as splitting Grey Teal and Chestnut Teal. Ducks, as opposed to drakes, can look similar to ducks of other species. The set of diagnostic characters you need to observe in flight tend to be very different from the set of diagnostic characters you use when ducks are perched or swimming. Many ducks are shot at during their lives and such ducks have huge critical distances. They use the precautionary principle and take off and fly away if they feel threatened. This makes getting close enough to them to identify them without disturbing them a challenge. On the other hand, ducks in suburban ponds are often hand-fed, are habituated to humans, and will allow a very close approach. Finally, ducks are strong fliers, and there is always the possibility of the odd vagrant to add spice to the usual fare.