The theme for this competition is Best of 2018. As the name implies, we invite you to submit your best image(s) taken during 2018.

This competition is open for submission of entries from Monday 14^th January 2019 until Monday 25^th February 2019. Images must have been taken within 2018 (that is, between 1^st January 2018 and 31^st December 2018). The standard competition rules apply, with no special conditions except for the time limit. For the Advanced level, one or both of the image dimensions must be 1800px - this is a changed rule introduced as a trial in this competition.

The theme for this competition is Best of 2018. As the name implies, we invite you to submit your best image(s) taken during 2018.

This competition is open for submission of entries from Monday 14^th January 2019 until Monday 25^th February 2019. Images must have been taken within 2018 (that is, between 1^st January 2018 and 31^st December 2018). The standard competition rules apply, with no special conditions except for the time limit.

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.

For this competition, we asked you to submit photos of birds which are feeding either themselves or another bird, or with food/prey in their bill. We will consider drinking to be a feeding action.

This competition was open for submission of entries from Friday 9^th November 2018 until Monday 10^th December 2018.

This gallery contains images of places within Australia or its external territories/dependencies, such as long range/wide angle landscape photos, or patches of habitat, such as medium range views of typical scrub, forest, wetlands, etc.

This gallery was set up to provide BirdLife Australia with images of Key Biodiversity Areas to use in their 2017 KBA campaign.

This gallery is for submission of members' images. Images will remain in this gallery for one month, then be moved to the Main Library, or another special gallery if selected for that gallery. Details of this gallery's operation are available here.

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.