Look, I write about a lot of garbage that doesn’t interest me in the slightest, so cut me a little slack here.

I’m going to show you the winners of the ‘Bird Photographer of the Year 2019’ competition. If that doesn’t interest you, be gone.

That Dalmatian Pelican above was snapped by Caron Steele, and she took home top prize, and a cool £5 000, for her efforts.

Her photo was taken at Greece’s Lake Kerkini, where birds returning to the area “regaled [her] with hilarious antics as they slid across the lake surface trying to retain control as they took off and landed”.

She also won the Gold Award for the Best Portrait category and the People’s Choice Award.

Via Forbes, let’s look at some of the other winners:

Best Portfolio Winner: Black-crowned Night-heron at Kiskunság National Park, Hungary, hunting at twilight – THOMAS HINSCHE, GERMANY

You can see Black-crowned Night-herons around Cape Town, too. Rondevlei is a good place to start.

Best Portfolio Winner: Eurasian Hoopoe Saxony-Anhalt, Germany: A male Hoopoe feeding its mate while she incubates the eggs – THOMAS HINSCHE, GERMANY

You can also see the hoopoe in Cape Town – try Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and you might get lucky.

Blue on Blue: Best Portrait, Silver Award Winner – A bold young Kingfisher during the winter months in the middle of Hertfordshire town – BEN ANDREW, UNITED KINGDOM

Head-On: Birds in Flight, Gold Award Winner – Black Skimmer in Ocean City, New Jersey – NIKUNJ PATEL, USA

In southern Africa, we have the African Skimmer, which is one of the crown jewels of the Okavango Delta.

Rope-dancer: Bird Behaviour, Silver Award Winner – Grey Heron at a fish farm near Kanjiza in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina – JOZSEF GERGELY, SERBIA

Church Light: Garden and Urban Birds, Gold Award Winner – An all-white Snowy Owl on a quaint white church set against a light backdrop in Saskatchewan, Canada – CHAD LARSEN, CANADA

The Tongue of the Hummingbird: Young Bird Photographer Of The Year, Silver Award Winner – A female Rufous Hummingbird sticks out her tongue – MADELINE NOLAN, USA

We don’t get hummingbirds in South Africa, but in Cape Town, we do have a number of sunbirds.

One, in particular, the orange-breasted sunbird, is endemic to the fynbos of the Western Cape, occurring nowhere else in the world.

This shot was taken at Kirstenbosch:

If you see people at Kirstenbosch with long-lens cameras, trained on the tops of proteas or aloes, they’re probably snapping pictures of sunbirds or Cape sugarbirds.

Well, that’s enough bird-nerd talk for one day.

Happy weekend.

[source:forbes]