© 2019 Derrick Jackson
Derrick Jackson is the third winner of the 2020 BirdWatching Photography Awards with this full-frontal photo of an Atlantic puffin with a beak full of fish.
He took the photo on July 14, 2019, on Eastern Egg Rock, Maine, an island in Muscongus Bay. This is one of the sites where the Puffin Project has restored the species in the Gulf of Maine.
“The Atlantic puffin was nearly extinct in the state of Maine in the early 1900s, due to hunting for its meat and eggs by coastal dwellers,” Jackson says. “Today there are more than 1,300 pairs thanks to the restoration efforts of the National Audubon Society. This good amount of hake in this puffin’s beak symbolized the bounty available in 2019, as the waters were cool enough for cold-water fish to remain in the puffins’ feeding range. But availability has become unpredictable with climate change, because the Gulf of Maine is the fastest warming body of ocean water on Earth.
Derrick used a Nikon D810 camera and a 300mm f/2.8 lens. The settings were 1/1000 sec, f/5.6 and ISO 320.
The photo was one of more than 1,230 entries we received during the competition period this spring. And it was one of 14 finalists that we announced last week. Check out the links below for first and second place images as well as our finalists and honorable mentions.
First place at the BirdWatching Photography Awards 2020
Second place at the BirdWatching Photography Awards 2020
Finalists for the BirdWatching Photography Awards 2020
Honorable Mentions from the 2020 BirdWatching Photography Awards
A big thank you to our judges: Alan Murphy, professional bird photographer; author, podcaster, Bird watching columnist and photographer Laura Erickson; Outdoor photographer Editor-in-Chief Wes Pitts and Bird watching Editor Matt Mendenhall.
Find out how to submit your photos to our Color of Birds competition
