For the 4th year, Audubon Magazine has run its annual photography awards, and I am so pleased that one of my images of a red-naped sapsucker has been selected for the Top 100 out of the 9,361 photos submitted.

If you want to take a look at the Top 100 on the Audubon website the link is here.  There are some stunning and beautiful images, mine is in the 4th row down, 11 across.
 

A driller and steward of sap-wells, an adult Red-Naped Sapsucker, also known as the "Aspen Sapsucker", peers out of its nest cavity after delivering sticky insects to the noisy, insatiable chicks inside.  The cavity was in a mixed Aspen, Cottonwood, Coniferous riparian habitat in Wyoming, where I enjoyed watching and photographing this pair of woodpeckers for several hours whilst they continually hunted insects to feed the chicks tucked safely inside an aspen cavity excavated earlier in the year.  Extremely active in summer, with chicks to raise, this species is also adept at nabbing insects from the air or plucking them from branches.

I am now off to teach a class at the Yellowstone Association Institute Buffalo Ranch in the Lamar Valley for five days.  It’s a mix of classroom and fieldwork, so I’m sure we will find something exciting that I can blog about when I get back. 

In the meantime, “Happy New Year” and all best wishes for a successful 2013!