Category Archives: Take 5

Indigo Bunting © Amy Powers-Smith

Take 5: 2018 Photo Contest Honorable Mentions

This year, more than 4,000 images were submitted in the Mass Audubon Picture This: Your Great Outdoors photo contest—another record year! It wasn’t easy to determine the winners with so many incredible entries, but thankfully we always allow for a handful of Honorable Mentions outside of the main categories so we can highlight some of our favorites that just barely missed the cut.

Here are five Honorable Mentions that we loved from the 2018 photo contest. See all of the winners and runners-up on our website and get some tips for capturing a winning photo for next year’s contest.

Indigo Bunting © Amy Powers-Smith
Indigo Bunting © Amy Powers-Smith
Lighthouse © Jason Taylor
Lighthouse © Jason Taylor
Orange Bluet Damselfly © Sherri Vanden Akker
Orange Bluet Damselfly © Sherri Vanden Akker
Red Eft © Anna Mitchell
Red Eft © Anna Mitchell
© Melissa Knowles
© Melissa Knowles
Eastern Bluebird © Cheryl Rose

Take 5: Winter Songbirds

Whether you’re briskly pacing across Boston Common or gazing out your kitchen window into a snow-covered suburban backyard, birds can be seen all winter long. The birds featured below are some of the most commonly seen species in winter all across Massachusetts, and many of them will readily come to bird feeders.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but many urban and suburban avian visitors in the winter months will belong to one of the species below. See a longer list of cold-weather Massachusetts birds on our website and enjoy these five beautiful photographs from our photo contest archives.

American Goldfinch © Alex Renda
American Goldfinch © Alex Renda
Cedar Waxwing © Bernard Creswick
Cedar Waxwing © Bernard Creswick
White-breasted Nuthatch © Jonathan Eckerson
White-breasted Nuthatch © Jonathan Eckerson
Tufted Titmouse © Kim Nagy
Tufted Titmouse © Kim Nagy
Eastern Bluebird © Cheryl Rose
Eastern Bluebird © Cheryl Rose