Editor's blog

Greg Balogh, USFWS

UPDATE 12/12: Time to vote for your favorite caption! We’ve narrowed down the options for this week to these three.

Here’s the photo backstory: The short-tailed albatross chick (right) just had a satellite transmitter attached to its back. Now it’s cozying up to an adult decoy—that’s right, folks, the bird on the left is a fake.

In a landslide victory, the black-crowned night heron took Matchup #3. (Check it out here if you missed it.) 

Today, in round four, a peregrine falcon and a parasitic jaeger, both in flight, compete for your votes. Which do you like best? 

It’s time for another round of head-to-head photo competition. 

Eagles in mid-air battle won the second matchup. This time, pick your preference out of these two, part of our gallery, “You Lookin’ at Me?” from the Audubon Magazine Photo Awards entries.

Great stuff on the first matchup! Thanks to all of you who clicked your pick. Surfing Birds earned the win, by just a few votes.

For our next head to head, it’s chicks against eagles (okay, okay, chick photo versus eagle photo). Either way, pick your favorite of the two, vote, then tell all your friends—virtual or otherwise. The winner of this matchup will go up against Surfing Birds sometime mid-December.

Our January-February issue will feature the winners of our annual Audubon Magazine Photography Awards. But why let the official judges have all the fun?

From now until the beginning of January 2012, we’ll be pitting some of our entries (selected in no particular order) against one another for you to vote on. We’ll feature the winner on our website, along with an article about how she or he captured the shot.

Click through to cast your vote!

The Hall sisters are "Birding the Net" with abandon.

 
The movie The Big Year, starring Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson opens next Friday. The sweet, and, of course, funny film tells the story of three birders hell-bent on tallying the most avian species in a calendar year. Here’s a sneak-peek at a clip from the movie, narrated by comic genius John Cleese...

An isolated barb from a vaned feather, trapped within a tangled mass of spider’s web in Late Cretaceous Canadian amber. Pigment distribution within this feather fragment suggests that the barb may have been gray or black. Image: Science/AAAS

 
Feathers encased in amber 70 to 85 million years ago are giving researchers new insight into the evolution of these incredible structures in birds and non-avian dinosaurs.  The fossils show the progression from hair-like filament structures contained in early feathers to the more complex branching feathers of modern birds. Click through to see more incredible photographs...

A World War II poster encouraging kitchen waste to feed animals.

From farm to fork, Americans waste 40 percent of their food. In addition to the economic and ethical ramifications, our widespread squandering has far-reaching environmental impact. Since each person creates roughly a half-pound of food waste per day, we can play a significant role in reducing it. Here are five tips for reducing food waste...

Cable network Animal Planet announced its most ambitious foray into reality-TV programming yet Monday with The Zoo, a weekly, hourlong show in which members of a diverse, all-animal cast square off in a single 3,200-square-foot home in the San Fernando Valley.

"Sparks—and fur—are sure to fly when animals from 11 different ecosystems share a single row house in trendy Echo Park," executive producer Stu Wolchek said. "For many of these wild, colorful, and totally unpredictable cast members, it's the first time they've ever seen a bison or sloth."